As he approached, she saw that the distance remained in his eyes. She should be grateful. If he kept her out of his heart and soul, she was far less likely to make a fool of herself. That wasn’t
how she felt. She felt like he locked her out in the snow while inside he sat by a hearty fire drinking brandy.
He gestured along the beach. “Shall we walk?”
“Yes,” she said, even as she shivered.
He noticed her discomfort. He noticed everything. “We should go inside.”
Back to the house? Back to the unending, tormenting awareness that simmered between them? In a way, he was even more appealing under open sky with the wind ruffling his thick gypsy-black hair. But out here she was less oppressively conscious how every moment made surrender more inevitable.
“N… no.” She loathed the betraying stammer.
“As you wish.” He whipped off his coat. Heavy folds settled around her, swaddling her in warmth and a heady mixture of scents—horses and leather and the sea and, most intoxicating of all, Jonas Merrick. Wrapped in his coat, she felt wrapped in his arms.
She made a halfhearted attempt to return it. “Won’t you be cold?”
He laughed as he strolled ahead. “The devil looks after his own.”
She scurried to keep up. “I wish you wouldn’t be kind,” she said in a subdued voice, holding her wayward hair back from her face.
“I’m never kind.”
“You never admit it at least,” she muttered, guilt scourging her like a thousand flails. She had a troublesome inkling that if she weighed sin against sin, her trespasses against Jonas Merrick far outweighed his against her.
Chapter Nine
Jonas couldn’t bear this. He whirled around to face Sidonie. “Don’t deceive yourself that I’m a good man.”
Shocked, she stared at him. Then her chin tilted at the familiar angle. “I think you’re a better man than you believe.”
His laugh was weighted with bitterness. “My sins condemn me.”
He’d hoped to daunt her into backing down. He should have known better. “Name one. Confession is good for the soul, they say.”
He bit back the retort that he didn’t have a soul. Once he’d have said that was categorically true, but some rusty shreds of honor had scraped into agonizing life under Sidonie’s influence. Why else would she still be virgin after nearly three days in his clutches? “They talk a lot of twaddle.”
“You raised the subject of your wickedness. I just want to confirm how bad you really are.” She paused to brush back the flyaway hair around her face. The breeze was strengthening. “Tell me just one thing you’ve done that puts you beyond the pale, then I’ll leave you to brood romantically over your wrongdoing.”
“Very droll.” How he regretted challenging her. But then he remembered with repugnance the way she’d looked at him when he’d given her his coat. Strategy might insist he gull her into thinking him a decent fellow, but the prospect of her bitter and inevitable disillusionment made him cringe. Not for the first time since meeting Sidonie, he cursed that inconvenient, reluctant honor that hindered his stratagems.
“Have you killed someone?”
He could see she thought he fretted over mere trifles. “Not with my bare hands,” he snapped, turning to stride down the beach.
She scuttled to keep up. “Tell me.”
He wanted to consign her to Hades. Instead, he stopped and faced her. If she was so all-fired keen to count his crimes, he’d damn well tell her. But how to choose one misdeed from the hundreds to his discredit? “You want to know if I killed someone?”
She too halted, wisely keeping a distance between them. She probably guessed that he wasn’t far from grabbing her slender shoulders and giving her a good shake. “Yes.”
His eyes narrowed on her and his answer emerged as a supercilious drawl. “My dear, I’ve killed thousands.”
Sidonie tangled her hands in her skirts, partly to preserve modesty against the brisk wind, partly to hide her sudden trembling. “I don’t believe you.”
That superior smile she’d learned to hate twisted Merrick’s lips. “On my mother’s grave, I swear it’s true.”
Swiftly shock subsided and reason kicked into life. She knew he played a game with her. A grim, grotesque game, for sure, but nonetheless there was some trick here. “How?”