All He Ever Wanted(73)

“Dutiful,” I said. “You have been cold.”

“Yes, I have. And I have said I am sorry for that. But that has nothing to do with this.”

I walked over to the apothecary cabinet and touched the white tin cake box. Etna took a quick breath.

“When you would ask me for money, at the breakfast table, it was for this?” I asked.

“I had money from the painting.” She put the pieces of the broken saucer on the drainboard beside the sink. “It was worth more than I thought it would be.”

“This is madness,” I said.

“It is my price,” she said quietly.

“Your what?” I asked, certain I had not heard her correctly.

She raised her chin. “My price,” she said.

“Your price for what? I know of no other wife who exacts a price.”

“Perhaps they do not,” she said.

I shook my head. “Has it been so painful to be married to Nicholas Van Tassel that you must exact a price?” I asked. “Has it been so distressing that you have needed a place to hide?”

“I do not hide,” she said simply.

“Then why have you not told your husband about this?”

“Because it would not then be my own,” she said.

“I do not understand your logic, Etna.”

And, truly, I did not. Had it been a man who maintained a separate dwelling, I might have understood. A dwelling for his mistress, perhaps. One might not condone the action, but one could at least grasp the idea. But for a woman to have such a thing! It was unthinkable.

“This is not meant to be logical, Nicholas.”

“You had a lover before me!” I said explosively, no longer able to keep this accusation to myself.

In the silence between us, I could hear geese honking overhead. A motorcar along the road. Etna’s eyes slid away from mine. She took a long breath that may have contained a faint shudder.

“Who?” I asked, even as I braced myself for the answer.

She leaned against the porcelain lip of the sink. “It is not important,” she said.

“I demand to know,” I said, summoning all of the putative power of the husband.

She turned and looked out the small window over the tap. “And I shall not tell you,” she said.

My eyes took in the room once again, alighting on now-familiar objects: the tin cake box, the Gothic window frame, the chandelier. I spread my arms wide. “Why?” I asked.

She turned back to me. “This is a thing apart, Nicholas. It is separate. It has nothing to do with you.”

“There can be nothing separate in a union  ,” I protested.

“If you were wise,” she said, “you would stop these questions.”

“We had a bargain,” I said.

“Yes. And I have kept my end of it.”

I sat heavily on the ladder-back chair. Etna moved away from the sink. “Do you have a lover now?” I asked.

“No, I do not.”

“Why else would a woman need a cottage that her husband knows nothing about?” I asked. “This is what everyone will think.”

“No one will think anything if they do not know.”

I leaned my arms on the wobbly table. “You would have me become part of your deception?”

She appeared to think a moment. “No, I would not,” she said finally.

I gestured in the direction of the larger house. “Who lives there?” I asked.

“The woman who sold me the cottage.”

“This isn’t her property?”

“The driveway divides the two properties.”

I stood and walked to the window, and from there I could see what in the rain the day before hadn’t been apparent: the cottage was bordered by a low fence. “How did you discover this?”

“I saw a notice in the newspaper.”

I walked to an oak wardrobe to one side of the entry and opened it. Inside were two dresses, a smock, and a garden hat. The sight of the dresses and the hat unhinged me, I who was a door waiting to fall from its frame. I swung my arm across the wardrobe and swept the clothing from its hangers. I flailed, a wild boar after all. I moved away from the wardrobe and tore a linen drape from its window.

“Nicholas,” Etna said.

I kicked over the enameled bucket, sending dried hydrangeas skidding across the floor. I ripped a small picture from its hook. Etna slid away from me, inches from my grasp.

“Nicholas, stop!” she cried.

Would I have hit my wife? No, I do not believe I would. I wished only to violate that room. I opened a cabinet and took out a plate and flung it against a wall. Etna made a sound, and I turned. There was an expression of such alarm on her face that it brought me to my senses. I stumbled forward and collapsed on the davenport, amazed that it held my violent weight.