“Yes, but you are my husband, Thomas, forever.”
“Isn’t that just dandy?”
“Why did you withdraw from me again? Two weeks ago.”
“You dreamed about him. You said his name aloud.” He slammed his fist against the wall. “Damn you, Meggie, I had just given you immense pleasure and you dreamed about that damned bastard! I wanted to kill him—I still do.”
“What do you want to do to me?”
“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it, but I just don’t know. I don’t want to hurt you again, not with sex. Never with sex again.”
“I don’t remember dreaming about Jeremy. To be perfectly honest here, Thomas, I don’t think of him all that often anymore. You are my husband. Pendragon is my home. I want to be your wife, in all ways. I hate that you distrust me, that you blame me, that you don’t want me anymore.”
“Oh, God knows I want you, Meggie. I am a young man, young men are randier than goats, and I have grown up hearing that goats will bed anything that wags a tail or chews a boot.”
“That’s vulgar,” Meggie said, and laughed. It dried up very quickly. She said slowly, looking at him intently, “Do you think perhaps that we can start over, Thomas?”
“Start over? Start over what? This sham of a marriage?”
She’d been wallowing in guilt, knowing she’d been profoundly wrong. She’d been trying to exert reason and logic, trying to make him see how hideously sorry she was, but now she felt anger filling her, coming right out of her mouth. “This isn’t a sham marriage! Blessed Hell, Thomas, I wouldn’t let a man do what you do to me, and I surely wouldn’t let a man hear me scream in pleasure, if this were a damned sham marriage! I am your bloody wife. Do you hear me? I will grow old with you. Get used to it!”
She was breathing so hard that she was panting now. She realized in that instant that he was looking at her breasts, heaving and pressing against that wicked peach satin. She, the vicar’s daughter, straightened her shoulders, stuck her chest out, and said, “So what are you going to do about it, Thomas?”
He slammed out of the White Room.
Meggie stared at the still vibrating door. This was not good. She knew she’d hurt him very badly. But she couldn’t control her dreams. She tried and tried, but she simply couldn’t remember even dreaming about Jeremy. Oh yes, it had been after he’d sent her the carved statue of Mr. Cork. What could it have been?
And then she remembered.
She bounded out of bed and burst through the adjoining door into his grand and massive and very gloomy bedchamber, which she’d had cleaned, but not really paid much attention to since Thomas spent so little time in here. He was standing by one of the long skinny windows, staring out over the sea.
“Thomas, I remember.”
He turned slowly. “You follow me, even into my bedchamber, where I should have privacy if I wish it?”
“Climb down from your hobbyhorse, you ass. I remember the dream about Jeremy.”
“You have had time to make something up, Meggie.”
She ran straight across the room, right at him, and grabbed his dressing gown lapels. She stood on her tiptoes and said right into his face, “I haven’t made up a single thing. Listen to me. I dreamed about him right after he sent me Mr. Cork. Naturally he was on my mind, but not in the way you think. I dreamed about a cat race.”
“Ha.”
“Shut your trap, curse you. I dreamed that Mr. Cork was running, he was way ahead of the other racing cats. Then he began changing—he turned black, his eyes were bright orange, and then, he was suddenly fat, his belly nearly hanging to the ground. I just couldn’t believe it. And then Jeremy was saying that he would have to rewhittle him, make me a whole new statue and it would take him more time than he had, but he had to so he could be faithful to the real Mr. Cork. And I was begging him not to. I wanted my own Mr. Cork back, not this monstrous thing.”