Page 123 of Faceless

“I want you to go,” he said. “And the longer I consider it, the more I doubt it would suffice to send you to your uncle. The moment anyone learns you are my wife —”

“We have been over this. I am not going.”

“We have no choice, Elizabeth. You must go to Geneva. Webb has connexions there, the accounts are accessible, you would want for nothing, and English law cannot reach you across that water. I do not think Pentonville is far enough.”

“No.”

“Elizabeth —”

“No. I will not go.”

“You are no longer safe here. You were never entirely safe here, but a merciful court would not have convicted a wife who had never known her husband’s name or seen his face. You could have claimed ignorance and been believed, because it was the truth.” His eyes stayed on her face. “It is not the truth any longer. Your face would give you away now. Any magistrate who put you in a room and asked you questions would know within five minutes that you knew. That changes everything.”

“Then we had better see to it that no magistrate puts me in a room.”

“Elizabeth.” He reached past her and turned the paper over, the column of figures facing down. “I will not watch you hang for me.”

“I am not going to hang, and neither are you.”

“I may.”

“You are not.” She stood, which brought her very close to him, and she turned to face him fully in the narrow space between the desk and the wall, and she was not calm — her jaw was tight, her eyes bright — but she was also entirely, characteristically immovable. “You are not going to hang, and I am not going to Geneva, and we are going to find a way through this together, because there is no other arrangement I will accept.”

He sighed and let his fingers trace her cheek. “This is my fault. If I had not kept so much company with you, let you close enough to ask questions and form an attachment… Had I kept to my intentions, you would still not know my name and would think of me only as some ghost who lives on the upper floor and leaves you entirely alone.”

“And I would be miserable, and you would be on the brink of a mental collapse.” She cupped her hand lightly over his. “Do not think I did not hear your loneliness each night? A whisper does not hide that much.”

He shook his head. “But I have been in your bed. I never meant it to happen even once, but once the dam broke, I came back, and then again, and every night for weeks. You were like opium to me, and I knew the price, and I knew you would be the one to pay it.”

“I was hardly unwilling. And I am not ignorant of… certain potentials.”

“Then you understand the urgency. I knew — I knew what the interval was and I came anyway, every time, because I could not stay away from you and I am not able to excuse that.”

“You forget that I actually demanded you perform your marital duty on more than one occasion.”

He shook his head. “And when have you known another person’s demands to have the slightest influence on me? But with you… If there are consequences from that, sending you away is not a choice I make for myself. It is the only protection I can still give you. You would face it alone, and that would be my fault, but you would be alive, and the child would be alive, and that is more than I can say for what happens if you stay and they find us.”

She studied him gravely. Then something near a smile crossed her face.

“No court in England,” she said, “would condemn a pregnant wife.”

He stared at her.

“I am not arguing that I would be believed if I claimed ignorance. While I still had doubts about my husband’s name, I could be questioned and answer honestly. I cannot now, and I ought not attempt it. I am arguing the next thing — that the law has a particular dislike of hanging women who are visibly with child, and that judicial dislike will hold whether my ignorance is believed or not. A knowing accomplice is one matter. A woman carrying her husband’s child is another matter altogether, and you know it as well as I do.” She tilted her head slightly. “Your lack of self-governance where I am concerned may yet prove our salvation. It would be rather a fine irony, would it not?”

The breath had gone out of him. “Four months,” he murmured, “and all my scheming to steal a future for us… and I had not considered…”

Her chin came up. “Your argument for sending me away rather loses its force if we have already made that eventuality rather more likely than not, does it not?”

“That is not—” He stopped. “Elizabeth, that is not a stratagem.”

“Is it not?” She took a step towards him, and the morning light caught her face and her hair and the line of her throat.

“It is a reduction of risk. It does not save you with any certainty.”

“And…” She came near enough to slide her hands up his chest and looked up at him — those eyes he had loved since a rainy Hertfordshire morning when he had seen them so bright and full of herself. “I could just as easily meet some dreadful fate in Geneva. Alone, possibly already with child. What odds do you give me?”

“Your sister could… Your uncle…”