“What a very heartwarming declaration,” she said. “Because you wanted to. You married me, Flavian, to avenge yourself upon Lady Hazeltine and upon your families, who did not stop her from marrying your best friend. And your choice of a plain, uninteresting nobody was inspired. I can see that now. No one could fail to get the point. Least of all me.”
“You are neither plain nor uninteresting nor a nobody, Agnes,” he said.
“You are right.” She got to her feet, hugging her dressing gown about her. “I am not—except in the eyes of your mother and sister and thewoman you loveand her family, and that is all that really matters, is it not?”
“Agnes—” he began, but she held up a staying hand.
“I am not puttingallthe blame upon you,” she said. “I am to blame too. Marrying you was utter madness. I did not even know you, or you me. Iknewit was madness, but I married you anyway. I allowed myself to be swept away by passion. I wanted you, and finally I persuaded myself that the wanting was enough. And then, after we were married, I convinced myself that what happened between us reallywasenough, when in reality it was nothing but base physical gratification, divorced from either mind or reason. I have been no better than a—acourtesan.”
“Courtesans feel no passion, Agnes,” he said. “They are too busy arousing it. Their living d-depends upon it.”
“Then I am no better than mymother,” she spat out.
She turned toward the embers of the fire again so that she would not have to look at him.
“Unlike her, you have not left me for someone else yet,” he said.
“Passion is adestroyer,” she told him. “It is the ultimate selfishness. It kills everything but itself. She left me when I was little more than a baby. Worse, she left Dora with all her hopes and dreams forever destroyed. Dora was seventeen, and she was pretty and eager and vivacious and looking forward to courtship and marriage and motherhood. Instead she was left with me. It was the lesson of a lifetime for a young child—or ought to have been. Passion was to be avoided at all costs. I chose wisely the first time I married. But at the first advent of passion into my life withyou, I grabbed it without having any thought to anyone or anything else. Because Idesiredyou in the basest physical way. And forthatI do not blame you. Only for your dishonesty.”
“Agnes—” he said.
“I am going back to Inglebrook,” she said. “It will not make any difference to you. You are stuck with me for life anyway, and that will be enough to feed your revenge. You cannot also marry her unless I die. I am going back to Dora. I ought never to have left her. She deserved better of me.”
“Agnes—”
“No!” She swept around to look down at him. “No, you will not talk me out of it. When you think about it—if you ever do stop tothink, that is—you will find yourself glad to have me out of your life. I have served my purpose, and I am going. Tomorrow. And you need not concern yourself. I will go on the stage. I have enough of my own money to pay for a ticket.”
Suddenly his mask was firmly in place—hooded, lazy eyes, slightly twisted mouth.
“Agnes,” he said, “you are a p-passionate woman whether you wish to be or not. And you are m-married to me whether you wish to be or not.”
“Passion,” she said, “can and ought to be controlled. And when I go home, I can forget that we are married.”
He raised one mocking eyebrow, and she wanted nothing more than to sink to her knees before the hearth and curl into a ball and sob her heart out. Or stride toward him and smack him hard across the cheek.
She had been married for revenge against the woman who had once hurt him beyond bearing.
But what about the woman wholovedhim?
What abouther?
18
His wife’s bed had been slept in, Flavian could see—or lain upon at least. The dressing table had been swept bare of everything that had adorned it the last time he been had been in her bedchamber, however, except for the two candlesticks with their burned-down candles. Nothing littered the room.
Flavian might have feared she had gone already, if the sound of muffled sobs had not been coming through the partially open door to her dressing room.
He had not been to bed. He had spent the night in the book room, sprawled in the chair where she had found him sometime after midnight. He had not slept either. He had not got up to rekindle the fire or to pull his coat back on, though he had been aware that the room was chilly. He had not got up to refill his glass. Experience had taught him that drunkenness would only deepen his gloom, not lighten it or obliterate it. He had never had much success with liquor. He sometimes envied happy drunks.
He was aware that his evening shirt was horribly wrinkled, that his hair was hopelessly disheveled, that he was badly in need of a shave, that his eyes were undoubtedly bloodshot, and that he probably did not smell all that pleasant. He could not be bothered to go and change and get cleaned up. Besides, she would probably be gone before he had made himself presentable.
It was still dashed early, but then, daylight was all she had waited for, he guessed.
His life could not possibly be more messed up if he had tried.
He went to the doorway of the dressing room and set his shoulder against the frame after pushing the door a little wider. She was dressed for travel. All but one of her bags were packed and closed up. The remaining one was ready to be closed. It was not she who was sobbing, though, he discovered. It was the skinny little maid.
“Madeline,” he said when she looked up and spotted him. “W-Will you leave us, please?”
