“I have to know, Sedric.” Her words called him back to the cramped and grubby galley. She was watching him, her face pale in the dimness. Waiting for the truth.
In her position, he would have felt the same way. The need to know how foolish he had appeared, how many people had known. “Yes,” he said. The word cut his mouth. “But I didn’t laugh, Alise. Sometimes I spoke out for you.”
“And sometimes you didn’t,” she added ruthlessly. She sighed and set her mug down on the table. It was a small sound in the quiet room. She lifted her hands and hid her face in them. He feared she was crying. If she was, he knew he should comfort her, but he would have felt like a fraud doing it. He had been a party to creating this humiliation for her. How could he offer the comfort of a friend? He sat still, not speaking, waiting for her to make a sound.
But when she lowered her hands from her face, she only sighed heavily. She picked up her mug and took a sip of her coffee. “How many?” she asked conversationally. “How many people in Bingtown knew what a fool I was?”
“You weren’t a fool, Alise.”
“How many, Sedric?”
“I don’t know.”
“More than ten?” She was relentless.
“Yes.”
“More than twenty?”
“I think so.”
“More than thirty?”
“Possibly.” He took a breath. “Probably.”
She laughed bitterly. “So you were not very discreet in your indiscretion, were you? Was I the only one who didn’t know?”
“Alise…you don’t understand. Men like us, we have our own society, one that is mostly invisible to Bingtown society at large. We create our own world. We have to, because if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be allowed…You are not the only wife who has no idea of her husband’s preferences. There are other wives in Bingtown who do know, and just accept it. My sister believes you are one of them, from something she once said to me. Some of those husbands are fathers, some of them do love their wives, in their own ways. It’s just that…well…”
She had clenched her hands into fists. “Sophie knew?”
“Yes. Sophie knows. The way she spoke, she believes you knew and agreed to it. For a time I hoped you did. Then I mentioned it to Hest one day, and he laughed at me.”
Her brows were knit as she puzzled over this. Then she asked abruptly, “How did Sophie know? Did you tell her?”
“I didn’t have to. She’s my sister. She just knew.” He paused to think about that. “She always knew,” he added quietly.
Alise drew a small breath, sighed it out. “I don’t know which would be more humiliating, really. To have your sister think I was a deceived fool, or to think I was a party to your arrangement.” She looked aside from him. “At least Hest didn’t pretend he cared for me. Looking back, I suppose that he did offer me a strange sort of honesty. I knew he didn’t want me, that he came to my bed only because he must, to make a child. I supposed he had another woman or women somewhere; I could never understand why he hadn’t married someone he actually liked. But now I know. He couldn’t.”
He bowed his head to her cold reasoning.
“When I try to imagine you and him together, when I think of you embracing him, kissing his mouth, and him holding you tight…in the very house where we lived. Both of you coming down to breakfast with me after a night together, both of you planning…”
He was appalled. “Please don’t, Alise. I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Was he tender to you, Sedric? Did he say he loved you, bring you small gifts? Remember what scents you liked, what sort of sweets?”
She wasn’t going to let it go. Did he owe this to her? Did he have to endure this? He took a breath and admitted it. “No. That was how I was to him. He was never that way to me.”
“Then how was he?” There was an edge of tears in her voice. “What did he do to make you love him?”
He stopped to think about it. It hurt. “He was Hest. You’ve seen him. It was easy to fall in love with him. He’s handsome and well dressed. Graceful on the dance floor. Charming. When he wants to, he can put his attention on you and make you the most important person in the world. He was strong. I felt…protected. Lifted up by him. I couldn’t believe he wanted me, that he’d chosen me. He was so beautiful that just to have him notice me was all the gift I could imagine. I was dazzled. He did buy me gifts. Clothing. Pipes. A horse. I look back and I think now, those things were not really for me. They were things he gave me so that I would look how he wanted me to look. So I would not shame him with my shabby clothing or my poor taste in horseflesh. I was like…like cloth. Like something he had cut and sewn into a garment that suited him.”