Tod looked pleadingly at Hartley through his long red lashes. “Release Tod from his duty, Mighty One, Tod begs.”
“What is wrong, Tod?”
“She weeps.” He bared his teeth and covered his eyes. “Weeps and weeps in her cold chamber, so soft no mortal ear could hear. But Tod hears. Mortal weeping makes Fane mad. Can’t go back!”
Hartley leaned against Atlas’s flank and closed his eyes. Eden’s tears might disturb Tod, but it was Hartley they were likely to drive mad. She wept because of him.
Why? She had admitted her desire, and that desire had been fulfilled. Was not honesty what she wanted? But the thought of her pain plunged into Hartley’s gut like a deadly knife of Cold Iron. His Fane senses betrayed him, seeking the mother of his son and carrying back to his ears the low, broken sounds of her sorrow.
He could not bear it.
“I release you from your task,” he told Tod in a whisper.
Tod leaped from the stable wall and hopped from the back of one horse to another, feet never touching the ground until he had reached the door. Atlas snorted and slued his head about to gaze at Hartley.
Every other equine head followed suit. Large brown eyes watched him, waiting for his decision.
There was none to make. Hartley cloaked himself in a glamor of invisibility and strode from the stables to the house. He entered the servants’ door and took the most direct route to Eden’s room.
The door was closed. All was silent within. He had never been inside Eden’s chambers. They were not for the likes of Hartley Shaw, not even when she took him for her lover. No one would see him enter now. Her honor was safe.
He was the one in danger.
The door opened at a pass of his hand. His Fane eyes pierced the darkness, found her huddled upon the bed like a child being punished for some wrong she did not understand.
“Eden,” he said.
Only the tiniest movement betrayed that she had heard him.
“Eden, look at me.”
She obeyed, but surely not to please him. Her face was puffy and streaked, her eyes red and filled with defiance. “Go away.”
He remained where he was. She felt across the counterpane until her fingers connected with a pillow. He could see her debating whether or not to use it as a weapon, and the crack in his heart extended. What weapons did they truly have against each other?
“Leave, at once,” she whispered hoarsely. “Unless it is your intention to… ruin my life completely?”
“I will not, and it is not. No one has seen me.” He advanced farther into the room. Eden recoiled—not afraid of him, but of herself, and the desire they shared. In the confines of her chambers, it was almost smothering.
Hartley understood such fear. His heart raced like that of a stag pressed to extremity by ravenous hounds. He was beyond what mortals called common sense. But he knew what must be done. They both were torn, he and Eden—torn between necessity and desire, repulsion and obsession. Neither of them would be free until each had his or her fill of the other: Eden free of shame and temptation, Hartley free of guilt and mortal obligation. He had the power to give Eden pleasure beyond mortal imagining… and there was still a child to be made.
It was time to strike a new bargain.
“Eden,” he said, “I have come to make a proposal.”
She laughed under her breath. “Could it be that you intend blackmail, now that you have had your way with me?” She sat up, ineffectually smoothing her crumpled gown. “Perhaps you believe that I have some hidden wealth to pay you off. After all, you know I would do anything to protect my son.”
Her suggestion astounded him. When had he ever done aught to make her attribute such motives to him?
“Oh,” she said with feigned contrition. “Do I offend your honor, Hartley? I do apologize.”
He laughed at himself, at her folly and his. His intended treachery was of a much more permanent nature.
He went to her bed and knelt beside it, humbling him-self. “You are wrong, Eden.” He released a long breath. “It is not my way to beg pardon, but I ask yours now if I did anything to put such thoughts in your mind. If I have behaved wrongly, I… am sorry.”