“Then we can be married and live apart. I will do my best to get to America to see you at least every other year.”
His expression answered her.
She looked back at her horse. “Why did you do this to me?” she asked softly. “Why did you make me fall in love with you?”
He reached out for her, but she moved away. “Maddie, these things happen. I never meant—”
She turned to look at him. “Yes, you did. You wanted me and you did everything in your power to get me. You were like someone who saw something lovely in a shop window and you saved for it, planned how to purchase it.”
“That’s absurd. I fell in love with you. It happens every day. If you’d just—”
“When did you fall in love with me? Tell me the exact moment.”
He didn’t know what she was talking about with this purchasing talk, but he couldn’t help but smile when he remembered the moment he realized that he loved her. “It was after the miners kidnapped you, on the day that I was bringing you back from where they’d taken you. We had been talking and it was so easy between us. I thought you were so different from other women, and then you looked up at me and I knew that I loved you.”
She looked back at the horse. “That was some time ago. After that what did you do?”
“Maddie, these questions are ridiculous. We love each other. We can work this out.”
“We can work it out by my singing in the theater you build for me?”
“I can’t see that that’s so bad. We’ll make Warbrooke into a haven for opera lovers. People from all over the world will come there to hear you. I’ll build a hotel just to accommodate them, and, of course, we can transport them on Warbrooke ships.”
“Buy me. Buy me. That’s all you can think of. If you have your way, I’ll die never having achieved anything on my own. On my tombstone will not be written that I was a great singer, but that my husband bought everything for me.”
“Maddie, you’re not being reasonable.”
She turned on him, tears in her eyes. “Reasonable? You don’t know what reasonable is. All you know is what you want. You’ve been so spoiled in your life that you have always had whatever you wanted. If you wanted to run the family business when you were just a child, then you were allowed to do so. If you wanted to join the army, then you were allowed to do that too. And now you’ve decided that you want a little songbird for a wife, so you expect to be allowed to do that as well.”
“Maddie, you’re becoming hysterical. And you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve always had to work for what I have.”
“Like you worked to get me?” Her voice was rising in anger. “You planned your attack on me like you’d plan a battle campaign. You decided that you wanted me, you figured out how to get me, and then you put your plan into motion.”
“You make me sound cold-blooded. I admit that I did do a bit of planning, but I can’t see that it was so wrong. I love you and I want you.”
“Do you? Do you know me from…from Edith? Or did it just fit into the plan of your life to marry an opera star? Wouldn’t it look nice with the illustrious Montgomery name to tie it to the great LaReina?”
“You’re going too far now,” he said softly.
“Oh, I’m not to step on the toes of the magnificent Montgomery name, is that it? Oh, God, ’Ring, why did you do it? Why did you work so hard to make me fall in love with you?”
“Because I loved you and I wanted you to love me in return.”
“Me!” She almost shouted at him. “Me? You don’t know anything about me. I told you long ago that unless you know about my singing then you know nothing about me. You seem to think that knowing what kind of food I like or my favorite color is knowing me. Those things have nothing to do with me.”
She could see by his face that he didn’t understand a word she was saying. Her anger left her, and she turned back to her horse. “I wish you hadn’t done it. If you’d wanted a housewife, someone to wear the pretty dresses you buy her, someone to be at home waiting for you when you returned, then you should have found her and married her. You should have chosen to love a woman who was what you wanted in a wife and left me alone.” She leaned her head against the horse and fought back tears. “Why couldn’t you have been content to just take me to bed? That seems to be what most men want from a woman, but not you. You wouldn’t even make love to me until I loved you. And now you make me choose between you and my music.”
“I’m not asking you to give up your music.”
She began to tighten straps that were already tight. “No, you’re just asking me sing for you while I’m in a cage.” She turned on him. “Damn you! Damn you to hell, Christopher Hring Montgomery! Do you even know enough about me to realize that I am not a frivolous woman and that when I love I love forever? I have seen so many singers, singers with great voices, who gave up singing after only a few years simply because they fell out of love with singing. But me, once I love someone or something, I love them forever. I don’t change affections for people or animals or for what I do.”
He put his hand on her arm. “I don’t know why you think that I love someone I don’t know, but it’s you I love. I saw a long time ago that you love with all your heart. When I found out that you were here singing for these men who don’t appreciate your voice, and all because you wanted to save a sister you hadn’t seen in years, I was sure that I loved you. Maddie, don’t you yet see how much alike we are? I could never love someone who didn’t have the intensity that I have. Were I to marry one of those little women who is content to live her husband’s life, I would terrify her.” His hand tightened on her arm. “You can’t leave me. After I deal with Yovington I have to go back to the fort. Wait for me there. We can work things out. Maybe after we’re married we can go to Paris or London every summer and you can sing there.”
“How can we ever work anything out? You don’t know the meaning of compromise. I am the only one to compromise. Just me. Never you. You don’t compromise at all. If you decide we’re to spend three days chained together, then it’s your decision and yours alone. You never even ask my opinion. If you decide you’re going to go after my sister, you go, never saying a word to me, just sneaking off and leaving me a note signed with your initials. Now you’re telling me I’m to marry you and do whatever you want for the rest of my life.”
She glared at him, then shook her head. “You really don’t understand, do you?” She sniffed back her tears and put her chin up. “Let me explain it to you as clearly as I can. You are not the only person in this world who has to do what he must. Just as you feel that you have to go after the kidnappers all alone and anyone else’s opinions be damned, I have to sing. I have to sing for other people, not people who are purchased by you, but people who choose to hear me sing. I am not going to live your life, I am going to live my life.” She jerked out of his grasp.
“You mean that you’re going to walk away from me, don’t you? You’re going to give up what we have without even trying to work out our problems?”