“Has something happened with Grace?” Matthew interrupted, a sharp note in his voice.
“She is with him now, at our house,” she said, and Matthew sat back in his chair, exhaling. “Matthew, don’t look like that—I don’t hate her,” Cordelia said, and she meant it. “I don’t. If she loves James as he loves her, all this must have been rather awful for her.”
“She does not,” said Matthew icily, “love him.”
“I didn’t think—but perhaps she does? She seemed panicked. She must have heard he was in danger today. I suppose they felt they had to see each other, after everything.” Cordelia’s hand shook, rattling the teacup in its saucer. “She told him she would break it off with Charles. And he said, ‘Thank God.’ She was holding him—he was holding her—I had never thought—”
Matthew had set his tea down. “James said, ‘Thank God’？ When she told him she was going to end things with my brother?”
Charles, Cordelia knew, would not care in any real way about Grace’s abandonment. But Matthew did not know that. She sighed. “I’m sorry, Matthew. It’s not very nice to Charles—”
“Never mind Charles,” said Matthew, propelling himself savagely out of the armchair. Oscar gave a concerned woof. “And as for James—”
“I don’t wish you to be angry with him,” Cordelia said, suddenly worried. “I would never want that. He loves you, you are his parabatai—”
“And I love him,” said Matthew. “But I have always loved him and understood him. Now I love him but do not understand him at all. I knew he loved Grace. I thought it was because of the way he met her. She seemed to desperately need saving, and James has always wanted to save people. Even those who very clearly cannot be saved. And I, of all people, cannot fault him for that.” He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “But to let her into your home, to embrace her with you standing right there—how could I not be angry with him?” He dropped his hands. “Even if just on his own behalf. Grace will never make him happy.”
“But that is his choice. He loves her. It is not something he can simply be talked out of. There is nothing that can—or should—be done about it.”
Matthew gave a sharp, disbelieving laugh. “You are remarkably calm.”
“I always knew it,” said Cordelia. “He has never really been dishonest. I was the one who was not honest. I did not tell him I loved him. I do not think he would have consented to marry me if he had known how I felt.”
Matthew was silent. Cordelia, too, had run out of words: she had finally said it, the dark, awful thought that lurked in her soul. She had tricked James into marrying her, pretending to an indifference she did not feel. She had lied to him, and earned this consequence.
“It is only that I do not know what to do,” she said. “Divorce now, after such a short time, would ruin me, I think. But I do not—I cannot go back to that house—”
At last Matthew spoke, with a sort of jerky precision, like a windup toy coming to life. “You—you could—stay here.”
“With you?” She was startled. “Sleep on the sofa? That would be very… bohemian. But it wouldn’t do, my family would never—”
“Not with me,” he said. “I am going to Paris. I was planning to leave tomorrow.”
She flashed back to the steamer trunk by the door. “You’re going to Paris?” she said, feeling suddenly, terribly alone. “But—why?”
“Because I couldn’t bear to be here.” Matthew began to pace. “I took an oath to stand by James’s side. And I love him—he has always been all the things that I am not. Honest where I am not. Brave where I am a coward. When I thought his choice was you—”
“It was never me,” said Cordelia, setting her teacup down.
“I thought he took you for granted,” said Matthew. “Then I saw the way he ran to you, after that battle in Nelson Square. It seems a thousand years ago now, but I remember it. He ran and caught you up and he seemed—desperate—to know that you were all right. As if he would die if you weren’t. And I thought—I thought I had misjudged him. So I told myself to stop.”
Cordelia licked her dry lips. “Stop what?”
“Hoping, I suppose,” he said. “That you would see that I loved you.”
She stared at him, motionless, too shocked to speak.