“It pleases you to use sarcasm,” she said, “and to walk roughshod over my feelings. I suppose it will please you to lie too. Do you deny that you are having an affair with Miss Hamilton?”
“Yes,” he said. “But you have already labeled me a liar, Sybil, so your question was rather pointless, was it not? Would it be so surprising if I did take a mistress?”
“It is what I have learned to expect of you and to accept,” she said. “But though your love for me is dead, Adam, I thought there would have been some remnants of respect left for the fact that I am your wife.”
“Wife.” He laughed softly and took two steps toward her. “I would not need a mistress if I had a wife, Sybil. Perhaps you would like to protect your interests more actively.”
He set one hand beneath her chin and kissed her lips. But she turned her head sharply to one side.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t, please.”
“I didn’t think that idea would have much appeal to you,” he said. “Don’t worry, Sybil. I have never forced you and am unlikely to start doing so now.”
“I feel unwell,” she said. “I still have not recovered fully from that chill.”
“Yes,” he said, “I can see that you are right about that. And you have lost weight, have you not? Did your visit have any other purpose?”
“No,” she said, her light, sweet voice shaking. “But I know you are lying, Adam. I know you have been with Pamela’s governess. No matter how much you deny it, I know it is true.”
He had a sudden and unwelcome mental image of blood—on Fleur’s thighs and on the sheet where she had lain.
“It seems,” he said quietly, looking steadily at his wife, “that we are both ready to go to the drawing room to make ourselves agreeable to our guests. Shall we go together?” He extended an arm for her hand.
She laid a hand on his sleeve without gripping his arm at all, and walked beside him in silence. A small and fragile and beautiful woman who looked as innocent as a girl.
It was difficult sometimes, his grace thought, to accept the fact that this was his present and his future, the marriage he had dreamed of as a young man. Except that all the dreams were dead and there could never now be any others to take their place.
Just perhaps unwary dreams at night.
He thought again of Fleur, of his first sight of her standing quietly in the shadows outside the Drury Lane Theater, and of his unexpected need for her. The need to spend a night sheltered in the arms and body of a woman who would accept him without question. The need to sleep with his head pillowed on a woman’s breast. The need for some peace. The need to soothe his loneliness.
And he thought again of the blood and of her hand, which had been shaking so badly after he had violated her that he had had to hold it while putting the wet cloth in it. And of her hunger and the self-discipline that had held her back from wolfing down the food set before her. And of her humiliationwhen he had set the coins in her hand, payment for services rendered.
He paused outside the doors into the drawing room while a footman opened them, and entered with his wife on his arm. He smiled and was aware of her bright glances for those of their guests already assembled there.
FLEUR PRACTICED IN THE MUSICroom in perfect privacy the following morning. The door between it and the library remained closed.
And she found herself more self-conscious than on any other morning. Was he there? Was he lurking behind the closed door, listening? Was he about to fling it open at any moment to criticize some error in her playing or to tell her that she was no longer welcome to use that room? Or was he not there at all? Was she indeed as alone as she seemed?
She could not concentrate on the pieces she was learning. She could not lose herself in the music she already knew and could play with her eyes closed. Her fingers were stiff and uncooperative.
She smiled at herself without amusement as she left the room five minutes before her hour was at an end. Could she relax more, knowing that he was close, than she could when he was absent—this dark, hawkish man who terrified her more than anyone she had ever known, even including Matthew, and whose physical closeness always made her want to turn and run in panic?
All morning as she taught Lady Pamela a variety of lessons, she listened for the sound of a firm tread outside the door and of the doorknob turning.
But they were left in peace. And peaceful the morning seemed, Lady Pamela unusually quiet and docile, until she suddenly snatched up the scissors without warning while they both embroidered and cut first the silk thread with which shehad been sewing and then the handkerchief itself with deliberate and vicious slices.
Fleur looked up in amazement, her own needle suspended in the air. She was in the middle of telling a story.
“She said I could go down,” Lady Pamela said. “She said! And he said some other time. He said he would remind her. He said it ages ago. I’ll never be let to go down. And I don’t care. I don’t want to go down.”
Fleur set her work quietly to one side and got to her feet.
“And now you will tell them that I have been bad,” the child said, making one more cut with the scissors, “and they will come to the nursery and scold me. Mama will cry because I have been bad. But I don’t care. I don’t care!”
Fleur took the scissors and the ruined handkerchief from the little hands and stooped down in front of the child.
“And it’s all your fault,” Lady Pamela said. “Mama said I was to go down, and you would not let me. I hate you, and I am going to tell Mama to send you away. I am going to tell Papa.”
