I felt a tear trickle down my cheek. It will be too long. There was a weight of foreboding in my heart, a powerful sense of bad things to come. Don’t go. Not yet. But I would not say it.

“I said to you once, there was a solution, to the problem of your safety, that is,” he went on, rather awkwardly now, as if picking his way over broken glass. One false step, and damage was inevitable. “I have seen the way they treat you, even my mother, how they look at you, and speak behind your back. How they distrust your presence in the household. They cannot accept you as a friend, because they do not understand why—that is, your place in my house is unclear to them. That leaves you vulnerable to their tricks, their unkindness and prejudice. To worse. I can change that, I will do so, if you agree. But I have said, this solution will not be to your liking.”

What?

“Promise me,” he said, “that you will listen. That you will hear me out, will not run away, or block your mind, until you have heard all I have to say.”

I stared at him. My hand loosed its deathlike grasp on his tunic and fell to my lap. I nodded mutely.

“As my guest,” he said carefully, “your status is—is subject to the whims of others; your security cannot be guaranteed, if I am not there to watch over you. As my wife, you would be safe.”

My heart lurched, I sprang to my feet, my skirts spraying sand in his face. My answer must have been clear in my eyes as my hands moved convulsively to reject his words.

No. You cannot do this. No.

“You promised you would listen,” he said quietly, and I had. So I sat down again, very slowly, and I found I had wrapped my arms around my body as if for protection.

The sunny spring day was suddenly chill, its brightness dimmed.

“You’re frightened. I expected no less. Jenny, I know—I understand that—that someone has hurt you, has been cruel to you—I know you still shrink from me, though I hope, despite all, that we are friends. This marriage would be—would be in name only, a marriage of convenience, you might call it. I offer you the protection of my name, so that you may complete your task in safety. No more and no less.”

You cannot do this. It is wrong, all wrong. How can you even think—oh, for words to tell him properly. The threads of this story were tangling, knotting, falling into chaos. It was one thing to break the pattern, another to tear it boldly apart.

“At least consider this,” Red went on, his voice very quiet, very level, as it was when he was exercising the utmost control. Me, I wanted to hit him, slap his face, force him to see reality. Didn’t he know this was no answer? Couldn’t he see that it was impossible? I imagined myself living at Harrowfield as the lady of the house. I would have found the picture comical, if it didn’t hurt so much. “At least give it some thought. We still have a little time before Ben returns.”