“But you did marry her,” said Richard. “And I see the way you look at each other, and everything is quite obviously… that seems fine.” He chuckled.
“Yes, but I think that’s part of it. She thinks I married her because of, er, lust. Which, I suppose, is accurate.”
“No,” said Richard, laughing. “No, truly, Will, that is nothing like you at all—”
“I know!” I said with some heat. “I do not understand it, Richard, but I saw her, and I lost my head.”
“That’s not lust, it’s love,” said Richard. “It’s different.”
“How?” I said.
“That’s what love is. When a man has that notion to go against everything, to go to the ends of the earth if necessary, for a woman. That’s love.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s still lust. Love is more than that. It’s when you care about more than simply securing her, it’s when you have a continued interest in her happiness and pleasure, and when you want to please her more than you want to please yourself and when she cares for you in return in much the same way and—”
“That develops later,” he said.
“You would know because you have ever so much experience with this,” I said dryly. “You’ve been in love a number of times.”
“Just the once.”
“With the actress.”
His nostrils flared.
I repented of it, then. I should not have teased him in that way, I supposed. I opened my mouth to apologize, but he was talking again.
“All right, yes, it’s abominably embarrassing to have fallen for an actress in that way. And I cannot but admit it was foolish, in the end, and that she may never have felt the same things for me in return, but she also had to be concerned with her own well-being, and I had not the means or the inclination to keep her, so she had to keep up her time on the stage, and I resented it, and things went badly, and then he arrived, with his money and his offer of renting a whole house for her, and I was so resentful of the fact she would not give up acting to be with me that what enticement did she have to stay with me? Of course she left.” He turned to me. “What iswrongwith your marriage, Will? What are you doing wrong?”
“I…” I shook my head. “I do not know. But we were together every night until the night of the dinner with your parents, and she has rebuffed me since then.”
“And you thought that was because of me,” he said. “Yes, I can see why you did.”
We walked in silence for some time.
“She thinks you married her because of lust,” he said. “So, she is removing that element of your relationship and she wishes to see what you will do.”
“That makes sense, actually,” I said.
“Let it be for now,” he said. “Do not visit her bedchamber, don’t ask about it, act as if it is nothing, and everything goes on as it has before.”
“This is your advice?”
“Yes,” he said. “But it is not enough, of course, something else is wrong. Go back to what you were saying about how she does not like it that everyone in society thinks she’s improper, again? It hardly seems fair she is holding that against you. You cannot change everyone else’s minds.”
“It is not… everyone else,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
I sighed heavily. “I begged off the dinner with your mother. The invitation was addressed to her, but I never let her see it. I lied and said we had a previous engagement and did not tell her.”
“Youwhat?” Richard shook his head, air whistling through his teeth.
I sighed.
“I do not understand. You did marry her, Will.”
“Yes, obviously,” I said.
