"Did you love her?" Marguerite asked, still tending to John's arm. The others had long since retired.
"What are talking about?" he winced at the searing pain from where the red-hot poker had burned his skin. How he managed to not even blink when Danielle had touched it to his arm.
"When we were leaving the village, she yelled for you to help her, said she loved you." She paused. "And after…after all she did to us… to me… to you! You fought us, to go back to help her? To risk your life for her? When she was ready to kill us?" she sighed. "I guess, what I'm saying is… why? Did you love her, too?"
He quickly grasped her hand, stilling it, "Now you listen here, and you listen good! Anything, anything I felt for, for that… woman! Would be wholly sourced on, whatever spell she cast over me… and besides… it pales it comparison to what I feel for you." He kissed her hand.
Her eyes widened, … "You… you can't! There's a million reasons!"
"And one very good reason we should be together." He smiled at her sadly; as if he were about to cry.
"And what, may I ask is that?" she could barely whisper.
"It's right."
"How do you know?"
"Don't you feel it? I know I do." he took hold of her small hands, in his rather large ones. Yet they seemed to fit perfectly, as if they were made to fit, two working parts, made for each other. "I love you Marguerite."
A single tear left her eye, "I'm sorry John…" she left the table and went to her room. "But you can't."
END
NOTE: I kinda stole that line from "Tapestry", because when Roxton says, "…I love you Marguerite. Don't you say I can't, don't pretend you can't hear me…" in "Trapped" it sounds to me like she has said that more than just once.