gave him everything. But he had a strong sense of duty and took his responsibilities seriously. If I hadn’t had a dowry and the right bloodlines, he wouldn’t have married me no matter how much he hated you. He may have had…unfair opinions about you, but he wasn’t a monster. So when I pled my time of the month after the wedding and asked for a week, he didn’t force me. Which I’m grateful for even more now — if he had died in my arms rather than with that opera dancer, I never would have forgiven him. I would rather deal with the scandal of where he died rather than having him die on top of me.”
Nick exhaled, then closed his eyes. Ellie sighed and buried her hands even deeper in her fur muff. In the shadows, with his hair swept back under his hat and his shoulders tensing up under the capes of his greatcoat, Nick suddenly looked like a stranger — a dark traveler who heard her story with passing interest and would forget it before he reached the next town.
“The way you smiled at your wedding…” Nick said. “I thought you wanted him.”
He opened his eyes — with the way they burned, how could she have ever imagined that he was disinterested? But his statement confused her. “How do you know how I smiled?”
“I was there, Ellie. Hiding in the back like a damn beggar, waiting for you to change your mind.”
This time, she closed her eyes. She hadn’t seen him at the wedding — but then, she hadn’t seen much, since she was trying so hard to look calm and not retch during her vows. “I had to smile,” she said. “It was either that or be sick. I didn’t want to be known as the bride who cast up her accounts on the altar at St. Paul’s.”
When she looked up at Nick, the burn was gone. Cool contemplation took its place. He steepled his fingers in front of his face, resting his chin on his thumbs. His words, when they finally came, were quiet, as though they’d had to sneak past the bars of his hands. “And you thought you could be a good wife?”
“Yes. Not the best wife, perhaps, and I might never have felt anything stronger than affectionate concern for Charles. But I’d made my bed. And I would have settled into it eventually. Don’t you see?” Her voice, like her heart, turned urgent. “When I knew I was bound to Charles, I could make a life around that, however bad it was. But add even the slimmest bit of hope that you might come back for me…it was the hope that made those first years unbearable. I could have borne a pleasant, passive marriage. I couldn’t bear all those painful, useless dreams.”
“Do you really think that? That you could have been happy if you’d fully lost me?”
“Not at first, perhaps. Not for ages. But perhaps I would settle for peace now. As you are so keen to remind me, I’m not the girl you loved. I’ve abandoned my childhood fantasies of happily ever after. As have you, I’d wager.”
“Childhood fantasies? I never had them.”
“Now there’s a lie if I’ve ever heard one,” Ellie said. “You may not have dreamed of princes and castles and large families, but you dreamed. And they’ve come true, haven’t they? Enough money to buy the ton’s regard and a title to secure it. Would that I had dreamed your dreams — I had all that ages ago.”
He dropped his hands away from his face. “You seem to confuse goals and dreams. Goals are what I’ve accomplished. Dreams are something else entirely.”
“Then what are your dreams?”
He frowned. “You are full of questions today.”
“Would you rather I not care?”
“It would be easier if you didn’t.”
“What would be easier?”
He looked down at his hands. “Revenge. Atonement. Call it what you will.”
She didn’t know what to call it. She couldn’t name any feeling between them, when hatred felt like love and revenge felt like a gift. “You said you hate me. Revenge is easy with hatred, isn’t it?”
He didn’t answer, just kept looking at his hands until she thought he would never acknowledge the question. Finally, he said, “I don’t hate you. I hate what you did. But perhaps it had to happen that way.”
“I would take it back if I could.”
“I know. But if we had stayed together then, we wouldn’t be who we are now. I find the