Until You

Things that might change the way Conor felt about her.

"Miranda?"

She started. Conor was watching her, a puz

zled smile on his face.

"Don't you like the hot and sour soup?"

She looked down at the table. A bowl of steaming soup had appeared before her but she had no idea when.

"Because if you don't, that's okay. We can order something else."

"Conor." Miranda folded her hands in her lap. "You've never asked me—you've never asked me why I married Edouard."

Conor put down his spoon. "No," he said carefully, "I didn't. You married him and that's that. You don't owe me any explanations."

"I know that. But I want you to know. There are things about me..."

Pieces of her past, she meant. And he realized he ought to encourage her to share them. For all he knew, they'd shed light on why someone had targeted her.

For all he knew, de Lasserre, that pompous son of a bitch, had been the love of her life. And if that was true, he didn't want to hear it.

"I married him because I was lonely."

Conor looked across the table at her. "Did you love him?"

"I thought I did. You have to remember, I was seventeen years old. I had no real friends—I never stayed in one school long enough to make any. My mother and I didn't—we didn't get along. And suddenly this man came into my life. He was kind to me. He was handsome, too, and sophisticated—a teenaged girl's dream, you know? And he told me all the things a lonely kid dreams of hearing, that I was beautiful and desirable and that he'd take care of me forever."

"And you believed him."

"Sure. Why wouldn't I? Edouard was very polished and I was this dumb kid." She drew a deep breath. "I met him through my roommate, Amalie. Did I ever tell you about her?"

Conor cleared his throat. "No. No, you didn't."

"Amalie hated me on sight. I tried everything I could think of to make friends with her. I let her copy my homework, I coached her in the subjects she was failing. God, I must have seemed so pathetic! But it didn't matter. For some reason, she flat-out disliked me from the start and when Edouard—he was her cousin—when Edouard started paying her visits, taking her out to lunch and inviting me along..."

Conor reached for her hand across the table. "Amalie was pissed," he said, with a little smile.

Miranda laughed. "Exactly. I knew it upset her and honestly, I didn't want that but I was so flattered by Edouard's attention, so—what's the word?—so infatuated..." She let out a long sigh. "Anyway, he proposed. He loved me, he said, and by then I was convinced I loved him, too. I told him my mother would never give permission, she'd say I was too young, and he said we didn't need her permission, that we'd elope." Her eyes met Conor's. "He thought I was eighteen. I let him think it. I'd been afraid that if he knew the truth, he wouldn't bother with me."

"Miranda." Conor's hand tightened almost painfully on hers. "You don't have to say any more. Look, we all make mistakes. Hell, I was married, once, too, but it didn't work out. And I didn't have the excuse of being a lonely, mixed-up seventeen-year-old kid."

"I'm not apologizing for what I did, Conor, I'm just trying to explain why—why I never..." She swallowed dryly. "By the time we reached Paris, I knew I'd made a terrible mistake. I tried to tell that to Edouard. I said I wanted to go home. And he laughed." Her voice dipped; Conor had to lean forward to hear her. "He said nothing would part us, after he'd—after he'd..."

"Baby, don't. It isn't important, not anymore."

"He raped me," she said, with sudden, awful ferocity. Her head came up, all the pain of so long ago blazing in her eyes. "When it was over, he said I was pathetic, that I'd have to learn to make believe I was a real woman if I didn't want him to teach me a lesson I'd never forget. Then he locked the door and left."

Conor felt the rage twisting inside him like a snake.

"Eva turned up the next morning. Oh, I was so happy to see her! I was sure she'd come to take me home." Her eyes went flat. "But it wasn't like that. She said I was no better than a whore."

"Jesus Christ, your own mother?"

"She said she'd take care of Edouard and that when she and I got back to the States, I'd be going to a special school for girls who were bad, like me." Her voice quavered. "I knew the place—we used to joke about it, at Miss Cooper's, we'd say, well, this place isn't the end of the line anymore, now there's the Newton Academy, where they lock you in your room and pump you full of dope if you don't behave." She took a deep breath. "I begged Eva not to do it. I said I'd rather stay in Paris than be locked away like that and she said, then stay. The next thing I knew, I was standing in the street, watching her taxi drive away."

He was almost afraid to speak because of the rage he felt.