“The evidence is rather compelling.”
“The evidence is a letter that could have been written by anyone and placed by anyone in a book that I left unattended for all of ten minutes while I went to fetch my pelisse.” She crumpled the letter and threw it back at him. “If I were conducting an affair, do you truly think I would be so careless as to leave incriminating correspondence lying about?”
“Perhaps you thought yourself safe. Thought I was too preoccupied with estate business to notice your comings and goings.”
“My comings and goings to the orphanage! Where you accompanied me yesterday, or have you forgotten already?”
“I have forgotten nothing. Including the fact that you have been leaving the house at dawn for months without explanation. Including the substantial sums you borrowed from household accounts. Including the other letter I found weeks ago, tucked into yourA Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, signed by this mysterious W who seems to occupy so much of your thoughts.”
She stared at him. “You read my private correspondence?”
“It fell out of the book when I was searching for something to read. I did not go rifling through your things.”
“But you kept that information to yourself. Nursed your suspicions in silence instead of simply asking me about it like a rational human being.”
“Would you have told me the truth?”
“There is no truth to tell! I do not know who W is. I have no lover, no secret assignations, no cabin in the forest where I run off to betray my vows.” She was shaking now, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “How dare you. How dare you think so little of me.”
“How little? You have been secretive since the day we married. Disappearing at odd hours, avoiding my questions, hiding expenditures in the household accounts?—”
“I explained all of that! The orphanage, the children?—”
“So you say. But how am I to know that is the truth when you have proven yourself quite capable of deception?”
The words hung in the air between them, ugly and irreversible.
Eliza’s expression shuttered. “I see. And what of your trips to the theater? The ones you failed to mention to me?”
August went still. “What?”
“You heard me. You have been going to the theater. Twice, at least, since your father died. During mourning, when you should have been at home. Where were you really, August? And with whom?”
“Who told you that?”
“It does not matter who told me. What matters is that you were there. Were you seeking comfort?”
“Do not turn this around. We are discussing your infidelity, not my?—”
“My infidelity!” She laughed, sharp and bitter. “I have been faithful to you in every possible way. In deed, in thought, in the foolish, foolish hope that perhaps this marriage might become something more than a transaction. But you have already made up your mind, have you not? You want to believe I am betraying you because it is easier than trusting me. Than trusting anyone.”
“Eliza—”
“No.” She held up a hand. “I will not stand here and defend myself against accusations based on a letter I have never seen from a person I do not know. If you wish to believe I am an adulteress, that is your prerogative. But do not expect me to beg for your good opinion when you have clearly decided it is not worth giving.”
She turned toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To the milliner’s. As I intended from the start. Unless you plan to lock me in my chambers like some medieval tyrant.”
“Eliza, wait?—”
But she was already gone, the door slamming behind her with enough force to rattle the windows.
August stood in the center of his study, the crumpled letter at his feet, his chest heaving with breaths that would not quite fill his lungs.
What had he done?