Off balance, she screamed, and they collided, dropping to the ground hard, the air shoved right out of her lungs. Stunned, she lay on her back, head, chest, and leg aching.
"Are you insane? You can't just stroll into the swamp! What if I lost sight of you? You just gave me a f**king heart attack," he said, leaning over her, resting on his hip, hands in his hair, breathing hard.
He sounded so damn indignant that Marley just stared up at him, hysteria bubbling up and out with a laugh. That he could speak as if the situation were normal, as if he were normal, struck her as ludicrous. He had just shot himself in front of her.
"Would it matter if you had a heart attack? You can't die." She choked back the laughter, but a sob burst forth. "Oh, God."
"Shhh, Marley, come on now. It's alright. Everything is alright. I know this is a shock."
"That's the understatement of the millennium." Marley turned, not wanting his face so close to hers, his mouth and breath hovering over her.
"I'm the same man I was yesterday. The same man you've been talking to, laughing with, making love to. You and I, that hasn't changed."
"Of course it has!" Tears were in her eyes again, and she tried to wiggle across the dirt away from him, but he pinned her down with his arms, his chest. "You're not the same man at all. I thought you were Damien du Bourg, a man who inherited this plantation from his ancestors, a man who lost his parents, his wife, and was an innocent victim of fate." Another sob crawled up her throat. "That's not who you are."
Damien looked away. "That's true. I am certainly not a victim. This is all my doing and I take responsibility for that." Then he swiveled back, locked eyes with her. "But I am the same man nonetheless. What I say, what I do, is real, is the truth, is the man I am today." He brushed her hair back, giving a shuddering sigh. "I have tried so hard to walk the line between what the Grigori demons want, and what I can live with as a man, and I have so much remorse for all of my mistakes, all those I've hurt. If I could undo the past I would, in a heartbeat."
He looked sincere. He looked very much in pain, dripping with regret. Her heart swelled, wanting to trust, wanting to believe. The torment on his face was familiar to her. She'd seen it a number of times since she'd met him.
Marley couldn't reconcile this Damien, the one she had thought she'd known, with the Damien that Marie had described. It seemed like they were two men, but if they were one and the same, then either she or Marie was wrong. And given her lack of experience with men and her naive inclination to believe everyone was truly good no matter what mistakes they made, it would seem that Marie was a better judge of character than she was. Then again, maybe they were both right. Maybe Damien had changed. And while she desperately wished that was true, it seemed foolishly optimistic. Leopards didn't change their spots, and right now, still in viewing distance from them, one of his adult parties was in full sexual swing, and she had never seen Damien express any remorse for his part in producing them.
"Why do you do it?" she whispered. "The parties, the themes, the cocktails… I thought it was meant to be a sort of punishment for yourself for cheating on your wife, a sort of defiance, or coping mechanism to keep yourself distanced from women. Safety in sex, stay away from relationships… but if you're not the victim, not the suffering widower I thought you were, why do you do it?"
He shrugged. "Because I have to. It is my burden, my never-ending task, to promote sexual sin among mortals. That's what I agreed to do in exchange for eternal life. It was a very bad bargain on my part."
"Do you enjoy them?" she whispered, not exactly sure what she was asking. "The parties?"
"No. Not for a long time. I told you, I've changed." Then he sighed. "It amazed me how quickly I did change, how soon I was tired of my task. Within a month, maybe two, I already regretted the choice I had made. I already wanted nothing more than to live with my wife and pretend that night had never existed."
"You were married to Marie," Marley said stupidly, shocked all over again to realize that everything Marie had written was the truth, the brutal, pain-wracked truth. "You cheated on her, you were a cold, heartless husband when she was suffering."
"What are you talking about? What do you know about Marie?" Damien stared at her in censure. "What do you know of her suffering?"
Marley figured her promise to Anna was no longer valid now that she knew Anna had been toying with her, Anna's motives unclear but suspect. "The letters Marie wrote to her friend back in France. I read them all. I read what she said about you, how you were cruel at the beginning of your marriage, impatient with her, how you took her virginity on the ship when she was violently seasick."
"What letters? There are no letters." Damien sat back in shock, horrified. "But if you know about the ship… how could you know that? Let me have them, Marley. Let me read her words."
"No. She didn't want you to see them." Marley didn't know why she said that, why she felt the need to argue, to protect Marie's memory, and to protect herself, her very real and frightened self, who saw Damien and wanted to believe in his goodness so very, very much even when evidence to the contrary stared her in the face. "She hid them from you because she was afraid of you." That wasn't entirely truthful and she knew it. In the second half of their marriage, Marie hadn't been afraid of him at all, but Marley was so hurt, so disgusted with herself, so afraid that she had no sense of character if she could fall in love with a man who was a lecher, an aberration. No matter who he was now, he had said those things to Marie, done those things. Asked for immortality from a woman he'd only known long enough to lift her dress and have sex with her.
Marley felt foolish, felt naive and embarrassed by her own behavior. She'd come for her sister, and instead she'd taken her clothes off for the first man to pay her a speck of attention. She had fallen in love with him, or thought she had. "You forced Marie, even when she was seasick," she repeated, wondering if she was trying to convince herself he was cruel so she'd feel less stupid, less ashamed of herself for succumbing to his practiced charm.
Damien just shook his head though, looking certain, even a little puzzled. "She was not seasick that night, I would swear to it. She made that up because she hadn't wanted to marry me. She was trying to prove a point, trying to torment me, to show me that I wasn't good enough for her, and that the only reason she had deigned to marry me was because of my money. She was beautiful, delicate, petite, and she made me feel like a barbarous oaf, so that I couldn't forget that I was not of the aristocracy. But Marley, you have to understand, I have told you I was spoiled, I was selfish, I was young and stupid. Marie was young as well, and naive, and later I came to realize she was shy and perhaps even insecure. We started poorly, that is true, but we came to an understanding, I thought, we came to enjoy each other, and share some happiness, love."