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Elma—disappearing the second Elias entered a room.

Elma, holding up a vial of laudanum and locking eyes with Elias, only Elias, as she threatened to drink it whole.

Caty could feel herself starting to shake, as though she had the ague. She was hot and cold all at once. “Elias . . .”

He had his back to her, his shoulders bent, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. He turned, and there was something in his face she had never seen before.

“If thee had been here where thee were meant to be,” he said viciously, “none of this would have happened. Does thee know how lonely it was with everyone gone away? Thee went away and left me.”

“I—” Caty’s lips moved but the sound wouldn’t come out.

“I begged thee to come home.” Elias advanced toward her. “I wrote to thee and I begged thee. But no. Thee was too busy basking in the country air to attend to thy own husband.”

Caty licked her dry lips. “Elma was a girl—in our care.”

“She was a woman grown. She knew what she was about. Thee left me here with her.”

“Not with her—” Just to manage the boardinghouse. Not to share her husband’s bed. Caty covered her mouth with her hand, unable to bear the image.

“See?” Elias loomed over her, forcing Caty to crane her neck back to look at him. “Thee knows what thee did.”

Caty felt like a shattered cup, all sharp-edged pieces. “I didn’t leave because I wanted to. It was for the children. . . . Our children.”

Rachel and David and Phoebe and Eliza . . . their little trundles lined up so neatly beneath the bed.

“It was only six weeks,” Caty said desperately. “We were only gone six weeks.”

“Only. Even when thy body is here thy spirit is absent. Thee never has time for me. Everyone is more important to thee than thine own husband. At least Elma—”

He broke off, the import of what he was saying clear to both of them.

Elma wasn’t cooking and cleaning for thee, Caty wanted to say. Elma wasn’t making sure thy children were clothed and thy bills paid. But she knew if she did they would cross a bridge over which they could never return. And she wanted, so badly, to go back to an hour ago, before she knew.

“Elma listened to me,” he finished.

She’d done more than listen.

Caty bit her lip hard, the pain anchoring her. “Richard Croucher—how does he come to know this?”

“He saw us,” Elias said briefly.

“He saw her with thee. Not Levi.” Caty remembered the way Richard Croucher had smirked at her, and now she knew why.

Elias made an impatient gesture. “For all thee know, he saw her with Levi too. No one misses a slice off a cut loaf. Why does thee think Levi would sooner kill her than marry her? He knew what she was.”

“What thee made of her.” The words were out before Caty could stop them.

Elias’s face hardened. “She was a daughter of Eve. And thee—if thee had been a proper wife to me, I would never have had to look elsewhere. This is thy doing, Catherine, thine and none else’s. Let that be a lesson to thee.”

“I never meant . . .”

“No, thee were headstrong and proud. If thee had been guided by me, none of this would have been visited upon us.”

But it hadn’t been visited upon them. This wasn’t divine retribution. Elias had made the choice to share her cousin’s bed.

What else might Elias have done?

“Elias, thee didn’t . . . hurt her?”