"I used to imagine it. When we were—" She stopped. "That is not what I came to say."
"No," he agreed.
"I want you to know that I did not come here to make things difficult for you. I want you to believe that."
He looked at her steadily. "I believe that you believe it," he said.
Something flickered in her expression.
"That is not the same thing.""
No," he said. "It is not."
He reached into his saddle bag and produced a bag of coins. He had counted them carefully the night before. Enough for a month of lodgings and perhaps more if she was sensible. It was enough to address the immediate situation, or to give her options, but not enough to consider herself affluent.
She took it. There was a moment where she looked at it, and something passed through her face that he could not entirely read.
"You are very good," she said. "You have always been very good, Thomas."
He kept his voice even.
"Clarissa."
"I mean it—"
"I know you mean something by it," he interjected. "I am less certain it is exactly what you are saying."
The silence was brief and specific. She looked at him with an expression that was recalibrating.
"I have been thinking about what I want," she said. It came out differently than he suspected she intended. Less composed, more real. "I have been thinking about it very carefully. And I know that what I am doing, some of what I have been doing is not…" She stopped. Started again. "I do not think myself a villain, not in the way my parents seem to think me, Thomas. I want you to understand that. I am a woman in a very constrained situation making choices with very limited options, and some of those choices have not been… they have not been kind."
He regarded her steadily. It was, he thought, the most honest thing she had said to him in a long time. He did not say this.
"I understand that your situation is genuinely difficult," he said. "That has never been in question."
"But," she said.
He held up his hand to give himself the space to talk.
"But Genevieve did not create your situation. And she should not be made to pay for it."
Clarissa was quiet for a moment. A bird moved somewhere in the upper branches and the sound of it dissolved into the general quiet of the morning. Something flickered across her expression. He had seen that heat in her eyes before. Never once had it been in his direction, though.
“What does Genevieve have to do with our situation?” she asked, struggling to keep her voice even.
“She has everything to do with our situation,” he replied. “She is my wife.”
“Does your wife dictate the things you say to me? I scarce say she is unaware of our meeting,” she said.
He had to bite the inside of his cheek at that. She was right. Not for the reasons he thought she might think, but none that would help him if Genevieve knew the truth.
“That is beside the point,” he said.
“Then what is the point?”
"I want to speak to you about the ball," he said.
"The ball was—"