“You shouldn’t be shocked. I would hardly propose marriage to a woman I wasn’t in love with. So the whole emotionless affair thing wouldn’t really work, would it?”

“Sam—”

There was a muffled knock on the bedroom door, followed by Liza’s voice.

“And in all the stories, this is my exit,” he said, picking up the shoe he’d dropped and stuffing his foot into it. He grabbed the jacket from the chair, tied it around his neck, and opened the window. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s around yet. We should get away with it. Good-bye, Alva.”

“Good-bye,” she said, her voice stunned, and he was out the window and into the biting cold of dawn.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Last night’s snow lay crisp and flat under the gray overcast of the morning sky. Sam’s boots made crunching sounds as he broke the first path through it. His jacket was too thin for the temperature—in his excitement the night before he’d forgotten to take his overcoat. Shoving his hands into his pockets—no gloves, either—he bent his head into the sharp wind and trudged onward.

He didn’t know where he was going. Liefdehuis meant Alva, even if she wasn’t there, and he was feeling surrounded enough by thoughts of her. None of the taverns were open yet. To the rental house, he supposed. Maybe he could lose himself for a while working on the lantern prototype … the lantern he’d thought of during the dinner where he’d first met her. Or the shoe lacer … the one he’d imagined while thinking about her on the steps of Mrs. Kay’s brownstone. Or the tea tray … Were all his projects about Alva Webster?

He’d never felt like this before, hurt and frustrated and angry and generally tied up in knots over a woman. Then again, he’d never proposed marriage to one before, either.

Flashes of the night before briefly distracted him from the cold. Her hair, glowing red-brown in the firelight. Her skin, flushed pink with desire. Her laugh, her smile—

Her laugh turning bitter when she’d talked about the dreams of her youth. How she’d looked when she’d said good-bye.

Had he really believed her complications would be so easily dealt with? “Complications.” What a stupid word for a pile of horrible experiences, all dating back to the piece of shit masquerading as a man that she’d called her husband.

Had he hit her?

That nasty little suspicion had been hidden in Sam’s brain for a while, apparently, because it sprang easily and forcefully to life. He thought about the way Alva watched him sometimes, as if she wasn’t sure how he was going to react. How brittle she seemed. How she could be pugnacious one minute and heartbreakingly fragile the next. What wound did that scar tissue correspond to?