“Fuck no,” he bit, his temper snapping. “You are not daft, don’t pretend to be.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” I demanded.

“Maybe you are daft,” he muttered.

I reared back as if he struck a blow.

“Daft?”

“Daft,” he clipped.

And again.

I’d had enough.

More than enough.

It was time to have this out.

And be done with it.

“You know, I know,” I whispered.

“It seems to me you do not know much, so please. Tell me. What is it you know, wife?”

“I know I have to share.”

His head jerked. “Share?”

“That is the way and I know it is the way. I know it’s something I’ll have to endure. And I promise, I’ll find it in me to do just that. For you. For our marriage. But even if it’s not your custom, I just ask, and please, I beg of you, regardless that it is how you are, who you are, what you expect of our marriage, of me, I beg of you to grant this. That you go about doing the things you need to do, but don’t make me participate and don’t make me watch.”

His manner was entirely changed when he asked quietly, “Watch what?”

“Pegeen?”

“The maid?”

“Yes.”

“Silence, piccolina, you’re making no sense.”

“When you do the things to her that you do to me.”

That did not get me fire.

At that, in but an instant, he straightened from the jamb only for his body to go statue still.

And his face seemed made of stone.

Thus, his voice was gravelly when he asked, “Are you accusing me of infidelity?”

“It is your way, I know—”

“It is whose way?”

“Yours.”

That got me fire, and it appeared, alarmingly, that he’d grown inches.

In all directions.

Indeed, it felt the very air was aflame when he asked, “Mine?”

“Firenze!” I cried wildly. “You told me, after the first time, the first time you made me…” I shook my head. “That when we brought others to our bed, we would choose carefully. I know it’s not infidelity to you. I understand how it is in Firenze. But it is not,” I pressed my hand to my chest and leaned toward him, “my way. I do not wish to share you. I do not wish to see you with other women. I want no other man but you.”

“Silence—”

“And I heard, I listened, it was important to you, so it was important to me, and so I listened to every word of the piercing ceremony, Mars. And it was about vowing to give you my ear and my thoughts and my words, but not my body. And thus, you wear the chain and I know I have your ear and your thoughts and your words, but I have to share your body.”

“Amore,” he said gently, “you haven’t actually had my body.”

“What?”