All He Ever Wanted(74)

I put my head in my hands.

I had been cuckolded by a house.

“I will not get the post,” I said.

“Nonsense,” Etna said.

“I have been told.”

“When?”

“This morning. By Edward Ferald.”

“Nicholas,” she said, moving toward me.

“Don’t,” I said, putting up a hand. I didn’t want her sympathy. Her coldness I could just about bear. But her pity? Never again, I told myself. Never again.

Etna stopped and crossed her arms over her chest. “I am so very sorry.”

“Tell me your lover was not Phillip Asher.”

“It was not.”

“But you knew him.”

“Hardly at all. I’ve told you this.”

I sat forward on the davenport. “It was his brother, then. Samuel. He was your lover.”

Etna briefly closed her eyes. When she opened them, I saw that she was crying.

“Did you know that Phillip Asher was coming to Thrupp?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I knew nothing until I heard his name at the reception.”

“Ferald’s reception.”

“Yes.”

“It’s why you dropped the champagne glass.”

“Yes,” she said.

“It’s why you shut yourself away all those weeks. You haven’t been grieving for William; it is grief for some other.”

“That is a monstrous accusation,” she said.

“You married me under false pretenses,” I said.

Etna pulled a pin from her hair. She sometimes did this in moments of private anguish. “I did not,” she said. “You never asked about my former life.”

“It is understood that such a thing is to be confessed before marriage,” I said, somewhat distracted by the sight of the cascade of acorn-colored hair falling from the undone knot.

“And did you not have lovers before me?” she asked, shaking her hair along her shoulders.

“Don’t be absurd, Etna. That is hardly the point.”

“It’s very much the point,” she said. “You have had your freedom.”

“I don’t want my freedom,” I shouted quite truthfully. “Since the day I met you, I have wanted no freedom.”

“But I have wanted mine!”

I stood in a panic of irresolution. “Where do they go?” I asked, pointing to a narrow flight of stairs.

“To another room. An attic room,” she said, as I pushed past her. “But there is nothing up there.”

The stairs were so steep, I had to use my hands. When I got to the top, I looked around and saw an attic room with gabled sides that allowed me to stand only in its center spine. It was sparsely furnished, though there were curtains on the windows at either end. There was a white iron bedstead with a mattress and a sewing machine cabinet. At the foot of the iron bed was a cedar chest. I opened it and saw a folded quilt. I recognized the quilt as one that had once been on our marriage bed.

I sank to my knees and put my head in my hands.

After a time, I walked back down the stairs. Etna was still standing near the sink.

“I assume you know that Phillip Asher is a Jew,” I said.

She blinked. “Yes, of course,” she said after a moment. “You took a Jew as a lover?”

Her mouth opened and then closed. “This is beneath you, Nicholas,” she said.

“I’m amazed, Etna. I didn’t think you capable of such a thing.”

She was angry now. “How can you think my heart and mind not capable of accepting a Jewish man?” she asked, her voice rising. “Of loving him?”

“The heart may love, but the mind does not,” I said fatuously. “The heart has no mind, and the mind has no heart. They are two separate organs, often at war with each other.”

“You are deluded,” she said. “Your own mind, certainly, is wanting.”

“My heart is wanting, and I mean that in another way entirely. You knew that Phillip Asher was a Jew, and yet you said nothing, even though it may have aided my candidacy to do so?” I asked.

“Stop this!” she cried. “You are a fool, Nicholas.”

“This is grounds for divorce,” I said.

The room went deathly quiet, as if awed by the pronouncement.

“You would not divorce me,” Etna said.

“I would,” I said.

(But why had I said such a thing? I wondered. I did not want a divorce. No, no, it was the last thing I wanted.)

“You are too rash,” Etna said, and I noticed that her hands were shaking.

“It is you who have been rash.”

She backed up a step and sat on the Chinese grass chair. The strength in her legs had at last deserted her.

“You have been coming here secretly for eleven months,” I said. “That was rash. You have lied to your husband. That was rash.”