And I couldn’t help the heat pricking at my eyelids when I felt him stiffen and then start pulsing inside of me. Oh God, it felt so damn perfect. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? When we were fucking, our world was perfect. When our bodies were joined, everything but our love melted away, refined into gold by the furnace of our desire.
But we couldn’t always be fucking. We had to live lives. We had to coexist for decades, we had to see other people, and one day we would probably have children.
I loved him. I wanted him by my side, always. More than anything. But the things he had done, and the truths he had hidden—how could I willingly embrace all of that and carry it into a marriage?
I didn’t know that I could.
His hands tightened on my waist as I lifted my hand. The light, as always, caught the ring and threw glinting arcs of color around the room. There had been a time when I imagined it on my finger until the end of my days, a cool weight on my hand as I fell into my final slumber, hopefully surrounded by children and grandchildren with the Markham green eyes. What a foolish fantasy. Girls like me—poor, without connections or property—didn’t get their fairy tale endings. I wasn’t a queen. I wouldn’t even be fit to serve a queen. I had always been destined for the gray world of isolation and solitude, and it had been stupid of me to ever think anything different.
I slowly tugged off the ring as he watched, and I put it in his inside jacket pocket. He was still inside me through it all, a deeply physical reminder of how empty I would feel without him.
“I will always love you,” I said. “But I don’t know how to live with you. When we are together, everything feels right. But what if I wake up one day and I’m like Violet and you despise me?”
“That will never happen,” he said fiercely.
“And Julian—” He froze at his name, as he often did. “I…you make me want strange things. The woman that I am becoming—I am frightened by her. I don’t think I can live my life with the kind of desires I have with you.”
He didn’t let go of my waist. “You are becoming more like yourself, Ivy. And only I can give you what you need.”
I slid off of him, wrestling out of his grasp. I took in everything about him, drank him in for what would probably be the last time: his lanky frame, square jaw, thick eyebrows. I touched his face, laying my hand against his high cheek and feeling the stubble tickle my palm. He closed his eyes, pressing into my touch.
“Goodbye, Mr. Markham.”
Three weeks later...
“So the rumors are true.”
I blinked against the sudden wash of sunlight in the hotel room. I’d been slumped in a chair in front of the fireplace, debating the merits of having a drink this early in the morning. I wasn’t normally the type to seek solace in drunkenness, but I would be lying to myself if I didn’t admit how appealing the feeling was. The feeling of forgetting.
Silas hurled himself into the chair across from me, all charm and smiles like always. “At least you don’t smell. I was worried that I would have to come dunk you forcibly into a bath and burn your clothes.” He looked around the room. “I’m actually impressed, Markham. You are quite a tidy little hermit.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked tiredly. “How did you even get in?”
“I told the concierge I was your brother and I was worried for your health. And then I handed him some money. You know, the usual.”
“But why…” I trailed off, already exhausted by the exchange. What did it matter? What did anything matter? Ivy had ended our engagement, not seconds after we’d stopped shivering through our climax, and I couldn’t bring myself to care about anything else. Even the thought of leaving London for my own house seemed untenable—no matter how sundered we were practically, I couldn’t tear myself away geographically. I spent my days imagining her days. Was she walking in Hyde Park now? Visiting the British Museum? Spending time with her aunt?
“Molly said she saw your valet running errands and so she asked around, and word was that you were holed up here brooding. And I said, ‘Our Markham brooding? How out of character for him.’”
“Your sarcasm is duly noted.”
Silas folded one long leg over the other, studying me for a moment. “What happened?” he finally asked. “You can tell me.”
I wouldn’t. It was unthinkable, laying bare the pain and shame once more by speaking it all out loud. But when I opened my mouth to tell him it was none of his business, the story started tumbling out. All jumbled together—Ivy breaking off the engagement, using Mrs. Harold as a weapon against Violet, the ever-present fear that I was indeed an evil man, and therefore Ivy deserved better. She deserved for me not to hunt her down. She deserved for me not to possess her. She deserved a life free from me.
But the trouble was, I couldn’t live any kind of life without her.
Silas listened to the whole saga, punctuated with the frequent outbursts of my despair, and even though disgust flickered briefly in his eyes when I described what I had done to Violet the night she died, it wasn’t followed with judgment. In fact, his voice was kind when he said, “Markham, my man, you’ve got to forgive yourself. Yes, you did something terrible, but we all saw how desperately unhappy you were. No one who spent any time with you and Violet could truly fault you for lashing out like that.”
My face was in my hands at this point. “Ivy faults me.”
He cleared his throat. “Have you seen her? You know, since she broke your heart and all?”
“No,” I said into my fingers. “She made it very clear she doesn’t want to see me.” Then I thought a moment. “Wait, have you seen her?”
He shrugged. “That aunt of hers is parading her through every fashionable house in London. She’s out every night.”
My chest squeezed. She was out—laughing? Drinking? Dancing? With other people?
