“I believe you put more importance on family honor than on not hurting people who are supposed to matter to you. You hurt me. You hurt Dimitri. If you had been Dimitri you would have married me and left the mother of your child in the cold.”
“I would not have gotten another woman pregnant,” he said through gritted teeth.
Phoebe looked at him for several seconds of silence. “I believe you.”
“Then believe me when I say that we are in perfect accord physically.” He was still reeling from her accusations of hurting the people he cared about, but he could not allow himself to get sidetracked from their initial discussion.
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean that this is not a negotiable point.”
“It should not be a point at all. You already know the answer—there is no need for further testing.”
“So you say.”
“Yes.” And his word should be good enough. Besides, she had been there. The true surprise was that she had believed his denial of how powerful it had been.
But she had believed, and she had been hurt—and there was only one way to make up for that. If she would let him.
“How can I know you are telling me the truth now?” she asked, proving her mind was traveling along the same path.
Only she had a different destination in mind.
“Because I am.”
“Not good enough. You lied to me once, according to you…and you could do it again. And I wouldn’t find out until it was too late to rectify the problem with anything but a divorce. Mama is upset enough about the current scandal. That would unhinge her completely.”
“There will be no divorce,” he bit out. How could she even suggest a thing?
“That is my hope as well. But if there is not love between us at least we need to know we are a good match sexually. We can build on that.”
“You love me. You said so.” Okay, she’d stopped herself from saying it completely, but he knew that was what she’d meant.
She flinched, but then she shrugged. “My feelings, or lack thereof, are not up for discussion right now.”
“Phoebe, I have always loved you.”
She looked both sad and happy at that. “I know. As a very dear friend—probably the most dear friend in your life. But you still turned me away when I needed you most. You aren’t in love with me, but if you truly want me I think we can make a marriage work.”
The fact she believed he had abandoned her when she had needed him most was a shard of pain lodged deep inside him. “I was trying to protect you.”
“It didn’t work.”
“Of that I am aware. I knew I’d made a mistake after you had gone. You would not talk about it later, though.”
“There was nothing to discuss any longer. I was engaged to your brother.”
“Yes.”
“Regardless of why, you did not want to marry me. Now you do. For reasons I find personally hard to trust. I need other assurances.”
“You are saying if I make love to you, you will marry me?”
“I am saying that if we make love and it is good it will help me make a choice in your favor.”
“But surely you know…sometimes these things take more than one effort to establish.”