“You have taken me from the only home I know.”

“Then you can stay with me. Call this place a home. Is it not obvious to you that I want more than a bloody contract between us? I should hear from Amir any day now with regard to your son.”

“You speak as though you think you’ve won a hand of cards. This is not the case. I know Amir better than you ever will. When will you see that for the truth?”

“Do you want to know what I see, Jinan?” He did not wait for her to say anything, and he continued. “I see a woman who is afraid to embrace freedom when it’s been offered to her. Damn well nearly on a silver platter.” His voice was steady, but she heard the upset in it.

“You have no understanding of my life before now, so do not base your judgment of me on what you think you know and what you think you remember. I am not free here. I am not fool enough to believe your words for they are hypocrisy. You have caged me as well as a songbird. This cage might look and feel bigger because of the false freedom you’ve offered, but this design is no less obvious. I take it for what it is—my prison.”

“I have given you the freedom of my home. I want you to feel comfortable here.”

“Is this what you tell yourself? Are you so blind to your own deviousness? If this is not a golden cage symbolizing further repression, why do you refuse me what I want most?”

There was a long pause from Rothburn. He rubbed at the beard stubble along his jaw. “I wish you could see the truth of what I offer. If I sent you home you might never come back to me.”

She sat up in her chair, unsure what she should say to that. Because that was the truth. If she went back to the harem, she’d never see him again. She could not choose to come back to him. So he was right. Leaving meant an end to everything between them. It wasn’t something she wanted to think about. “What you do is not better than what Amir did. You cage me to act as your whore.”

He must have misread her expression, her tone. His hands brushed through his hair in a jerky displaced movement of frustration—a habit of his. “I will get nowhere with you, will I? I do not want you playing the whore. I never did. But you sit there pretty as can be playing the damned part so well, I wonder if I’ve dreamed you half my damned life. Made you something more in my head, in my thoughts, over the years we were separated.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.” Did he really want to acknowledge their past now?

It seemed pointless, a lifetime ago. They’d both mentioned things that hinted at their past engagement, but they’d not once talked about it.

He stood quickly, glaring down at her. The words all but poured out of him.

“Jesus, you are impossible. Do you think me a fool? I’ve wanted you practically half my life. I would have been content knowing I had lost you but could always return to you in my dreams. Instead I find you, and now I can never let you go.” He sat back down with a huff; the words seemed to have drained him. He turned his back to the wall and brought one knee up to rest his arm upon. “Do you know that you’ve ruined me for all others?”

He didn’t look at her, and she was glad for it. What could she say to a man who had wanted her for so long? Did he exaggerate? She’d known many a man to do just that.

No, she knew he did not refer to some hypothetical beauty of the night. He spoke of their past. She knew it as surely as she knew her own heart where he was concerned. Life was so much easier when you closed yourself off from your past. She’d learned to do that when she’d married Robert, and had continued to forget the innocent girl she once was, as her life turned down more and more paths too dark to navigate with a light heart.

“I’m not the person you have dreamed of all these years.” She looked away from him, unable to meet his eyes should he turn to face her. Her words were not a lie, but a truth made real by the path her life had taken. “I’m not the person you want me to be.”

“Damn it, Jinan. Can we lose the deceit for once? Just once—once!—give me the truth.” He didn’t turn when he said the words. Just stared out over the garden she’d enjoyed looking at moments ago. His fingers stretched and cracked as he sat there, such a small movement, but one clearly derived from his agitation.

“What do you want of me? Maybe that is the only thing that needs to be clear between us?”

“I want the truth. It’s what I’ve always wanted from you between us. Just the truth.”

“And what truth is that?” she asked, because she would not be forced to admit anything.

“Your games were pleasant during our reacquaintance. Did you find them to be so, too? Do you think I propose to just anyone I happen to fancy at a given moment? That I would spend so much money on a woman for the hell of it?”

