Sophie gave him a little smile. Quite suddenly she felt as if her head were about to float off her shoulders. At least the terrible throbbing was lessening. “I know you don’t want children,” she said to him, almost chidingly, as if he were a child.

“Oh God, Sophie, what are you talking about?”

“You were glad you married me, don’t you remember? Because I’m probably just like my mother, and so you won’t have to deal with brats underfoot. But I’m not like my mother—” The thought made her head even more unsteady.

Patrick finally realized that Clemens was in the hallway and dealt the butler a glare that sent him whisking back through the door to the servants’ quarters. He tried to calm the surges of rage pressuring his chest. Sophie didn’t know what she was saying. She was pregnant. Pregnant women were always irrational.

“What are you talking about?” He spaced his words very carefully, as if he were speaking to a child.

Sophie looked at him in surprise. How she wished that this silly conversation were over so that she could lie down and be still. “You told Braddon,” she reminded him. “You told Braddon, and I heard you, that you were just as glad to be marrying me if you had to be leg-shackled, because likely I would be as incapable as my mother, and then you wouldn’t have a lot of brats underfoot.”

There was a moment of pounding silence.

“May I go to bed now?” Sophie began to back up the stairs. Now she felt certain that her head was floating above her, and her heart was beating so fast that she felt dizzy. She cautiously felt backward for the next stair, holding tightly to the railing. She was afraid to turn about and walk away while Patrick’s face was so black with rage. She shivered.

When Patrick spoke, his voice was grating, splintered. “I didn’t mean it, Sophie.”

Sophie just looked at him. His voice had started to have that otherworldly quality again, as if she were hearing through piles of cotton batting.

She nodded helpfully. “I’m sure you’re right,” she murmured.

Patrick looked at his wife hopelessly. She was backing away from him, a smile fixed on her lips. A pit of black, bottomless despair opened at his feet. Sophie believed the horrible words she had heard him say. No wonder she’d never fallen in love with him. No wonder she was looking at him as if he were the devil incarnate.

“Sophie!” He bellowed it, with all the force of pent-up frustration and raw pain swelling his heart. “Oh God, Sophie, I want the baby!”