"So I gave it away myself?"
"Yes."
"I knew you were smart, Charles. But none of us thought that you were smart enough—"
"Thanks, m'lady."
"Stop it!" she cried. "What do you want of me?"
"What do I want of anybody?" he whispered in a voice thick with anger. "I had four brutal years clipped out of the middle of my life by a three-voiced unknown party who wanted to commit suicide bad enough to take thirty-three innocent victims along with him. They blamed it on Hot-Rock Farradyne, the spur-wearing spaceman." His voice came back and he was half-roaring. "I've seen the results of the hellflower in a ruined personality that might have been a brilliant and gracious woman. I've seen a man plugged through the middle, to die at my feet. And on top of that, I've seen a family of prosperous stability calmly making their place in 'society' by dealing in the stinking things that brought the ruin and the death to millions." His voice calmed to a cold, brittle determination. "What do I want of you? Your lovely, flawless hide skinned alive and spread seductively before a fireplace. That's all."
She shrank away from him; looked wildly at the stairway and back into his face as she realized there was no place in the spacecraft where she could hide.
He sneered at her fear. "I'm not going to hurt you, now." His voice was heavy with derision. "You're beneath my hurting you."
Carolyn drew herself together; somehow her self-confidence was returning; perhaps it was the realization that he was not going to do anything violent. "Why take your hatred out on me?" she asked. "Have I done anything but—"
"You?" he asked. "You? How in hell should I know what slimy game you are playing? You're all painted out of the same can, and the color is black. I know that I am not the guy responsible for the Semiramide affair, but who's to prove it? Who's the character that started tossing the con-rods out of the Lancaster? What was your former boyfriend doing on my ship? Setting me up for another kiss-off? Jesus Christ, woman, you'll be asking me not to take these things personally next!"