"You can put me down now. Surrounded by all these chauvinistic idiots, I doubt I'll be able to escape. This isn't at all dignified."
"Since when has dignity ever mattered to you? I'm not letting you go until I have you in a place where you can't run away from me." They were abruptly out of the sun. The dirt of the stableyard had been replaced by the wooden planks and sawdust of the stable Itself. "Get out of here," he ordered someone who was beyond her vision. "And stay out. Lock the stable doors behind you and don't open them until I tell you."
A pair of scuffed brown boots crossed her line of vision, and then the barn became suddenly dusky as the door was slammed shut.
She heard the bolt being shot as Philip moved down the line of stalls. "Don't you think you've carried this far enough?" she asked. "I'm getting dizzy from being upside down."
"Well, I've certainly carried you far enough." He knelt in an empty stall and put her down on a bed of fresh hay. "I'm getting a little dizzy myself."
"Are you?" She sat up, her face concerned. "You're still bleeding. Why did you have to be so stupid? You knew Oedipus wouldn't put up with being approached like that." She scrambled to her knees. "Let me look at it."
"It was the only way to get you off that contrary devil before he bucked you off." He reached into his back pocket, pulled out a white handkerchief, and dabbed carelessly at his cheek and temple. "You obviously weren't going to display any sense in the matter."
"Let me do that." She took the handkerchief and carefully wiped the blood away from the cut. It wasn't much more than a scratch she noticed with relief. Oedipus must have clipped him with the edge of his hoof. "You didn't have to try to commit suicide. You could have let me go."
"Never again," he said quietly. "Not as long as we both live."
"Which won't be very long for you if you continue to do crazy things like that," she said huskily. She felt as if something inside her was loosening, breaking up like an ice floe in sunlight. She had to blink rapidly to keep back the tears. "You could have had your brains knocked out, dammit."
"No loss. I don't seem to have many left since you reappeared in my life." He closed his eyes, and his voice lowered. "Lord, you scared me. I thought he was going to throw you again." He was shaking, she realized incredulously. The trembling was barely perceptible, but it was there, nonetheless. He opened his eyes, and they were unutterably weary. "Please, don't do that to me again. I kept seeing you lying on that path in the hills, crumpled up like a broken doll. It was like repeating a nightmare."
Please. When had she ever heard Philip plead for anything? She tried desperately to hold on to her anger. "It was your fault. Who ever heard of anybody locking up a wife in this day and age?"
"You wouldn't stay," he said simply. "I can't do without you now."
"You mean you can't do without your child," she said dully.
"I know what I mean. What do I have to do to convince you? Shall I arrange for an abortion?"
"No!" Her eyes widened in shock. "You wouldn't do that."
"No. We'd end up hating each other if I did. Besides, that child is probably more alive to me than it is to you. I've had more time to think about it. I want that child, Pandora."
"I know that," she said shakily.
"I want it," he said slowly. "But I'll give it up. If you'll promise to stay with me for the next year, I'll relinquish all claim to the baby. Should you choose to leave me after that time, the child goes with you."
She froze. "You'd do that?"
"If I have to." A muscle jerked in his cheek. "I'm hoping that at the end of that year I will have been able to convince you to stay with me." He drew a deep, shuddering breath. "God, I hope that."
"Why?" she asked. "It's not like you. I can't believe you'd calmly give up your own child."
His lips twisted in a travesty of a smile. "Not calmly. Rebelliously, agonizingly, perhaps. But never calmly."
"Why?" she asked again, her voice a mere whisper.
"Because I love you." His hands came up to clasp her shoulders. "How many times do I have to tell you before you believe me?" There was a touch of desperation in his tone. "Yes, I want the baby. But only because it's your baby, not because it's mine. Because I know I'll love your child almost as much as I love you."
Hope leaped wildly. She moistened her lips. "I'm afraid to trust you."
"How long am I going to have to pay for that night? I know I hurt you. I know I can't turn back the clock. Look, would it help if I told you why I brought Natalie here?"
"I know why you brought her here. You wanted to get rid of me." Her lips were suddenly trembling. "You wanted to hurt me."
"Yes, I wanted to hurt you. I reacted like a madman when you told me you were leaving me." He was silent for a few seconds, gathering himself to go on. "I don't like being this vulnerable. God, I don't want to put it into words."
"Put what into words?"
"It was one of the games she used to play," he burst out. "Most of the time she wasn't very subtle in her little cruelties, but she enjoyed that one very much. I was an exceptionally lonely child. She made sure of that. Lonely children are desperate for affection, and it was a weapon she could use. She was always trying to get back at my father through me."
"Helena Lavade," Pandora murmured. It was a statement, not a question.
"Who else, but my charming mother? And she could be very charming. She had been trained from childhood to dazzle and please. I was an easy mark for someone with her particular talents. When it amused her she would spend a week or so lavishing all her attention on me. I lapped it up like a starving puppy."
She couldn't stand to see the pain and self-disgust in his eyes. "Don't." She lifted a finger to his lips. "I don't want to hear any more."
He took her hand from his mouth. "And I don't want to say any more," he said. "But I will. I owe it to you to bleed a little." He looked down at her hand and began to play absently with her fingers. "She liked Paris and Vienna and London. They suited her expensive tastes, and it was easier to elude my father in a large city. She always had a lover in tow, and when she decided I was primed for the kill, she would tell me that she was going away with him. She'd smile very sweetly and tell me I mustn't ever expect her to stay. She told me I was too boring to keep her amused for very long." His hand closed on hers with convulsive force. "I can remember begging her to stay, but she would only laugh."
Stay, he had said as he'd held Pandora in his arms last night. Stay forever. Her throat tightened with an aching tenderness.
"I didn't think that morning you told me you were going to Paris, I just reacted," he said quietly. "You were leaving me, and I knew I already loved you a thousand times more than that bitch who gave birth to me. You had made me love you, and now you were leaving too."
"But you knew I loved you." She was trying to keep her voice from breaking. "I've always loved you."
His gaze lifted from her hand to her eyes. "I didn't believe it could ever really exist. Not for me. It was safer not to believe than to be hurt again." He moved his shoulders in a shrug. "Now you've heard my little confession," he said with a touch of self-mockery. "I hope you listened closely, for I never intend to indulge in that maudlin form of self-pity again."