Page 66 of Private Arrangements
“Yes. I was in love with him. I wanted him for more than his title. But I overstepped and my marriage withered on the vine.” She took a long breath. “I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier. Very sorry. I apologize.”
Freddie swallowed, gamely trying to digest the past she'd suddenly dumped on him. Then he cleared his throat, and she tensed. Dear God, what would she say if he asked her whether she still loved her husband? She could not lie to him, not at this juncture. Yet she could not bring herself to face the truth. Could not handle the abject terror of being in love—the kind of love that had already once before derailed her life.
Freddie looked as conflicted as she felt. He glanced down at his shoes, stuck a hand in his pocket, drew the hand out again, and fiddled with the fob of his watch. “You—you really don't know anything about the Impressionists?”
She didn't know whether to laugh from relief or to weep. Perhaps Freddie loved her only for her paintings. Perhaps he was as afraid of the question as she.
She pointed at a canvas directly behind him, a landscape of blue sky, blue water, and a French village with ochre roofs and porridge-colored walls. “Do you know who painted that?”
Freddie turned to look. “Yes, I do.”
“I don't. Or at least I don't recall anymore. I bought it along with twenty-eight other pieces.” She touched his cheek. “Oh, Freddie, forgive me. I—”
She stopped cold. Slowly, as if expecting a knife-wielding assassin, she removed her hand from Freddie's face and turned toward the door. Her husband stood there, leaning against the doorjamb.
Her heart gave a leap of pure, startled joy.
“Lady Tremaine.” He nodded. “Lord Frederick.”
Her pleasure instantly decayed into self-recrimination. How could she be so vile? She'd completely forgotten about Freddie, as if he wasn't there, as if he'd never been there.
Freddie bowed awkwardly. “Lord Tremaine.”
She could return neither Camden's greeting nor his gaze. She only vaguely recalled the time when she'd been dead certain that a divorce was the key to unlocking her happiness, when she'd fully, confidently anticipated putting him behind her once and for all.
Why hadn't she seen it? Why hadn't she realized sooner that she had been seeking that one last battle, a titanic clash, one for the ages?
And why must Camden have turned everything on its head? To go so far as to suggest that he bore an equal share of the culpability. To ask her if she wanted to start afresh, a new life together. Was he mad?
Or was she?
“I was—I was just about to leave,” said Freddie.
“Please, Lord Frederick, do not discommode yourself on my behalf. Lady Tremaine's friends are always welcome in this house,” said Camden, all gallantry and graciousness. “I've had a long journey; if you will excuse me.”
As soon as Camden was out of earshot, Freddie turned to her, half in shock, half in panic. “Do you think he saw us—”
“No.” She'd have known. He couldn't have been there for longer than a few seconds.
“You are sure?”
“Tremaine is no more a threat to my physical well being—if that's what you are worried about—than you are.”
Freddie took her hands in his. “I guess—I guess that isn't what I'm really worried about. I'm only afraid that the more time he spends around you, the less willing he will be to let you go.”
No, it was the other way around. The more time she spent around Camden, the more impossible it became for her to lethimgo.
She patted Freddie's hand. “Don't fret, darling. No one can take me away from you.”
She'd made the right choice. She had.
If only the reassurances she offered Freddie didn't sound to her own ears like so much mendacious drivel.
Camden ripped off his necktie and threw it on the bed. He crossed the chamber, rinsed his face, and buried it in a towel. She was touching another man, with tenderness and affection. What else was she doing with him?
Camden slapped down the towel and caught his own reflection in the mirror above the washbasin. He looked about as happy as the citizenry of Paris on the eve of the Storming of the Bastille, primed for violence and mayhem.
He dipped a hand in the washbasin and flung a constellation of water drops against the mirror. The drops rolled down the glassy surface, obscuring the face that stared at him in unblinking belligerence.
