Alise drew a small breath, sighed it out. “I don’t know which would be more humiliating, really. To have your sister think I was a deceived fool, or to think I was a party to your arrangement.” She looked aside from him. “At least Hest didn’t pretend he cared for me. Looking back, I suppose that he did offer me a strange sort of honesty. I knew he didn’t want me, that he came to my bed only because he must, to make a child. I supposed he had another woman or women somewhere; I could never understand why he hadn’t married someone he actually liked. But now I know. He couldn’t.”

He bowed his head to her cold reasoning.

“When I try to imagine you and him together, when I think of you embracing him, kissing his mouth, and him holding you tight…in the very house where we lived. Both of you coming down to breakfast with me after a night together, both of you planning…”

He was appalled. “Please don’t, Alise. I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Was he tender to you, Sedric? Did he say he loved you, bring you small gifts? Remember what scents you liked, what sort of sweets?”

She wasn’t going to let it go. Did he owe this to her? Did he have to endure this? He took a breath and admitted it. “No. That was how I was to him. He was never that way to me.”

“Then how was he?” There was an edge of tears in her voice. “What did he do to make you love him?”

He stopped to think about it. It hurt. “He was Hest. You’ve seen him. It was easy to fall in love with him. He’s handsome and well dressed. Graceful on the dance floor. Charming. When he wants to, he can put his attention on you and make you the most important person in the world. He was strong. I felt…protected. Lifted up by him. I couldn’t believe he wanted me, that he’d chosen me. He was so beautiful that just to have him notice me was all the gift I could imagine. I was dazzled. He did buy me gifts. Clothing. Pipes. A horse. I look back and I think now, those things were not really for me. They were things he gave me so that I would look how he wanted me to look. So I would not shame him with my shabby clothing or my poor taste in horseflesh. I was like…like cloth. Like something he had cut and sewn into a garment that suited him.”