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“The duchess’s missive warned me to be prepared for an odor,” Peyre said with a shudder. “I contemplated refusing her invitation. But—” he opened his eyes very wide—“who can refuse Her Grace anything?”

“Indeed,” Simeon said. Then he heard an echo of his mother’s sour tone in that word and softened it with a smile. “Please continue as you see fit, Monsieur Peyre. We have the utmost trust in your judgment.”

“Naturally,” Monsieur Peyre said. “Naturally!” But he was pleased.

He left in a cloud of perfume, and Simeon turned to sit down at his desk, paused, and looked through the window at the garden. He had left Isidore in the Dower House. A good proponent of the Middle Way would surrender his anger, perhaps running an extra mile or two. He would center himself in the universe, remember that anger is a force for evil and that the waters of the ages washed against the pebbles of eternity.

Simeon strode out the door and into the ballroom. Monsieur Peyre was in the center of a cluster of men, pointing to the frieze-work at the top of the room. He caught just a word or two, in French. The place would probably end up looking like Versailles, he thought.

He left through the ballroom door and headed for the Dower House. He would merely request that his wife consult with him before making large decisions to do with the house. Of course, he would remain civil. He would avoid anything akin to an argument.

Those predictions might have come true, if Simeon hadn’t been so angry. “The problem,” he said painstakingly, “is that you never think before you act.”

“Yes, I do!”

“You sent away all our furniture, never thinking where my mother would eat her nightly meal. You bought bolts of cloth from the village thief and paid him a small fortune to deliver them. You anointed a bad-tempered smith as the mayor. You nearly instigated a robbery and assault on my mother because you couldn’t wait five minutes for me to finish my letter.”

“That’s not—”

“You are irresponsible and heedless in your actions toward others,” he said steadily. “You are used to getting your way in all things—”

“So are you!”

“Be that as it may, you have constantly forced my hand.” She looked a bit white, and more than a bit angry, he noticed dispassionately. “I dislike having a wife who has no respect for my opinions.”

“That is a different matter,” she said, cutting across his voice like a knife across butter. “You may disparage me for acting as you see it, without foresight. It may be simply that I think faster than you do. After all, my bolts of cloth managed to salvage relations with the village. My anointing of a mayor assuaged a man who hated your father due to the deaths of his wife and baby.”

Simeon narrowed his eyes.

“There’s no medical help in this village,” she said. “I’m sure I need not detail the reasons for the village’s impoverishment. The smith drove to the next town to beg for help from the surgeon; by the time he returned, his pregnant wife was dead. You may think that my methods are unorthodox, but they are effective.”

“I want to make those decisions,” Simeon said stubbornly.

“And your wife has what role in your life?” Her face was now utterly white, and Simeon knew that he was seeing Isidore at her most furious.

His wife had always been an illusory, shadowy creature, the docile sweetheart whom his mother had created in letters, the lass who sat in the corner of the room weaving lace as delicate as moonbeams. That maiden wouldn’t want to make decisions. She chose to sit in the corner of the room and be as fascinating as dirt.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“I do. You want your wife to be nothing more than a child who listens without question to your every word. In fact, I think it would be better if your wife didn’t even speak your language. I can’t imagine why you didn’t marry some foreign lady you encountered in Abyssinia, perhaps the princess you told me about.”

He felt his face freeze, just for a second, but Isidore was smarter than any woman he’d met, smarter by far than the princess, for all that lady’s ability with languages. She actually laughed. “You did! You thought about marrying a woman who didn’t even speak your language. That’s just perfect. She could sit in the corner translating poems, while you rampaged about making all sorts of asinine decisions. Luckily she would never question you because she wouldn’t even understand what you were doing!”

“What makes you think that I make asinine decisions?” he enquired.

There was a moment’s silence.

“Have I put you in harm’s way?” he said mildly. “Taken the furniture out from underneath you?”

“You’re trying to make me into some sort of silenced African princess, and you’re asking me if I think you make asinine decisions?”

Well, that was clear. Simeon thought he’d heard enough. His jaw tightened, but before he could say a word, she took a deep breath. “This marriage will never work. Never.”

He opened his mouth again, but—

“I thought if I could help you, that you would grow to like having me as a partner,” she said. “What a fool I was! It matters to me to be with a man who respects my opinions, who actually wants to be with me, who—”

Simeon met her eyes. “I do like you, Isidore.”