"My wife was upset." He said it without particular emphasis, without raising his voice. He was not, by temperament, a man who raised his voice to make a point. He had found that a point made quietly tended to be heard more clearly. "She was upset, and I watched her handle a room full of people saying unkind things about her with more grace than most people are capable of, and then we went home and she did not speak of it again. She does not complain. That is not a virtue I intend to take advantage of."
Clarissa was very still.
"What was said," she began, "I did not instruct anyone—"
"Clarissa. Do not delude yourself. I saw the way you were speaking to Lydia. I know she has been your fondest friend for some time" He kept his voice even. "I am not here to assign precise culpability. I am here to ask you to stop."
"It is not so simple as stopping. Lydia has her own—"
"Then manage Lydia." He kept his voice even. "You have always been very capable of managing the people around you when you chose to. I am asking you to choose to."
She looked at him with something that was almost indignation and then thought better of it.
"You think very poorly of me," she said.
"I think you are capable of better than this," he said. "That is not the same thing."
"It feels rather similar from where I am standing."
"Then consider," he said, "that what I think of you is considerably less important than what you think of yourself. And ask yourself whether this…" He gestured briefly with a wave to signify Lydia, the ball, all of it, "…is the person you intend to be."
The silence that followed was a different quality from the ones before it. She looked away.
"It is easy," she said, quietly, "to become someone you did not intend to be. When things go wrong in a particular way. You make one small choice, and then another, and they each seem reasonable at the time, and then one day you look at the shape of what you have been doing, and you cannot quite account for how you got there."
"I know," he said. And he did. He had not arrived at the person he was now by any direct route either.
"I am not making excuses," she said.
"I did not take it as one."
"Why do you care so much for her?" she asked. And it was not, he thought, entirely disingenuous, there was something genuinely perplexed in it, as though the question were real.
His brows furrowed and he looked at her steadily.
"She is my wife, Clarissa."
"That is not an answer."
He could feel the pause in his brain, her words causing more confusion.
"It is the only answer that is any of your concern."
Clarissa looked away, toward the tree line, where the morning light was doing the specific autumn thing of making everything look briefly golden and slightly elegant. He waited.
"You are in love with her," she said. It was not quite a question.
He considered denying it, on the grounds that it was not her business. He considered confirming it, on the grounds that clarity might serve better than evasion. In the end he said nothing at all, which was, he suspected, its own kind of answer.
Clarissa made a small sound that was almost a laugh and not quite.
"I had thought… I suppose I had thought that you would carry what you felt for me for longer. That it would be… I do not know. I did not think Genevieve would replace me in your eyes so easily."
"No," he said, quietly. "I do not imagine you did."
The words were not unkind. They were simply true. She heard them, he could see she heard them with the particular wince of someone receiving accurate information they had not wanted confirmed.
"She suits you," Clarissa said, after a moment. The tone was strange. Not generous, not bitter either, something more complicated than either. "She is…I know her, obviously. Better than most people do." A pause. "People assume her perfect, and me difficult. Her constant smile make people assume she is easygoing. I have not always been… I have not always treated that fairly."