If the proposal hadn’t been a whim, a foolish puppy love between them, then why had he walked away from her, left her? That time in her life now was hazy. She’d fallen head over heels in love with this man in a whirlwind two weeks, then he’d disappeared. After that, the vapid Baron Shepley had courted her. She’d been forced into a marriage with the bounder when he’d ruined her reputation—quite intentionally, she was sure.

When she didn’t answer, he turned to look at her. She could see the raw hurt in his eyes. She saw in his gaze that he wanted her to admit to their past.

But she couldn’t.

“Do you need a refresher, Elena?” He still stared at her, daring her to lie now that he had called her by her real name.

Or perhaps to gauge her reaction to the one name she never wanted to hear again.

She made to speak when he held up his hand to silence her. “Hear me out.”

“Rothburn, you do not understand my position in all this.”

“Don’t I? Let me fill in the blanks then, my dear. We met some ten years ago. I think you should take a moment to recall the Duchess of Glenmoore’s ball. There was a proposal in the gardens at the aforementioned party.” Those penetrating eyes of his landed on hers again—hurt lay in their depths. “Is this beginning to fall in place for you yet? Are you remembering?”

“I don’t understand what you are getting at.”

Rothburn took a deep breath, the only sound to fill the distance between them. It was clear he’d been waiting for her confession for some time, maybe from the moment he took her from the auction block.

“I remember our courtship, of course. Those were, at that point, the happiest days of my life. Then after proposing to me, you left the very next day, so I didn’t think it had meant anything to you.” She couldn’t say more than that, and stared into her lap where she entwined her fingers to still their nervous tremble.

“I understand better than anyone why you married that scoundrel, you know. The man is dead, is he not?”

She did not delay her answer. “My husband is dead.”

“I did look into his whereabouts. More specifically, your whereabouts. He shouldn’t have been a hard man to find given his proclivity for gambling; I’d hoped to find men claiming he owed them money. Both of you proved impossible to locate once you moved abroad.”

“He did not die well or with any honor. We did not have friends to turn to anymore.”

“Had I known, I would have done more, Elena.”

“Please do not call me by my birth name.”

“And why not? It is your birth name. There is no reason not to use it now. I’d like to think there are few things we don’t know about each other at this point.”

“I implore you not to.” Her eyes flooded with tears. She tried to hold them back, but she knew they would fall soon. This was too much, rehashing her sordid, awful life.

“For a long time I was angry with you. I thought you had only been interested in finding the next available suitor.”

His words were more caustic, more detached, the longer he went on. She wasn’t sure if his apparent anger was directed at her or at himself. It was in her best interest now to set him straight on the matter of her downfall.

“You can never understand the trials I have been through, Rothburn.”

“I can imagine it was no hardship. I doubt you would have embraced that life so easily if it had been a hardship. I’ve never seen reserve in you, nor guilt. Not once did you ask for my help in taking you away from that place. How many men have you warmed? Have you enjoyed them all as much as you seemed to enjoy my company?” The whip of his words shattered her heart like shards of cold ice. She lifted her head, tears trailing a path down both her cheeks with the motion.

“Stop this.” He must have been caught off guard by her raised voice. Mouth clamped shut, he allowed her to continue. “I was given no choice about that life. Amir has been most kind to me. He would never abuse me or neglect me. He has been above reproach in his care and generosity.”

“I fear your faith is placed in the wrong sort of man.” He snorted his disgust.

“He’s no more morally incorrupt than the people that visit his bawdy island.”

“I do not mistake his generosity. He’s been most kind, and I know you will never understand such a thing. You cannot understand the lengths he went to to save me from a death too cruel to repeat. I bear great respect for the only man to show me kindness in all my life.”

She revealed too much with the last; she spoke strongly. She’d kept her past so deeply buried that once she started digging, the heart of the matter seemed to raise to the surface on its own, demanding she delve to the very core of her secrets. It was a strange personal revelation, too. For the first time in five years, she actually hated the fact that Amir’s kindness had won her over so easily. It made her an unworthy woman and mother to not fight harder for her freedom.

“Elena.”