Arabella’s mouth opens and closes with no sound.
“And,” I add, because if I’m going to build the whole structure, I may as well finish the architecture, “if we do move forward with surrogacy, we could speak to her about being the surrogate.”
That shocks a sound out of her. Half laugh, half sob, all disbelief. “Vincenzo… wh-what?”
I shrug. “It solves several problems at once.”
She stares at me like I’ve either lost my mind or finally found it. “Why would you do that?”
“Because this marriage has been a slow, elegant misery for both of us, and I’m tired.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Fine.” I look at her directly. “Because you deserve to be with the person you actually love, and because if the world insists we all perform respectable lies, we may as well at least arrange them in ways that hurt less.”
Tears spill down her cheeks again, but now they’re different. Not frantic, more stunned. “You’d… let me?”
I almost smile at the phrasing. “Arabella, I have no interest in imprisoning you in a role I barely perform myself.”
“Why?” The word tears out of her. “Why would you do that? Why wouldn’t you be disgusted? Or furious? Or insulted?”
I look at her for a long moment. “Why would I feel disgusted?”
She laughs once in disbelief, tears rising again. “Because your wife has been sleeping with someone else. Because I’ve made a mockery of our marriage. Because I wanted another woman more than I’ve ever wanted the life I have with you.”
There is no bitterness in it, only despair, and that makes it easier to answer honestly.
Before I can decide against it, I reach up and tug the collar of my shirt aside just enough to show her the marks at my throat. Half-moons there from Nikolaj’s teeth, a bruised kiss low along the side of my neck. Proof enough for a smart woman, and Arabella is far smarter than most people give her credit for.
Understanding moves through her face in real time. “Oh,” she says.
For one long second, we simply look at each other—husband and wife at last standing in the same miserable kind of truth.
“I have the same problem,” I say quietly. “The difference is that Marie can live here. You two can have a life together under this roof if we structure it properly. Mine…” I let the sentence fade because she doesn’t need the name to understand the shape. “Mine will never be that simple. I could never be with him like this.”
Arabella’s face crumples again, this time not with anger but with something far worse: recognition and compassion. God help me.
“You poor bastard,” she whispers.
That almost makes me laugh. I cross the bedroom and sit down next to her, taking her hand in mine.
“You can think of me as a friend in this,” I say. “Or a co-conspirator. God knows we’ve done a terrible job of being husband and wife in any real sense. But if you want Marie, and she wants you, the three of us can structure this house in a way that keeps everyone protected. We should do that instead of playing at misery until we all rot.”
Arabella’s eyes fill again, but this time the tears look different. Less jagged and more exhausted.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “For the last few years. For the shape this marriage became and the pain of it. You didn’t deserve the emptiness.”
She covers her face with both hands and cries in earnest, then. No more elegance left in it, only relief and shame and exhaustion pouring out together. I pull her into my arms.
“I’m sorry too,” she says through it. “For disrespecting our bed by bringing him here. For making a fool of both of us.”
“I understand why you did it,” I say as I rub her back.
She looks up at me, eyes red, nose wet. “Do you?”
“Yes.” I remove the handkerchief from my breast pocket and hand it to her. Then I glance toward Lucien, who is still unconscious on the carpet. “What I do not understand is why my second-in-command thought this was an acceptable risk.”
Arabella wipes her nose and shakes her head. “Lucien didn’t pursue me. He was lonely too,” she says, with the kind of honesty that only comes after the rest of the room is already in ruins. “And drunk enough to be stupid.”
