Page 31 of The Forsaken
“Never tell me?” Air scraped through his suddenly dry throat. “You went looking for answers about your one true love and future marriage.”
“Fine. I won’t.” She snatched her hand back and made the curtain the only thing she had eyes for. “You needn’t go to all the effort of trying to seduce me again.”
“I did not attempt to seduce you,” A flush of heat crept up his neck. “I charmed you.”
“You did, neither.”
The hell, he hadn’t.
At least he had gotten her back to her normal, perpetual state—tart-mouthed shrew.
Except… Her tears loomed.
Kerr scrubbed a hand over his face. “You aren’t a complete peabrain to believe some charlatan.”
“The Siren isn’t a fake.”
He scoffed. “She’s some girl who resents her lot in life.”
“As she should. And?”
“And no doubt enjoys when a bored young lady such as yourself—”
Andromena pushed her hood back, and he welcomed the battle to come.
He recoiled. This was not Andromena McQuoid Smith. This haunted, pale creature bore no resemblance to anything or anyone McQuoid related.
“She was not jealous, Edgar,” she whispered. “She pitied me for what she saw.”
He restrained his response. “That’s certainly what she wanted you to believe.” Kerr’s instinct to haul Andromena away from that girl had been the correct one.
“Why is it men believe women are enemies of one another? Is that because that is the way you men are?”
“That’s because that is human nature. It’s not reserved for a sex.”
“Such generalized information could only come from a man,” she muttered, giving him a patronizing look. Even worse, a McQuoid began to educate him. Him. A man who had seen every corner of the world.
“I know what you’re thinking, Edgar.”
“You can’t even begin to—”
“You believe because you’re so much more worldly, that you’ve sailed all the seas, that you must know if not everything, then at least more than a young woman whom you feel is your inferior in every way.”
Frankly, he didn’t know what he believed anymore. At some point, they had deviated into the philosophical. This was certainly a first for him, with any woman—and even more outrageous that it was this particular lady. And now she was correctly reading unspoken thoughts he withheld.
Her pert chin tipped at a triumphantly arrogant angle.
“Nothing to say? I’ll say it because you’re not able to… I’m right.” She smiled. “Even that, you’re trying to rationalize in your mind. How can this McQuoid lass—”
“I would never use the word ‘lass’.”
“Who I once treacherously deceived,”
His brows came together. Treacherously deceived? But now that she had spoken it aloud…
All of this was increasingly distasteful.
His fingers twitched toward the fabric, ready to pull his curtain back. But her eyes spoke the warning her lips spared him: I know your next move before you make it. He dropped his hand.
