“It mattered.” My voice sounded strangled.
He shook his head, still staring at me, his eyes dark in the lamplight.
“Not enough.” He paused, face floating pale in the air above his dark dressing gown, then came round the bed to stand by me.
“Sometimes I wondered if I could rightfully blame you,” he said, almost thoughtfully. “He looked like Bree, didn’t he? He was like her?”
“Yes.”
He breathed heavily, almost a snort.
“I could see it in your face—when you’d look at her, I could see you thinking of him. Damn you, Claire Beauchamp,” he said, very softly. “Damn you and your face that can’t hide a thing you think or feel.”
There was a silence after this, of the sort that makes you hear all the tiny unbearable noises of creaking wood and breathing houses—only in an effort to pretend you haven’t heard what was just said.
“I did love you,” I said softly, at last. “Once.”
“Once,” he echoed. “Should I be grateful for that?”
The feeling was beginning to come back to my numb lips.
“I did tell you,” I said. “And then, when you wouldn’t go…Frank, I did try.”
Whatever he heard in my voice stopped him for a moment.
“I did,” I said, very softly.
He turned away and moved toward my dressing table, where he touched things restlessly, picking them up and putting them down at random.
“I couldn’t leave you at the first—pregnant, alone. Only a cad would have done that. And then…Bree.” He stared sightlessly at the lipstick he held in one hand, then set it gently back on the glassy tabletop. “I couldn’t give her up,” he said softly. He turned to look at me, eyes dark holes in a shadowed face.
“Did you know I couldn’t sire a child? I…had myself tested, a few years ago. I’m sterile. Did you know?”
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.
“Bree is mine, my daughter,” he said, as though to himself. “The only child I’ll ever have. I couldn’t give her up.” He gave a short laugh. “I couldn’t give her up, but you couldn’t see her without thinking of him, could you? Without that constant memory, I wonder—would you have forgotten him, in time?”
“No.” The whispered word seemed to go through him like an electric shock. He stood frozen for a moment, then whirled to the closet and began to jerk on his clothes over his pajamas. I stood, arms wrapped around my body, watching as he pulled on his overcoat and stamped out of the room, not looking at me. The collar of his blue silk pajamas stuck up over the astrakhan trim of his coat.
