She said nothing.
“What do you want me to do? Beg?”
“I thought,” she said at last, “you just did.”
“Is that what you want?” His voice rose and cracked. “I don’t care. I’ll say whatever you want to hear. I’m sorry, all right, I’m sorry for what I did to you. Just don’t take him away from me. I can’t ... just don’t, please don’t.” His hand slammed down next to hers.
Her head turned sharply, and he caught the shock in her eyes. “You’re in love with him.” Her lips twisted. “You mean less than half of what you say, but you do love him.”
“I ...” He clung to the stile. If he let go, he thought he might fall. “I have forgotten what love is.”
She nodded. “Perhaps you have. I don’t think it’s a kind thing, this love of yours.”
“Don’t pity me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I have no interest in you, Micha, for good or ill. And I was not the one to break my promise.”
“I wish you hadn’t come,” he said, with sudden fury.
“I didn’t come to ruin you,” she replied.
“But you still can.” He couldn’t stop trembling. “Will you?”
Again, she was silent. Across the fields, detached, drifted the laughter of the girl. Then, “No.”
It was what he needed to hear. What he had pleaded for. But it felt too easy. Far, far too easy. “Why?”
She shrugged. “I suppose I’ve seen enough of ruin. I’d like to be done with it.”
“But ...” he protested, against his own interests, hardly knowing what words were going to fall from his lips. “But I would deserve it,” he finished wretchedly, hating her and hating himself still more ferociously.
“Indeed.” Her look was cool and wry. “Fortunately, I’m a better person than you.”
His lip curled bleakly. “The whole fucking world is a better person than me.”
To that, she offered no answer.
“Do you mean it?” he ended up asking.
“That I’m a better person than you?”
“About ...” Micha stumbled over Thomas’s name. It was like he had lost whatever right he’d ever possessed to utter it. “You really won’t say anything?”
“No.”
“How can I trust you?” His voice cracked. He had intended to be firm with her. But he just sounded ... desperate.
She shrugged. “That is not my problem.” She looked at him with cold eyes. “And if the uncertainty torments you, I’m afraid I’m not quite enough of a better person to lament it.”
If he had believed for a moment he could get away with it, Micha would have thought nothing, right then, of murdering her. Anything that would return things to the way they had been a day ago: a closed world of nothing but Thomas. Thomas and laudanum, usurper and king.
“Micha,” Mrs. Clark said, softly. “You know there are things you should tell him for yourself. Things you must.”
“That I’m a whore?”
“That you take laudanum.”
He shook his head. The colours of the meadow smeared in his vision, so he closed his eyes. He tangled his fingers through his hair. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t get out. I try but I can’t.”
