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He opened his mouth and shut it. “I can’t imagine why we’re having this conversation,” he said finally. “I refuse to grant you a divorce.” Rees stared at his wife in frustration. In general, he had no trouble understanding women. For the most part, he found them bland, foolish, and greedy in a petty sort of way for things like bonnet strings and silk stockings. But he had never made the mistake of underestimating his wife’s intelligence.

“I should have left that house party the very moment I met you, back in ’07,” he said suddenly. “Young fool that I was.”

“I wish you had,” Helene said.

“But I didn’t.” Rees’s voice had a harsh edge that surprised himself. “I still remember walking into the drawing room and seeing you playing the piano—”

She shook her head. “It was a harpsichord.”

“Anyway, there you were, wearing a yellow sort of gown and playing Purcell’s Fairest Isle.”

“I had no idea you were so sentimental, Rees,” she said with perfect indifference.

“I would hardly call it sentimental. I try to keep the image in mind because it encapsules the most crack-brained impulse of my life: asking you to elope with me.”

He couldn’t tell whether he was annoying her or not. Lord, but she had gained control since they were married! In those days, the merest comment would drive her to burst into tears and throw something at his head. He eyed her rigid, dried up posture and wondered if he didn’t prefer the old Helene.

“It was hardly an impulse, Rees, given as we had known each other for some months by the time you asked me to marry you. But believe me, if I could take back my acceptance of your drivellingly insulting request, I would. It has ruined my life.”

There was a heartfelt truth to her statement that silenced the witticism Rees was contemplating. He looked harder at his wife. She had dark shadows under her eyes and her hair was pulled up as tightly as it could be in those infernal braids she fancied.

“Is something the matter, Helene?” he asked. “I mean, something more than the usual?”

“You are.” She raised her eyes, and the despair in them struck him in the chest. “You are, Rees.”

“But why?” he asked, in honest bewilderment. “I’m far less scandalous than I was a few years ago, when I…”he paused and decided to skip over the Russian dancers, “when I was younger. I have never interfered with your doings. What could possibly be so awful about being married to me? I think it’s a position that many women must envy. If you’re lucky, I’ll fall dead to the ground like Esme Rawlings’s first husband, and you can become a rich widow.”

That was a fairly lame joke, but surely it deserved a twitch of a smile.

“Honest to God, Helene, I simply don’t see what’s so objectionable about my being your husband. If I were requiring you to fulfill your wifely duties, I could understand.” He stopped and the sentence hung on the air. He wished he hadn’t brought up that old painful subject.

“I want a child,” she said quietly. “I—I feel quite strongly about it.”

“Still?” he said, without thinking. Helene was perched on the very edge of the couch, her delicate fingers clenched in her lap. There wasn’t much that he liked about his wife’s body, not really, but he always loved her hands. More fool he, he thought, remembering that he had been stupid enough to think that she would caress him with the same tenderness with which she caressed the piano keys.

A slight frown creased her forehead. “Yes, still. As I told you last spring. Why wouldn’t I still wish for a child?”

When Rees was surprised, he generally spoke what he was thinking and regretted it later. “Because you’re not exactly…”he eyed her.

“What?”

“Well, motherly,” he said, feeling, belatedly, a distinct sensation of danger.

“Do explain precisely what you mean, Rees.” She seemed to be speaking from between clenched teeth.

Rees resisted an impulse to check for breakable objects in her vicinity. He waved vaguely in the air. “Motherly…ah, fertile, fecund, you know what I mean!”

“Fertile?” He could hear her teeth grinding. “You venture to say to me that you think I am lacking in fertility? You have assessed my abilities, as if I were a sow you thought to buy at market?”

“Wrong word,” he said, floundering deeper. “I only meant—”

“Yes?”

But Rees had woken to his own foolishness. “Why in God’s name would you want a child, Helene?” Then he narrowed his eyes. “What am I thinking? Naturally you want a child because all your friends have children, don’t they?”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“Esme Bonnington dropped that brat last spring,” he said with deliberate crudeness, “Carola Pinkerton has a daughter, and there’s Darby with a son. That pretty much covers your intimate circle, doesn’t it? Oh, wait…I forgot the Duchess of Girton. She too has produced an heir, has she not?”