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the queenly nature of her fear, the way she ordered him as though he were naught but a serving boy, if it weren’t for the panic still ruling her.
    The name hit him like a chunk of star falling from the sky and he breathed it without hesitation. “Calypso.”
    The poker in her hand lowered in slow degrees until its point aimed at the floor. Her mouth worked tentatively, as if she was biting back a whimper or a cry.
    He smiled, a smile he knew didn’t reach his eyes. None of his smiles ever did. Yet he felt a moment’s warmth. He’d moved something deep within her. Something meaningful.
    It was the perfect name.
    It was also the perfect time to leave—just when she was intrigued. He didn’t know what gods he needed to thank, but finally he had found the answer to the screaming girl inside his head. Though he longed to stay, he would go now. At long last, he’d finally found someone to save. And once he had, he’d be free.

Chapter 3
    C alypso. Goddess. Daughter of the gods. Cursed. Mary lowered the poker and stared at the strange, hauntingly beautiful man across the room. How could he know? How could he know that she had been cursed for making a fatal choice? Was it possible that, like Calypso, she should be bound in agony for the rest of her days?
    “It is an apt name,” she replied, her voice as strong as she could remember it ever being, though she could scant draw breath as she studied him.
    Dark hair, darker than hers even, fell lightly over his forehead. The effect should have been playful. It was not. Playfulness was absent from his person. Two black slashes served as brows above eyes as empty and cold as an undiscovered cavern. There wasn’t an ounce of extra flesh to him, not even in his face, which was drawn as if he, too, dwelled with never-ending pain.
    And it was his pain that tempted her to suddenly open her caged heart and spill her secrets. She had never seen pain the likes of hers on a male face—until now.
    Perhaps he was as broken as she.
    The thought was preposterous. Men could never be that broken. They, at least, would always have some semblance of power, no matter their status. Didn’t even the poorest men have power over their wives and children?
    But this man was not poor. Quite the contrary. From the cut of his black evening coat, his slightly creased white cravat, and the black trousers that clung to his powerful legs, she could see he was a man of wealth. Self-assurance and inherent power rolled off him with the same kind of authority that her father had possessed. Yet for all his hardness, there was a boyish vulnerability to him, as though long ago all his hopes had been crushed like a toy, broken beyond all repair.
    She shook off such foolish sympathies and mustered up the remaining arrogance she’d once possessed as a pampered child. “And your name?”
    He angled his head to the side, still assessing her as he had done from the moment he had entered the room. “You are interested in it?”
    Quickly, she stepped back from the unwelcome question. Why had she asked his name? She didn’t want to know. Did she?
    “My name is Edward.” That deep voice, which could have urged water from a stone wall, caressed her cold skin, heating it with a foreign warmth. “Edward Barrons.”
    He bowed once again, only this time it was a deeper, more courtly gesture that should have seemed mocking but escaped any sort of insult. “And now, Calypso, I must leave. I have imposed on you long enough.”
    Oddly, she didn’t wish to be left to herself. It didn’t matter that, again and again, she had told him to go. She had been left to herself time out of mind.
    But as far as she could surmise, there was not one man in this world who could be trusted, not even this one. So instead of begging him to stay and keep her thoughts harbored in safer meanderings, she lifted her chin and said, “Good-bye.”
    He didn’t answer but turned without ceremony and left the room almost as quietly as he had