“It wasn’t like that,” he protested, even though it was exactly like that. But the thing was, it had felt different, at least a little. “You have to understand,” he tried, “the whole time . . . In London, when I was courting you . . . All the things about you that made you seem a good choice were the things I liked so well about you.”

“Really?” she said, and she didn’t sound snide, just disbelieving. “You liked me for my desperation?”

“No!” God above, what was she talking about?

“I know why you married me,” she said hotly. “You needed someone who would need you even more. Someone who could overlook a suspiciously hasty proposal and be desperate enough to thank you for your hand.”

Richard recoiled. He hated that those very thoughts had once sounded in his head. He could not remember thinking them specifically about Iris, but he had certainly thought them before he met her. They were the reason he’d gone to the musicale that first fateful evening.

He’d heard about the Smythe-Smiths. And desperate was the very word he’d heard.

Desperate was what had drawn him in.

“You needed someone,” Iris said with devastating quiet, “who would not have to choose between you and another gentleman. You needed someone who would choose between you and loneliness.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s not—”

“But it was!” she cried. “You can’t tell me that—”

“Maybe at the beginning,” he cut in. “Maybe that’s what I thought I was looking for—No, I’ll be honest, that’s what I was looking for. But can you blame me? I had to—”

“Yes!” she cried. “Yes, I blame you. I was perfectly happy before I met you.”

“Were you?” he said roughly. “Were you really?”

“Happy enough. I had my family, and I had my friends. And I had the possibility that I might someday find someone who—” Her words shattered, and she turned away.

“Once I met you,” he said quietly, “I thought differently.”

“I don’t believe you.” Her voice was small, but her words were tight and perfectly enunciated.

He held himself still. If he moved, if he so much as extended a finger in her direction, he did not know that he would be able to contain himself. He wanted to touch her. He wanted it with a fervor that should have terrified him.

He waited for her to turn around. She did not.

“It is difficult to have a conversation with your back.”

Her shoulders tensed. She turned to face him with slow intensity, her eyes gleaming with fury. She wanted to hate him, he could see that. She was clinging to it. But for how long? A few months? A lifetime?

“You chose me because you pitied me,” she said in a low voice.

He tried not to flinch. “That’s not how it was.”