“I’m not very good with people,” he said, answering her question about trust. “I never have been.”
How he squirmed rather than tell the truth. He was being obscenely polite with her. She wanted to wring his neck.
“You spied on us,” she said with brutal plainness. “That’s all it is, isn’t it? You saw Papa and me together-”
She tried to frame the remark as if it were a wild guess. It didn’t quite convince as such, and she knew it. But what the hell? It was said now, and he would have to invent his own reasons as to how she’d reached that conclusion.
“What did you overhear?” she demanded, but got no response. It wasn’t anger that tongue-tied him, but shame for his peeping. The blushing had infected his face from ear to ear.
“He treats you like he owns you,” he murmured, not taking-his eyes off the roiling water.
“He does, in a way.”
“Why?”
“I’m all he’s got. He’s alone . . .”
“Yes.”
“. . . and afraid.”
“Does he ever let you leave the Sanctuary?”
“I’ve got no desire to go,” she said. “I’ve got all I want here.”
He wanted to ask her what she did for bed companions, but he’d embarrassed himself enough as it was. She found the thought anyway, and fast upon the thought, the image of Whitehead leaning forward to kiss her. Perhaps it was more than a fatherly kiss. Though she tried not to think of that possibility too often, she could not avoid its presence. Marty was more acute than she’d given him credit for; he’d caught that subtext, subtle as it was.
“I don’t trust him,” he said. He took his gaze off the water to look around at her. His bewilderment was perfectly apparent.
“I know how to handle him,” she replied. “I’ve made a bargain with him. He understands bargains. He gets me to stay with him, and I get what I want.”
“Which is?”
Now she looked away. The spume off the whipping water was a grubby brown. “A little sunshine,” she finally replied.
“I thought that came free,” Marty said, puzzled.
“Not the way I like it,” she answered. What did he want from her? Apologies? If so, he’d be disappointed.
“I should get back to the house,” he said.
Suddenly, she said: “Don’t hate me, Marty.”
“I don’t,” he came back.
“There’s a lot of us the same.”
“The same?”
“Belonging to him.”
Another ugly truth. She was positively brimful of them today.
“You could get the hell out of here if you really wanted to, couldn’t you?” he said, peevishly.
She nodded. “I suppose I could. But where?”
The question made no sense to him. There was an entire world outside the fences, and she surely didn’t lack the finances to explore it, not Joseph Whitehead’s daughter. Did she really find the prospect so stale? They made such a strange pair. He with his experience so unnaturally abbreviated-years of his life wasted-and now anxious to make up for lost time. She, so apathetic, fatigued by the very thought of escape from her self-defined prison.
“You could go anywhere,” he said.
“That’s as good as nowhere,” she replied flatly; it was a destination that remained much on her mind. She glanced across at him, hoping some light would have dawned but he didn’t show a glimmer of comprehension.
“Never mind,” she said.
“Are you coming?”
“No, I think I’ll stay here for a while.”
“Don’t throw yourself in.”
“Can’t swim, eh?” she replied, testily. He frowned, not understanding. “Doesn’t matter. I never took you for a hero.”
He left her standing inches from the edge of the bank, watching the water. What he’d told her was true; he wasn’t good with people. But with women, he was even worse. He should have taken the cloth, the way his mother had always wanted him to. That would have solved the problem; except that he had no grasp of religion either, and never had. Maybe that was part of the problem between him and the girl: they neither of them believed a damn thing. There was nothing to say, there were no issues to debate. He glanced around. Carys had walked a short way along the bank from the spot where he’d left her. The sun glared off the skin of the water and burned into her outline. It was almost as if she wasn’t real at all.