Despite herself, Hazel felt her lips curve.
“Yes,” she said. “It is true.”
Cordelia gasped. “Oh!”
Evelyn leaned forward at once. “Hazel?—”
Matilda lifted a hand gently. “May I ask why?”
Hazel studied her friend for a moment. “Does Jasper not know?”
Matilda shook her head. “No. And,” she hesitated, clearly choosing her words with care, “I do not believe your husband does either.”
The warmth Hazel had been clinging to vanished at once.
Her fingers tightened around her teacup. “He does not.”
Matilda frowned. “Hazel?—”
“So,” Hazel said, rising abruptly, the chair legs scraping faintly against the floor, “he has not even troubled himself to wonder.”
Cordelia looked between them, alarmed. “That is not fair?—”
“Is it not?” Hazel cut in. Her voice was sharp now, stripped of its earlier calm. “My absence, my silence, my decision to leave… it warrants no curiosity? No self-reflection? He does not askwhy?”
Evelyn stood, moving closer. “Hazel, men are?—”
“—not oblivious,” Hazel finished, fury flaring hot and sudden. “Not when they care.”
The truth of it struck deep and cruel. If Greyson did not know what he had done, if he had not even perceived the wound, then her feelings must have mattered very little indeed. He considered it a misunderstanding, perhaps, or momentary discomfort, easily overlooked.
Matilda’s voice softened. “Hazel… sometimes people do not see the harm they cause until it is named.”
Hazel laughed without humor. “Then perhaps it is fortunate for him that I have spared him the inconvenience.”
Matilda did not smile in return.
She studied Hazel for a long moment, her expression thoughtful rather than reproachful. “You kept calling it a marriage of convenience,” she reminded her gently. “As though repeating it might make it true.”
“Itwastrue,” Hazel replied at once. “From the beginning. We were very clear with one another.”
Evelyn rose and moved closer, resting a hand on the back of Hazel’s chair. “Clear about what you intended,” she said softly. “Not about what you would feel.”
Cordelia shook her head. “Hazel, you cannot possibly believe this is all indifference. I have seen indifference. Greyson looks at you as though the rest of the room ceases to exist.”
Hazel turned away. Believing something like that was dangerous.
“You are mistaken.”
“Am I?” Matilda asked quietly. “Because Jasper has known Greyson since boyhood, and I have never seen him undone by anyone, not until you.”
Hazel’s voice sharpened. “That cannot be true.”
“Why not?” Evelyn asked. “Because it would require you to risk being wrong?”
Hazel’s hands clenched in her lap. “Because if it were true,” she said, carefully, “he would not have done what he did.”
Cordelia frowned. “What he did?”
