She looked up at him. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll always be willing to listen to you, Thomas.Thatpart of our marriage doesn’t need to be a sham, does it? We can be friends if nothing else.”
He smiled. “I’d like to be your friend,” he agreed. “I do like you, Madeleine. I hope you know that.”
“I know,” she said quietly.
“Why does that make you sad?”
“That doesn’t make me sad.”
“But youaresad.”
She sighed. “I’m not sad because you desire my friendship, Thomas. Truly, I’m not. That makes me happy. I want to be your friend. I suppose I’m just not…prepared for the way this relationship looks.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wasn’t ready to get married,” she said. “You know that.”
“I do. I wasn’t ready either. It took us by surprise.”
“Because we had to prevent a possible scandal.”
“Yes.”
“I hadn’t thought much about marriage before I met you. It was my very first ball, and…if I’m being honest with you, I didn’t want to get married. I worried about what would happen if I dared to marry. I worried about my curse getting the better of me and of the new family I might create with a marriage.”
“I know you’ve had those fears,” he said. “We’ve talked about them.”
“And now I find myself in a marriage,” she said.
“You’re still frightened of the curse.”
“Of course I am. I don’t want anything to happen to you. And I promised myself, when I first arrived here, that I wouldn’t let myself get too close to you. I promised myself that I would keep my distance so that you would stay safe. It seemed like the only decent thing to do.”
“That’s why you’re standing so far from me,” he realized. “You’re trying to keep your distance from me so that I won’t be impacted by your curse.”
“Yes,” she said. “And no.”
“No?”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“What more?” He was aware that he had meant to open up to her, and now he was asking her to open up to him. But she had piqued his curiosity and seemed in a mood to talk.
“I’m keeping my distance from you because…” She turned away from him and spoke so softly that he almost couldn’t make out what she said. “I’m beginning to have feelings for you.”
He had never wanted to reach out to her more.
He wanted to rest his hands on her shoulders. He wanted to draw her into an embrace. He wanted to tell her that her feelings were shared. She wasn’t the only one who was starting to feel things. He’d been growing more and more fond of her over the last several weeks, and she was someone he could see himself actually coming to love. He was glad to be married to her, glad that if he was going to find himself in this situation, she was the one he was with.
He wanted to tell her all that, but he didn’t want to frighten her, so he kept it to himself.
After all, she had made it clear that she was anxious enough about all of this that she didn’t know how to deal with the feelings she was having. It would only complicate matters if she knew he felt the same way. It would make things harder for her, not easier.
Instead, he decided to try to downplay what he now knew they were both feeling. He wanted to help her feel calm and safe.
“It’s understandable that you would have new feelings for me,” he said. “After all, our lives have changed drastically now that we’re married. We’re thinking about one another more than we ever have. We’re trying to decide how we fit into each other’s lives. That’s a complicated question.”
“Are you saying you have feelings for me too?”
