“Hest isn’t like us,” he said, and he wondered if he had ever said a truer thing. “I don’t know if he loves anyone, in the way that we use the word. Certainly he values you. He knows that you are his hope for an heir.” His supply of glib words suddenly dried up. “Oh, Alise,” he said, sighing. He put his arm across her narrow shoulders. “No. He doesn’t love you. Yours is a marriage of convenience. It was convenient to Hest to have a wife, to settle down and try for an heir. His parents had begun to insist that he behave as a respectable Trader’s son should. With you, he could present those aspects without changing his ways too much. I am sorry, my friend. He doesn’t love you. He never has.”

He was braced for her to collapse into sobs. He was prepared to comfort her as well as he could. He did not expect her to suddenly sit up straight and square her shoulders. She sighed deeply, but no new tears welled. She sniffed a couple of times and then said flatly, “Well. That’s that, then. It’s what I expected. Probably what I deserve. I made a deal with him. I keep telling myself that. Maybe now that I’ve heard the truth from you as well, I can believe it all the way through my heart. And decide what I’m going to do about it.”

That sounded dangerous. “Alise, my dear, there is little you can do about it, except to make the best of it. Go home. Live respectably. Continue your studies, and add to them what you’ve learned from this expedition. Have a child, or children. They will love you as you deserve.”

“And loving them, I could condemn them to having a father like Hest?”

He could not find a response to that. He tried to imagine Hest as a father and could not. Children and sardonic wit would not blend. Elegance and wailing babies? A supercilious smile and a five-year-old offering a flower. He cringed at each thought. She was right, he slowly conceded. A child might be what Hest wanted and needed, for the sake of providing his line with an heir. But Hest as a father was the last thing that any child needed. Or deserved.

Alise wiped tears from her reddened cheeks. “Well. I have no solution to my dilemma. I promised to be his wife, to lie with him, to give him a child if I could. I gave my word. It was a bad bargain to be sure, but what am I to do? Just sail up the river and disappear forever?”

Her query sounded almost hopeful, as if he might accede to such a wild idea.