Louisa rose in a rustle of skirts, her cheeks red. "I see. So you are happy to stand here and tell me how glad you are that you and Aloysius have returned to bickering like schoolboys? I am tired of it, Gabriel. Tired of your arguments and of being caught in the middle. I am tired of you."
Her words struck me like pistol balls, but she rushed on. "Do you think I enjoy knowing what you fight one another about? You are dear to me, Gabriel, dearer than almost anyone in the world, you always have been. You have told me I am dear to you."
"You are," I said, stricken.
"Then why do you force me to choose? I am loyal to my husband. I always will be. He deserves that."
My temper broke. "For God's sake, why? The man was ready to put you aside because you disappointed his selfish plans for fathering a dynasty. He deserves you spitting on him."
She shook her head. "I do not think that Aloysius ever meant to divorce me. Not truly."
"No? He made a damn good pretense of it."
"I misread him. I know that now. He hurt me, and I wanted to hurt him back."
"So you came to me that night to hurt him?" I asked, a dull ache in my chest.
"I do not know why I did what I did that night. I ran to you because I was afraid and confused, and so angry, Gabriel, you do not know how angry."
"I have some idea."
Her eyes were clear gray, like rain-washed skies. "No, you do not. He had wounded me at my weakest point, and I was furious at him for that. He had shattered my pride, and I wanted to strike back at him. You took me in and were so indignant on my behalf, and that pleased me."
"It pleased me too," I said, remembering.
I had hated Aloysius Brandon that night. When Louisa's tears had ceased enough that she could tell me her story, I had been ready to murder Brandon on the spot. Louisa had several times tried to give Brandon his hoped-for son, and she had failed each time. The enlightened Colonel Brandon blamed Louisa. I knew that Louisa secretly blamed herself, though she never voiced the thought.
I, on the other hand, put the blame squarely on Brandon. If he'd treasured Louisa as he ought, likely he would even now be surrounded by a horde of children.
"I believe that what angered him most is that you took my side against him," Louisa said.
I smiled wryly, hurt tainting my words. "Not finding you in my arms?"
Not in bed. I had held her close, letting her cry on my shoulder, while I had tumbled her hair and kissed her forehead. We'd been sitting on a camp chair, her cradled on my lap, the morning after she'd fled her husband, when Brandon had come looking for her.
I have never forgotten the look on his face. For all his bluster that he wanted to give her up, Brandon had damn well never meant for me to have her.
"We both stood against him, and he could not bear that," Louisa said. "He has always been much more worried about his pride than his love."
She was wrong. Brandon had wanted to kill me that night. He had certainly tried to kill me later.
"He is proud," I agreed. "His pride will be the death of him."
"I could say the same of you."
I could not argue. I had asked Louisa, this past summer, why she stayed with the irritating man. She had replied that she remembered the man Brandon had been-the admirable, brave, and compelling captain who had lured me from my Norfolk home. She still saw that in him, she'd said.
I could only see a man who'd let his achievements puff him up until he raged at minor disappointments. Brandon had wanted everything: the perfect wife, the perfect family, the perfect career, perfect devotion from me, the man he had created. He'd almost achieved all this until his pride destroyed it.
"I cannot help baiting him," I said, hiding my uneasiness behind a sardonic tone. "Brandon needs reminding that he ruined me. He can wait as long as he likes for me to fall on my knees and beg his forgiveness. I enjoy showing him that I've had done being his toady."
"Damn you, Gabriel, do you think I enjoy it? Watching you at each other's throats, hurling abuse at one another? I left the room the other night, but I would have had to flee to the next county to avoid hearing you. The servants too were most embarrassed."
"I know you get caught in our crossfire," I said, chagrined. "I am sorry. You know I never mean to hurt you."
"But it does hurt me, and neither you nor my husband let that stop you. How many times will you apologize to me, how many times will I forgive you for friendship's sake? I am running out of forgiveness."
I looked at her in sudden apprehension. "You are the dearest friend I have in the world, Louisa. I try to keep my temper around your husband, but he is so damned provoking. I could chew through a spoon trying to hold in my anger when he begins pontificating. You must know by now that reconciliation is impossible."
"Well you ought to chew through the spoon, then. And I know you will not reconcile. Both of you refuse to unbend. My meetings with you enrage my husband, as you know they do. I believe you encourage visits between myself and you simply to annoy him. And so these visits must stop."
The floor seemed to tilt like the deck of a ship. "Louisa, when I meet with you, it has nothing to do with your husband."
"You might think so, but in the back of your mind, you know you are rubbing salt in the wound. And you delight in it." She sighed. "I too, am not guiltless. I have kept up our friendship, meeting you and telling him of it, almost daring him to say there is anything untoward. But defiance grows wearying after a time. I want it to end."
My world tilted still more. "What are you saying? That we must sacrifice our friendship to soothe Aloysius Brandon's temper?"
"I am saying that this farce has gone on long enough. If you and my husband will not reconcile, then I will not take your side against him. He is my husband. I live with him day after day, and I do not want to be at war with him. I am too old for this. I am forty-three, Gabriel, rather long in the tooth for storms. I want peace."
"You will never find peace with Brandon," I said darkly. I knew I was behaving foolishly, but a great gap of fear had opened at my feet.
"You are wrong. When he is not reminded of you or confronted by you, we are a most tranquil couple."
Louisa was wrong again, I thought desperately. Her so-called tranquility was not harmony; it was simply the avoidance of painful subjects.
She lifted her chin, as though daring me to contradict her. "I deserve that peace. I want it. And so I want you to stay away."
I felt sick. I wanted to reach out and hold onto something. "You are abandoning me?"
Louisa looked at me a long time, her eyes sad, but tired. "Yes," she said quietly.
I tried to still my panic. Louisa had no obligation to me, I told myself. We had been thrown together during our years in the regiment, she a commander's wife, me the cocksure officer who had risen on my own bravado. In times of fear, triumph, grief, and joy, I had always known that Louisa would be there. She was the firm ground in the quagmire of my life. Even when she'd not physically been present, the mere thought of her had been enough to bolster my spirits. I had gotten myself out of many a tight spot on a battlefield by swearing that I would make it back so I could tell Louisa the tale.
Now, in London, with our lives so dramatically changed, I needed her more than ever. I was lost here, but I was never lost with her.
Louisa fingered her cloak. "You and Aloysius have forced me to choose, and I have chosen. I came here to tell you."
My panic threatened to overwhelm me. "Damn it, Louisa, seeing you, our friendship, that is what makes me live from day to day."
Her eyes blazed anew, ingots in the cold room. "Do not dare blackmail me with guilt, Gabriel. And do not dare fall into melancholia to sway me back to you. Next time I will not come running."
It cost her to say those words. I saw that. But she had forced herself to say them. She was tired of me and my temper and my melancholia. She had finished with me.