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It was all so humiliating. “I expect so.”

“Then it’s over.”

Isidore could feel her body drooping, like a plant without water. Which was foolish, foolish, foolish. “I feel like taking to my bed and never getting out,” she whispered.

“I can understand that,” Jemma said.

They sat in silence for a while.

“It smells,” Jemma said, finally. “I don’t mean the water closets, Isidore. I mean your husband. There’s something off here.”

“You know what I don’t understand?” Isidore said. “He said that he loved me. He said that.”

“You never told me that before!”

“I didn’t believe him.”

“You should have believed him,” Jemma said. “Men never say that sort of thing unless they mean it. They have rigid defenses prohibiting displays of emotion.” She was smiling. “He is just being a fool.”

“He’s not a fool,” Isidore said.

“He doesn’t know what he wants. Well, I expect he knows just what he wants, but he’s afraid to reach out and take it.”

“Simeon is not afraid of anything,” Isidore said, almost sadly.

“He’s afraid of you.”

Isidore snorted.

“He’s afraid of you because his mother is an old cow who is telling all of England that he’s crazy. And his father was even worse, with all his mistresses, and irresponsibilities.”

“That has nothing to do with me.”

“Then why didn’t he come back, all those years, when his mother was writing him letters describing the paragon waiting for him at home?” Jemma pounced.

“Because he was looking for the source of the Nile,” Isidore offered.

“Nonsense! Years passed. He could have nipped back here, snatched you up and taken you back to die of a Nile fever. He could have come back here, annulled the marriage, and returned to paddle around the river some more. He never came back.”

“I’m aware of that,” Isidore said, thinking that Jemma could be awfully dictatorial at times.

“I think that he’s afraid to own you. To own anything.”

“He doesn’t own me,” Isidore said, with dignity. “I am a human being, not a heifer.”

Jemma waved her hand. “Think like a man, Isidore. Think like a man! I expect he never really wanted the paragon. You saved him from the tiresomeness of perfection.”

“I’m too much,” Isidore said glumly.

“I think you may have been just a wee bit overbearing,” Jemma said. “Men like to conquer, you know.”

“It’s so stupid,” Isidore said, feeling tears prick her eyes. “If I understand you, you’re saying that he’s throwing me away like yesterday’s tart simply because he finds me too overbearing. I—I—” She meant to say that she deserved better, but she forgot the sentence and floundered into tears instead.

“He needs to take charge. That’s why he tried to redo the wedding. That’s why he hasn’t come to London, because it would mean following your whistle. He’s no lap dog.”

“No,” Isidore said, sniffing.

Jemma was smiling. “We have to make him understand what he might lose.”