“It’s over.” He snatched up a piece of driftwood. “Why did you run, Mac?”
“I didn’t—”
“Of course,” he said with a fierce edge of triumph. “You’re jealous. You couldn’t bear to see me with anyone else.”
Her stillness was sudden and profound. Mac’s fingers pushed deep into Norton’s rough coat. “You think I’d want to be in Caroline’s shoes after what you did up there? Humiliating her, treating her like a baby—”
He felt heat under his skin. “I know what Caroline needs.”
“Sure. That’s really the way to show it, all right. You have it down pat. Congratulations.”
“You wouldn’t know a bloody thing about how a lady should be treated. You’re little better than a tramp, Miss MacKenzie.”
“Tsk, tsk. You’re forgetting to be a gentleman, Mr. O’Shea. But that’s all right. Go on just as you’ve been doing, and you’ll make things easy for everyone.”
“And what do you mean by that?”
But she seemed to have thought better of what she’d said, for she turned her back and walked away along the surf’s edge. Liam tossed the driftwood aside with a savage jerk, and Norton set out in pursuit with a joyful bark.
“Damn it,” he said, lengthening his stride to catch up to her. “I warned you, Mac—”
“The way you warned Caroline and Perry?” she said, trailing her sodden skirts. “You’re good at that. Always need to be on top, huh?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He finally caught her arm and swung her around. “You’d like me on top in a very different situation.”
“Pardon me?”
He pulled her closer. “You can fool the others, Mac, but not me. You’ll always be what you are, no matter how many Mrs. Wyndhams approve or how many gowns you wear. It’s all paint over dross.”
She tried to jerk free. “You should know.”
The blood was pounding in his ears. “Should I?”
“You think you’ve figured me out, Liam, but I can play the same game. You’re a man who’s had to fight all his life for everything he has.” Her voice dropped so low that he almost couldn’t hear it over the surf. “You had a hard childhood, no privileges or gentleness, only stark poverty and struggle. Now you’re rich, but you haven’t left that childhood behind, have you? Is that why you want to marry Caroline, because she’s like some pretty toy you didn’t have as a kid? Because she means you’ve finally succeeded?”
He let her go as if her flesh had turned to fire. “Lucky guesses, Mac?” he rasped. “Or is this Perry’s opinion?”
“Perry has nothing to do with it. But Caroline does. You don’t know when to stop, Liam. You’re trying to make Caroline into something—Damn it, what’s going to happen when she really proves she has a mind of her own?”
Liam felt cold through to the center of his heart. “You don’t need to be concerned about that, Mac. Soon it’ll be over, and you’ll be out of this city. That’s how it will be. How it has to be.”
She only gazed at him, looking almost lost. Conceding the last word to him, granting him victory.
A victory that felt utterly hollow.
He turned and called the dogs. They came running, Bummer dancing around and around his feet and Norton leaning companionably against his side. True friends, incapable of using human speech to wound and rend and betray.
“I’ll take you back to the Palace now, Miss MacKenzie,” he said tonelessly.
“And Caroline?”
“I’ve sent her home.”
“I think I’d rather walk.”
He wouldn’t have been surprised if she tried it. “Will you come willingly, or shall I throw you over my shoulder?”
“Someday,” she said, sitting down in the sand to pull on her soiled boots, “you might learn there are better ways to get what you want than brute strength and intimidation.”
He didn’t answer her. They walked stiffly, Mac in the lead, back to the road.
The carriage ride to the Palace was made without conversation. Mac, somber and unyielding, was ready to speak only when he let her off in the Grand Court.
“Ask yourself one thing, Liam,” she said quietly as he prepared to drive away. “Why are you so anxious to be rid of me now? Why are you so afraid?”