“I …” She began to tremble. “It was my body, don’t you understand?”

“No,” Patrick said definitively. “What are you talking about?”

Now the tears returned to Sophie’s eyes. He was cracking her hard-won control by making her talk about it. “I failed her … I failed her.”

“You didn’t fail her.” Patrick’s voice was tender, consoling, as he drew his hand lovingly over the curve of Sophie’s cheek.

Sophie looked away. “I want to go by myself,” she said stubbornly. “I need to—”

“You didn’t fail her!” Patrick reached out, giving Sophie’s shoulders a little shake. “She wasn’t ready to live yet, remember, Sophie? You said that to me. It wasn’t your body. She was too fragile.”

Patrick drew Sophie into his arms, carrying her to the armchair. He sat down, snuggling her as if she were a child who had fallen and scraped her knee.

“It was because she knew I didn’t want her,” Sophie said, her voice breaking.

“How can you even say that? You wanted her so much that you wouldn’t let me touch you for months!”

There was a moment of silence in the room. “I was afraid,” Sophie said finally. “I was afraid that I would lose the baby.”

“Then how can you say that you didn’t want her?”

“You were with your mistress and you weren’t coming to my room. I knew we would never have another baby. I wanted this baby so much, but still, sometimes, I thought that if I hadn’t gotten pregnant you would have still come to my bedroom—” A burning wave of sobs clawed its way up her throat. “I shouldn’t have thought that,” she said brokenly. “I should have just accepted it and been thankful for the baby.”

Patrick sat, stunned, clutching his wife in his arms. “I was not with another woman, Sophie.”

“I could tell,” Sophie said, not even listening to his response, “that you were bored by making love to me.”

“I wasn’t—Why wouldn’t we have another baby?” Patrick’s strained voice punctuated Sophie’s sobs as she fought to control herself. She had lost all wish to hide anything.

“Because,” she said with devastating honesty, “you are tired of being married, and so we won’t have any more children since you don’t care whether you have an heir. When I got pregnant, part of me resented the child because it meant the end….” Her voice trailed off exhaustedly.

“Sophie.” Patrick’s voice was rough, strangled. “What are you saying? Don’t you know that I lay in my room, night after night, in agony because I couldn’t come to you? You’re not making sense! If I was going mad wanting to make love to you while you were carrying a child, what on earth would make me stop longing for you after the child was born?”