‘Interesting,’ he murmured, his eyes holding hers.
Rare, dark granite-grey with perhaps the faintest hint of a midnight blue flecked through them. And they rooted her to the mosaic floor.
‘If you see yourself as some kind of Marc Antony, and your father as Brutus, then who might you cast in the role of Cassius, I wonder? Or even Caesar himself?’
Wordlessly, Oti stared at him.
If she’d hoped that her months away would diminish the effect he had on her—even during their one single meeting, five months ago in the conservatory of Sedeshire Hall—then Oti now realised she’d been wholly naïve.
‘I keep looking at you and thinking you present yourself as quite the incapable, guileless young woman in this entire agreement. But you aren’t, are you?’
She blinked. It was true that she wasn’t herself around Lukas. She hadn’t been even from that first moment.
For a woman who had always prided herself on her gentle nature and giving personality, she seemed to turn into this smart-mouthed sass machine whenever Lukas Woods was near. It would have been disconcerting if she hadn’t decided it was a good defence mechanism. And she was only with him for Edward’s sake. Not her own.
‘Perhaps we should try needling each other a little less?’ he suggested as the bishop began to wrap up his opening speech. ‘Given that we’re about to become husband and wife.’
Husband and wife.
Oti knew it had been meant as a light quip, but the words echoed through her head as a strange sensation poured through her. And this time it had nothing to do with the low, impossibly rich voice that coiled around her unexpectedly, seeming to permeate her very bones and making her feel...odd. Or the way his mouth was so close to her ear that his warming breath brought jolts of unwanted attraction straight down her centre. To her core.
Husband and wife, it echoed again.
And she tried to pretend that something didn’t kick hard in her chest. Or lower, if she were to be shamefully honest.
What was she thinking, taking on a man like this...marrying him?
Even for her brother. But what choice had she had? She could finally see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, when the last four years had pitched them all into the blackness. How could she have done anything but run towards it and hope that it was the way out, and not another oncoming train?
It was odd, wasn’t it? The way her life seemed to be cleaved into such clear segments. It was as if she’d been reeling from one thing to another—her attack, her mother’s death, then Edward’s accident—these past fifteen years. Reacting. Countering. Hopelessly out of control. But always playing catch-up.
She hadn’t had time to breathe or think. Or even work out the person she was.
She’d thought she’d been getting closer to finding herself these last years with HOP. Working in South Sudan had been the first thing that had truly felt her own. It had helped to ground her. At least her last memory out there was of the walk with the young mum Kahsha, where the prolonged exercise had finally helped the baby to shift and descend.
Now there was a five-day-old baby back near their camp called Ayshani-Oti. Her heart actually felt as though it was going to swell its way out of her chest.
If only her father’s Machiavellian wrangling hadn’t once again caught up with her. He started fires wherever he went. Destroyed everything. He’d used Edward against her, and she’d had no choice but to fling herself once more into a burning building in the hope that she could put the fire out.
Only this time the fire was Lukas Woods. And she couldn’t help fearing that he was going to be the one to finally burn her.
‘If any person present knows of any lawful impediment to this marriage, speak now or for ever hold your peace.’
Oti tuned back in as the bishop was speaking, the silence descending in the cathedral seeming suddenly so loud in her ears. The vaulted ceilings echoed with the sound of a guest coughing. Someone sneezing. And all she could think was that she had a hundred objections to going through with the marriage.
Not least the fact that she no longer trusted herself or her motives. Not entirely.
And then she caught Lukas’s grim expression and she couldn’t have said what that sensation was that rolled through her; it was as though he was waiting for someone to object. But no one did.
Another cough.
Another shuffle of bottom against wooden pew.
And Lukas merely watched her. Challenging her. And taunting her. Baring his teeth in something that might appear to be a smile but made Oti think of wolves and sharpened fangs.
She needed to keep her head in t
he game, lest she end up being ripped to shreds. And she could pretend to be offended by the entire agreement all she liked—she certainly ought to be—but the truth was that she was floored by her insane attraction to Lukas.