“Does it not please you?” he said, his lips pressed together in irritation. “Is it not as long or as bejeweled as the one the Countess sports?”

“You think I am ungracious and spoiled?”

Arthur looked surprised. I had never been rude or combative toward him before.

“What then?” he said.

“You need ask?”

I shut the box and placed it on the cupboard.

“You are angry I cannot take on every whore and waif?”

The temptation to slap Arthur’s silly, handsome face was huge. “Am I a whore? Are your daughters? Is that why you do not ‘take us on’?”

“Speak plainly,” he said, running fingers through his hair, wounded that his moment of generosity had sparked not lust in me, but fury.

“I will speak plainly, Arthur. More than a year and a half has passed since George died. As you demanded, I have observed strict mourning and done nothing but work and worry. I have stuck to my word, but have you? If we are to wed in spring, why have you not proposed? We stood over George’s bed and joined hands, witnessed by a notary. So why are we not married?” I put my shaking hands over my mouth.

“Do I not support you?” said Arthur. “I gave you a ring. We must behave in seemly fashion, I have explained that.”

“Not such that I am convinced. You gave me a ring, yes, paid for by my dead husband and unaccompanied by any proposal of marriage. I am not your concubine, to be satisfied with trifles,” I said, struggling to get the lace over my head on which the ring was strung. I must have looked ridiculous. Arthur helped me disentangle it from my hair. I thrust it toward him but he refused it.

“I will not take your baubles,” I insisted, “for you are without honor.”

Arthur recoiled. “You can say that to me?”

I turned away. I could hear him picking at the nails on George’s chair and moving about the room, but he did not come to me. When I could wait no more, I marched to the door and opened it. I knew I should stop up my mouth but could not. “What proof have you shown me that you are a man who stands by his word?”

Very slowly, as if wading through water, Arthur passed through the open door. He took his cloak and hat from the peg and opened the front door. He did not so much as glance at me as he put on his hat and shut the door quietly behind him.