She had probably just been dismissed, her services no longer needed, poor girl.
“It just isn’t right, it isn’t,” she said, glaring at him with watery accusation.
“Madeline.” Agnes, her voice quiet but firm, cut the maid off from explaining exactly what it was that was not right. “Leave us, please. I will talk to you before I go.”
Still glaring from reddened eyes that did nothing to improve her looks, the girl passed him in the doorway.
Agnes set her brush on top of the still-open bag and closed it. She straightened up and looked at him—with a pale, composed face and empty eyes.
“Do you realize,” he said to her, “that yesterday was our f-first anniversary? Our one-week anniversary?”
“Would that I could go back and obliterate that week and take a different road,” she said. “But it is not possible. One can only move forward.”
“Are you not trying to go back anyway?” he asked her. “In time as well as in place?”
She seemed to consider her answer.
“No,” she said. “A short while ago I held a faint hope that I might marry again someday and perhaps even have a child or two, and that I would be as contented with my new marriage as I was with the old. Now that hope has been wiped out forever. Apart from that, though, my life will return to what it was until I made such an impulsive and disastrous decision. I will be with Dora. I believe she draws as much comfort from my company as I do from hers.”
“I think you will s-sadden her,” he said.
She laughed, though she did not sound remotely amused.
“She always said she did not trust your mobile left eyebrow,” she said. “I daresay she will not be altogether surprised to be proved that she was right.”
“I b-believe she likes me,” he said.
Agnes looked him over and laughed again. He wished he had at least buttoned his shirt to the neck. He must look the wreck he felt, not to mention disreputable.
“Don’t g-go,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows—both of them.
“It has been only a w-week, Agnes,” he said. “Since we are m-married anyway and nothing can change that, ought we not at l-least to g-give m-marriage a ch-chance?”
He thought suddenly of Ben once saying that he often wished he could just drop his canes and walk away from them without even thinking—or stumbling or falling. Flavian wishedhecould just open his mouth and say what his mind was thinking, without tripping and stumbling over his words—especially when he was most agitated.
“But it never was a marriage, was it?” she said. “Except, of course, that there was a ceremony binding us for life, and there was the consummation. Those things do not make amarriage, however, except in law. You married me so that you could hurt Lady Hazeltine and your family and hers as they hurt you years ago. And I married you because I—well, because Ilustedafter you. Now you have had your revenge and I have sated my lust, and it is time for me to go home. You are not going to try to stop me, are you? You are not going to try asserting your authority and order me to stay?”
She lifted her chin, and her jaw hardened.
“I w-want to be m-married to you,” he said. “I c-cannot explain why, and I am not going to s-spout reasons you would recognize as f-fabrications. But it was not revenge, Agnes. Or at least not... That w-word never entered my head. I w-wanted to be s-safe. I do not even know what I m-mean by that, but I felt it when you said yes, you would m-marry me, and I felt it when we m-married and walked out of the church. I felt s-safe. That may not s-seem very flattering, but itisthe truth. And it wasyouI w-wanted to marry, not just any woman. And it was not just lust on your part. You would not have m-married me just to be bedded. You b-belittle yourself when you say that. You wantedme, not just my body. You wantedme, Agnes.”
“I do not even know who you are,” she said.
“But you knew I wass-somebody,” he said. “Somebody you w-wanted to know. Somebody you wanted to spend a l-lifetime getting to know. It was not just lust.”
“More fool me, then,” she said. “There was nobody worth knowing inside that beautiful body after all, was there?”
He flinched and swallowed.
“Don’t go,” he said. “You may r-regret it. And I knowIwould.”
“Yourpridewould regret it,” she said.
“Probably,” he admitted. “And all the rest of me too.”
She stared at him, her face stony, her eyes blank.
