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She told the truth. “It didn’t occur to me.” She looked down and saw his hand curl into a fist, white-knuckled. Not rage but sadness.

“Yet you shared it all with Langlois.” His voice was even.

“He already knew,” Torie said, trying to explain. “Not at first, but after he came into my studio, he recognized the painting I gave you.”

“How could he recognize it? I thought no one visited your studio?”

“My work is recognizable to other artists. I truly didn’t mean to speak to him and not you,” she said, her voice trembling. “I don’t like talking to other artists. I can’t talk fluently about what I do, the way Langlois does. I avoid the Royal Academy.”

“He’s of your world,” Dom said huskily. Uncompromisingly. “I feel like such a fool. I don’t know you, and yet I love you.” His eyes were dark with betrayal.

Torie pressed a fist against her stomach. She was sorry, but a germ of anger was growing inside her chest. “To be honest, I didn’t think you were interested.”

The words hung in the air between them.

“I deserve that.”

With a quick movement, she swung off the bed and went to the window, looking over the unkempt garden, the weedy lake, the fields that stretched into the distance.

Behind her, always the gentleman, Dom rose as well.

Torie turned about and leaned against the window, allowing the breeze to cool her neck since she felt as if she had a fever. “I was protecting myself,” she said, the words wrenched from her raw throat.

“From me?”

“From your judgment.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I know nothing of the art world. Calling a painting worth thousands of pounds ‘meticulous’ shows my ignorance. I would have . . .” He cleared his throat. “I would have loved to learn, had you chosen to tell me.”

“It’s not about my art,” Torie said baldly. “You think I’m silly, Dom. You think that, my husband. I know it, and while you may not have allowed yourself to realize it, you do as well.”

“I disagree.” He folded his arms over his chest and gave her a ferocious scowl.

“I love the fact that you offer to fight duels against those who insult me,” Torie told him. “But warding off society’s unpleasantness is not the same as disagreeing with their judgment. In your world, a world of letters and education, a person who can’t read is a fool.”

“That is not true.”

“It is true! When you tell someone in Lords not to be a fool, you say it because you believe he is stupid. You told me that those men refuse to read accounts of the slave trade, so logically, when you told me I was a fool, you meant it.”

“They are fools because they are unethical and immoral,” Dom stated. “They could read the accounts, but they choose not to, making them fools as they have no desire to learn.”

“I agree with that, but reading is not the only way to learn, Dom.”

“I’ve learned that from you, because you are one of the most intelligent women I know.” His voice was uncompromising, his eyes fixed on hers. “You have an eidetic memory. Your argumentative skills are wilier than mine. I take the commonplace route when analyzing the Odyssey. You offer judgments that are fresh and new. I don’t think you’re foolish, Torie. Not at all.”

He didn’t? The label he’d hurled at her stuck in Torie’s memory, and she stared at him mutely.

“What I said was inexcusable,” Dom continued. “I was the fool between us. I must learn to think before I speak. That insult comes quickly to my mind because my father often disparaged me with that same word. I am trying to banish his voice from my memory.”

Torie’s lips parted in surprise.

“He told me repeatedly that I was a fool, that I couldn’t allow a woman to control me, that my dimples were effeminate, that I was too weak to be a real man.”

Tears pricked her eyes. “That’s absurd! You are everything a man should be.”

“I will always defend you, Torie, because I can’t bear to think of you being hurt. I know how that feels.” The words rasped in his throat.

Torie felt anger draining out of her.