“That is a lie. You do care.”
“I shall blame him and not her,” I said. “I shall forgive her.”
“If he has gotten her with child?”
Oh, damnation, I remembered him saying that. It hit me in the chest, and I could not breathe for several moments. I swallowed hard. “Well, then, we shall hope it is a girl child.”
Richard gaped at me.
“If it is not…” I took a deep breath. “Well, I do not know, but it is foolish to punish an innocent babe for something that is not its fault. And if I claim a child, it is mine, and that is that.”
Richard rubbed his forehead. “This is quite a reversal from the way you were at the beginning of this conversation, I have to say.”
“No, it’s not,” I said. “I should have concluded the same thing, regardless. There is only one way to handle a situation like this, and it’s to be civil with the woman in question. She is afraid of me.” I gestured to the letter. “And I am not that sort of man.”
“Of course not,” said Richard. “But you will really forgive her?”
I stared down at my palms again. “It may take time. Perhaps there will be no child at all, however, though that seems unlikely, considering our… it’s likely my child. How often could he possibly have—I spend every night with her.”
“But he was first,” said Richard darkly.
“Damn you, Richard.”
“Apologies.”
A long pause.
“But,” I continued, “she is my wife, and I shall have to forgive her, and I shall have to get other children on her, and all of that. There is no other alternative, Richard. What would you have me do? Kill her?”
“No, obviously, no,” said Richard, affronted.
I tilted my head at him. “This reminds me. You came in and said we should killhim, but before that, you said you were going to pay him? Did you give that wretch money?”
“No, of course not. I meant I was going to pay him the wages of his poor decisions, and I told him that if I saw him again, he should likely run the other way, because I would end him.”
“And then you let him go?”
“I couldn’t shoot him down on the street there, in that part of town, outside of a ball, could I?” said Richard. “But we shall go after him and do exactly that.”
I thought it over, saying nothing.
“Will, he has polluted yourwife.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, he has.”
I brought the letter back to her. “I am not having you send this out of the house,” I said to her.
She was cowering on the other side of her bedchamber, tucked into a corner, and she let out a defeated cry. “No?”
“No,” I said, setting it down. “But only because it casts aspersions on us both, and because we did not agree to be that sort of a scandal, my darling.” I laid the letter down.
“Let me leave,” she said. “Let me go back to my family. Please. If you wish not to tell them any of it, I shan’t. I shall say it was all my idea to leave you, and they will believe it, because I did not like you, and I spent a great deal of time talking about that, about how much I did not like you—”
“So, then why did you marry me?”
She bowed her head.
“I cannot let you go back to your family, Elizabeth,” I said softly. “But I know you are saying this because you are afraid, and I want to assure you that you are in no danger.”
