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“You know how this looks for him?” Faustine demanded. “To have a slut for a wife?”

“I am not a s-slut!” I protested, feeling that familiar relief when my husband came back in the room.

But it didn’t last for long.

“Étienne, please, they’re saying such awful things to me,” I whimpered, nausea rising in my throat. I felt like I was going to vomit, and my forehead seemed to burn knowing what he’d written there.

But it was like I hadn’t even spoken. The man with him wasn’t my usual doctor, an unfamiliar older man with gray hair and a white coat.

“Doctor, has she been with any other men?” Étienne demanded, and the shame and confusion filled me until I wanted to sink to the ground.

The idea that I would have brought shame to the Bastide name--

“What—monsieur—we can’t—” he protested.

“Has she been with any other men?” Étienne raged, his big hand slapping a glass jar on the side table against the wall shelf, where it landed with a shattering crash.

“I want a clear answer. Yes or no. It shouldn’t be that fucking difficult to tell me. Has there been another man’s cum in that pussy or not?”

I began to tremble.

I had seen him angry, of course, but never like this. Never at me.

“Please,” I begged again, feeling my throat go dry, afraid the words wouldn’t come out. “Étienne, you know I have never been unfaithful to you! I never would!”

He looked coldly at me. “That’s not what I have heard.”

“Who told you that?” I wailed, feeling pieces of my heart splintering off at the look on his face. It was like he hated me. How could this be possible?

How could his feelings turn so quickly?

“Who told you I was unfaithful? It is a l-lie!”

If I could only get the words out, he would see that this was just a tragic misunderstanding. Surely he could never dream it of me. Me, who had been his ever since the first moment I saw him!

“Never mind who has told me,” Étienne said. “What matters is that I have been told. I’m not raising your bastards, Léonie. If you think I will do so out of kindness, you’re wrong. I’m going to find out right now who is lying to me and who is not.”

His eyes slid over to the side of the room. Was he looking at his informant? At the person who had told him these awful things?

But I couldn’t tell who he was looking at. Was it Placidie or Faustine? Who?

Faustine held up something to my husband and a look of absolute loathing crossed Étienne’s face, so dark and forbidding that I began to tremble.

I twisted to see a packet of cigarettes in her hand, their fingers brushing as she passed it over.

“I found this on your private balcony.”

“I don’t know whose that is!” I protested. “I’ve never seen it before in my life!”

Étienne only glared at me. Those arms had been around me so many times. But right now they were crossed across his muscular chest, and he was giving me the kind of look usually reserved for everyone else but me.

“You have to believe me,” I pled.

None of his family liked me. But who would have filled his ears with lies?

“What have you been doing?” Étienne gritted out, crushing the cigarettes in his fingers. “Have you been bringing men to our bedroom, fucking them on the balcony? Who the fuck have you been letting in your pussy?”

“No one!” I cried, shrinking back on the table, curling my legs protectively under me. “I swear on my Gran’s life. On all my ancestors’ graves. No one at all! I love you so much. You know that!”