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She continued, driven by some sort of blind, destructive misery. “You do not understand what I am saying. I wrote that letter, and then Esme and I arranged for it to be revealed at her dinner.” His expression didn’t change. “Don’t you see?

I decided that I wished to marry you, and so I trapped you. You had no choice other than to marry me.”

A leaden silence descended on the dining room, broken only by Fanning entering the room. Like all good servants, he knew instinctively that privacy was required and left without bringing the next course. Darby indicated with a jerk of his head that he would ring for him if desired. Fool for Love

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Henrietta drank the remainder of her glass of wine. “I deliberately compromised you.”

“Why did you go to such lengths to marry me?” he asked, finally.

“I wanted the children,” Henrietta said. But it was too easy, and too untrue. “I wanted you,” she said. She was absolutely filled with rage. Rage against fate, rage against her body, rage against her husband, most of all, herself. If she’d never done such a stupid, stupid thing as marry him, she wouldn’t be contemplating that blue bottle.

“Ah,” he said. “Why?” He sounded mildly interested.

“You were different from the men of Limpley Stoke,” she snapped. “You kissed me. I wanted your children.You needed my inheritance.” She shrugged. “Does it really matter?”

“I suppose not. May I ask how this rather unsavory revelation affects our future married life?”

If he was angry, she couldn’t tell from his tone: there was no anger, merely distaste. A great, weary distaste. She had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if she were crushing something delicate and precious, as easily destroyed as the frost fairies on a window. But then—what did their married life matter, in proportion to what she would do by drinking that bottle?

“Immediately after Esme’s dinner party, before we discussed the sheath, you suggested a marriage in which you would keep a mistress and I would act as something of a nursemaid to your children.”

“As I recall, you were the one who raised the question of a mistress.”

She ignored that. “We shall revert to that idea. I cannot ask you to sacrifice yourself, given that I brought this marriage upon you by fraudulent means.”

She faced him, head high, tearless. “After tonight”—and she meant, after she drank that bottle—“we no longer share the same body, as you put it. My body will be mine own 326 Eloisa

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again.” That was almost the worst of all. After experiencing Darby, after being part of Darby, there could be no returning to one’s own skin without despair.

“You seem to be angry at me, Henrietta. And you are offering me reasons to be angry at you. Why?”

She looked at him and hated— hated—his calm. Why wasn’t he angry with her for wrangling him into marriage?

Because he didn’t give a twig, that’s why. Even without sleeping with her, he still had the nursemaid he needed. Henrietta had always been a terrible liar. “I’m not angry at you.” She could hear the rage in her own voice.

“My mother did her best to entice my father into displays of anger similar to hers. I will not show myself a lesser man than my father in this respect, Henrietta. I will not dance to your piping. If I have offended you in any respect, I would be happy to discuss the offense.”

“Your mother was probably trying to force your father to show some reaction,” Henrietta said rather shrilly.

“It always seemed to me that she was trying to dictate his feelings.” His long fingers played with the stem of his wineglass. There is no penetrating his calm, Henrietta thought. He must feel nothing for me. “I have no doubt but what we both regret this marriage,” she said, hearing her own churlishness.

“I certainly regret my—my rashness in writing that letter. But I will not make scenes, Darby. I will not behave like your mother, I assure you. I am perfectly prepared to recognize that you have other—that you have interests outside the house.”

His eyes were black in the candlelight. “And what of your professed love for me? So quickly dismissed, is it, that you can watch me take a mistress with equanimity?”

“One says many things in the heat of passion that should not be aired in the morning. You said that yourself.” Her voice was hard, and she spat it with all the rage she felt in her soul. Fool for Love

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“True enough.” He put down his glass. “Shall I summon the carriage? I expect you would like to powder your nose before we leave for the ball.”

“The ball?”

“Naturally. We did send our acceptance.”