“The way you look at him,” Matthew said simply. “I know you did not mean for this marriage to happen, that you did not scheme for it. Indeed, it must be a special sort of torture for you. And I am sorry for it. You deserve to be happy.”

Cordelia looked at him in surprise. She had, she realized, never thought of Matthew as enormously insightful. She had not thought he took things seriously enough for that.

“I know what it’s like to hide what you feel,” he said. “I know what it’s like to be in pain and not be able to explain why. I know why you’re not with James tonight. Because when we are in pain, we are flayed open, and when we are flayed open, we cannot hide our true selves. And you cannot bear for him to know that you love him.”

“How did you learn all this?” Cordelia demanded. “When did you become so wise?”

“I have known unrequited love myself, in the past.”

“Is that why you are so very sad?” Cordelia said.

Matthew was silent. “I did not know,” he said, after a moment, “that I seemed sad, to you.”

Cordelia shivered a little, though it was not cold in the room. “There is something weighing on you, Matthew,” she said gently. “A secret. I know it, as you knew I was in love with James. Will you tell me what it is?”

She saw his hand go to his breast pocket, where he often kept his flask. Then he lowered it stiffly to his side and took a deep breath. “You do not know what you are asking.”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “I am asking for the truth. Your truth. You know mine, and I do not even know what makes you so unhappy.”

It was as if he had frozen, sitting there at the end of her bed, a Matthew-statue. Only his fingers moved, tracing the embroidery on a pillow. When he spoke, finally, his voice sounded almost like a stranger’s—not Matthew’s usual bright, water-swift tones, but something much deeper, and more still. “I have told no one this story,” he said. “Not in all my life. Jem knows it. No one else. It is perhaps the very height of foolishness to tell you, and to ask you to keep it from James. I have never told him myself.”

Cordelia hesitated. “I cannot promise to hide it from him.”

“Then I can only leave it to your judgment, and hope you will share my opinion that it would do him no good to know,” Matthew said. “But beware. This story is also about Alastair, though I do not think he knows all of it.”

“James told me some of it, then. The rumors Alastair spread. Perhaps you think I am terrible, still loving him.”