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“You are the only one exhibiting bad behavior, Thomas. I have known stable boys with more decorum,” exploded Sophia, catching him off guard, and for the first time in probably forever shutting him up.

Stable boys? I don’t doubt that.

He folded his arms across his chest.

“You always deflect!” she continued. “You skirt around what you want to say without saying much at all. I know you want to tell me off, so just do it! I have grown tired of your pretending, and Iknowyou have grown tired of pretending too. You made that perfectly clear when you—well, you know when.”

A bubble of silence fell over them as Thomas stared at her, remembering the feeling of peace as he held her in his arms,listening to her soft breaths as she slept, reminiscing about the passion she had unleashed in him—the beast within that wasn’t violent or needed caging, but was perhaps his truest self. The part of him that could love her if he was just courageous enough.

Sophia brushed her hair from her face. “Out with it! What did I do that was so wrong?”

“You were laughing.”

“Is laughing a crime? Is it?—”

He raised a hand, interrupting her. “You were laughing with Robert.”

“You left me with him! I was being polite, engaging with your best friend.” She clenched her jaw, exasperation etched across her beautiful face. “What else was I supposed to do? Kick him in the shins and tell him to shove off?”

It’s ridiculous. I know it is, but…

“What were you laughing at?” he asked.

She chuckled tightly. “If I tell you, you are just going to mock me.”

Thomas laughed at the notion, but it was a weak laugh. “That’s preposterous.”

“Oh, is it? I thought you were not the type to enjoy jokes. The almighty Duke, too serious for the rest of us,” she answered, gesturing wildly with her hands.

Thomas stayed silent for a moment. After weeks of scolding her, she finally returned the favor, saying exactly what she wanted without hesitation. But there was a glimmer of something like guilt in her eyes, somewhat stung by the insult.

“Tell me anyway,” he insisted.

“We were exchanging jokes. Silly, puerile jokes. Puns and the like. You know, the ones yousoloathe,” she explained, and Thomas felt her reading his expression. His mask of stone had shattered the night they lay together, and though he had tried to fix it in the interim, she had just cracked it a second time.

“This is pointless…” she mumbled, throwing her hands up.

“Why is it? I am listening. I am waiting with anticipation for these ‘wonderful’ jokes,” he replied, trying to look her in the eyes and ignore that solitary curl of hair between them.

She had tried—and failed—to fix her hair multiple times.

She shook her head. “Even if it was the greatest joke in the world, it wouldn’t be more hilarious than the two of us pretending that this will work. I am not sorry for the favor I asked, but I am sorry I didn’t ask what other beds you have lain in beforehand.”

“Pardon?” Thomas’s face was immediately taken over by confusion.

“I heard you and William,” she replied tersely. “Taking about Lady Elspeth. Is that how you were able to lie with me? Did you think of her in order to endure it? Did you feel so guilty towards your lover afterward that you were compelled to leave that note?”

“Sophia, what are you talking about?”

Thomas was horrified, crushed by the idea that she could believe that was true. He had given all of himself toher, to his wife—no one else.

She sniffed, turning her gaze away. “We should have discussed the prospect of lovers before we married. It’s something a wife should know, and, in my opinion, a privilege that a wife should also be granted.”

“You want to take a lover?”

Thomas felt sick and enraged all at once, his mind brimming with visions of her tangled up in the arms of a carousel of gentlemen, calling out names that were not his in the throes of passion.

“Of course not,” she spat, whirling back around, “but I ought to be granted that privilege if you also have it.”