His face contorts in pain.
“Annabelle,” he says. “I don’t understand.”
“I will admit that you tempted me, Alfred,” I say, blinking back tears, trying to keep my tone cold. “I needn’t have married you. But I see now the wisdom of my original plan. I have gotten what I needed from you. You are dismissed.”
“Dismissed?” Alfred hisses. “I am not some employee that you can fire, Annabelle. I am yourhusband. I bear your name.”
“I want youout.”
The tears have started to fall. I cannot allow him to see me this way. Distraught over him.
I turn and run towards the door.
“Annabelle,wait,” he shouts.
But I am gone, having hurried down one of the darkened halls of the townhouse, and out into the street.
Chapter 58
Alfred
Ifreeze in the hall of the townhouse.
What on earth just happened?
The succession of events addles my brain, my confusion mounting.
For the first time in three weeks, my wife clearly wanted me.
Now, I am standing alone, when just a minute before her lips were on mine.
When she first kissed me, I was unsure what was spurring it.
I didn’t want her to bed me out of guilt or a misplaced sense of obligation. I wanted her to really want it. And so I hesitated.
I know that she still isn’t quite herself. I am not surehow, merely that I do. I suppose it is the way she moves. When Annabelle is feeling her usual self, she is alive to sensuality, to pleasure—it is a natural part of her. And that part of her is still inhibited.
But as she kissed me, I felt it again.
It only took me a moment to recognize it.
Then she found the broadsheet. And then everything fell apart.
I stand for a moment in the hall, unable to move.
I contemplate her dismissal of me. It is my worst fear, realized. And yet I am dominated mostly by concern for her. I saw her anger and her pain. It is hard for me to believe she really wants me gone.
I think of what she said—that she planned to get with child by me from the start.
I am unsure what to feel about this revelation. She intended to use me. But this, of course, I already knew. She made it clear to me from the start that she wanted me for her own pleasure, her own ends. That she had an ulterior motive, a child, stuns me. But I am not horrified. Part of me is even flattered. That she saw me as a desirable sire. That she saw a man worthy of fathering her child in the nervous, sputtering mess that was myself.
It was the broadsheet that set her off.
Of course, it made sense that it would upset her.
But so upset that she would flee from me? That she would think I don’t want her anymore?
She can’t possibly believe that that piece of trash would affect how I feel about her. She must know that such a thing is impossible.
