“What did I do?” Amelia replied. “What do you mean?”

“To Victorine.”

Amelia’s face changed, becoming suddenly as unlovely as the scar. “She’s a brat. She hates me. All she does is talk about Jess. Her maman.” She spat the word at Dan as if it were the filthiest thing she could say.

“She needs time.” Dan gave a compressed smile because what was at stake was Victorine and he would do whatever he had to do for her. “It’s strange for her, what’s happened. It’s strange for me too. As it must be for you.”

“What is strange about getting married?” Amelia inquired. “I believe it’s something that men and women all over the world do. It’s actually rather ordinary.”

Dan sat in a chair opposite his wife, his body sinking into the plushness. Everything in the room was soft and sumptuous and so very English: brocades and swags and dark wood and velvets and shades of pink and red that Amelia insisted he must call rose. He pressed down the nausea that clogged his throat every time he stepped foot into her bedroom and reminded himself that rose was simply a color and had nothing whatsoever to do with blood.

He shifted, trying to get comfortable, and eventually stood and sat on the edge of her bed, which was still cushiony and lush but at least it didn’t envelop him, draw him down the way the chair did with its upholstered arms and back.

“You know that nothing about this is ordinary,” he said quietly, trying not to provoke a fight.

“It could be if you made a little more effort. Or are you so repulsed by me?”

“Don’t,” he said sharply. “I am not repulsed by your face or your arm.”

“But you are repulsed by what I did to get myself here.” Amelia filled in the subtext he wouldn’t say. “Don’t you think it’s time to forgive me for that and make the most of the situation we’ve landed ourselves in? Surely it’s better for Victorine if we get along.”

Dan used all his strength to keep his face neutral. How could he ever forgive her for what she’d done? He studied her, her dark brown hair almost the same color as his, shiny and clean and perfectly styled. Her blue eyes, large and soft and pleading, eyes that she was so good at having her maid enhance with her dressing table of tools. Eyes that she was so good at turning on people, who would be immediately charmed by her limpid and innocent gaze and her pitiful scars and her heartbreakingly missing arm. Her dress, he was sure, had cost him a fortune and it certainly flattered her figure. He wished he could see all the effort, all the polish, as a simple attempt to make the most of the features that were still undamaged, to assuage the pain of remembering what she’d once looked like. But all of it felt calculated, strategic moves to advance her position, or perhaps everything he saw about her was sabotaged by what she’d done to get here.