He shrugged. He had no answers. He kept walking.

He wanted to talk to Iris. He wanted take her hand in his and make her understand that he hated this, too, that he was sorry he’d tricked her.

But not sorry he married her. He could never be that.

He paused outside her door. She was crying.

He wanted to hold her.

But how could he be of comfort, when he was the one who had done this to her?

So he kept walking, past his own bedroom door and down the stairs. He went to his study and he shut the door. He looked at his half-drunk glass of brandy and decided he hadn’t had nearly enough.

That was a problem easily remedied.

He downed the dregs and refilled the glass, raising it in a silent toast to the devil.

Would that all his problems had such easy answers.

Chapter Twenty

NEVER HAD MAYCLIFFE been such a cold and quiet house.

At breakfast the next morning, Richard sat in silence, his eyes following Fleur as she selected her food from the sideboard. She sat across from him, but they did not speak, and when Marie-Claire entered the room, their greetings were nothing but grunts.

Iris did not come down.

Richard did not see her all day, and when the dinner gong sounded, he lifted his hand to knock at her door, but he found himself frozen before he made contact with the wood. He could not forget the look on her face when he’d told her what she must do, could not erase the sound of her tears after she’d fled to her room.

He’d known this would happen. He’d been dreading it since the moment he slid his ring on her finger. But it was so much worse than his imaginings. The foreboding sense of guilt had been replaced by soul-deep loathing, and he truly wasn’t sure he’d ever feel at ease with himself again.

He used to be a good person. Maybe not the best person, but he’d been fundamentally good. Hadn’t he?

In the end, he did not knock at Iris’s door. He went down to the dining room by himself, stopping only to instruct a maid to have supper brought up to her on a tray.

Iris did not come down to breakfast the next day, either, prompting Marie-Claire to proclaim herself jealous. “It’s so unfair that married women can take their breakfast in bed, and I can’t,” she said as she stabbed her knife in the butter. “There’s really no—”

She stopped talking, Richard’s and Fleur’s twin expressions of ire enough to silence anyone.