“He got the Lafayettes to sell the chateau, didn’t he?”
I took umbrage that anyone else should get the credit. “He only arranged a meeting.”
Willie smirked. “Is that all he’s done for you?”
I didn’t bother to ask what he knew, or how. My husband had contacts and informants on every continent; I’d be naive to think he’d never ask them to spy on me. The only thing I wondered was how long he’d known about Furlaud. In any case, I refused to justify myself. In loyalty to Willie, I’d broken things off; I’d be damned if I paid a second price for it. “Captain Furlaud wouldn’t presume to tell me what to do or where to go. Whereas you presume too much.”
Willie thumped his empty glass on the table, perhaps hoping to catch the attention of our inattentive waiter. “You’re worried I’ll cause a scene, aren’t you? Fly into a jealous rage. Truthfully, I’m quite amused.” He did not look amused. “In fact, I feel sorry for the old chap.”
“Willie,” I warned.
“A banker, of all things.” He laughed in mockery. “You can toy with him if you like; you have my blessing. Because if a man like that thinks he has a chance, he doesn’t understand you at all. You’ll chew him up and spit him out and leave his heart bleeding on the floor.”
I glared. “Is that what you think I’ve done to you?”
Willie’s gaze dropped to his empty glass. “No. I haven’t a heart for you to chew up, which is why you married me in the first place.”
“That’s not why I married you.”
“Why the devil did you marry me, then?”
Because I loved him. Because he told me that if I married him, I could become someone new. But now I wanted desperately to be more than Mrs. William Astor Chanler. I almost said it aloud, but managed to keep it caged behind clenched teeth. “I don’t intend to sit here and trade insults.”
“I’m not insulting you, my dear, not at all. You’ve always lived a big life. Who knows? One day, maybe your life will be bigger than mine. I simply know that no matter how big it gets, there’ll never be room in it for a man who does nothing but move piles of money from one account to another.”
He does more than that, I wanted to say. Max was an officer, and a gentleman. Still, there wasn’t any point in defending him, because this was a childish conversation. “I don’t enjoy bickering in public.”
“Really? I’ve missed it,” Willie said, fiddling with his new prosthesis under the table as if it were giving him pain. “In all these months of inactivity due to the morphine, I’ve worked up a thirst for conflict, not to mention an actual thirst, if the damned waiter could be bothered to refill my glass.”
I turned to catch the attention of the headwaiter, who was facing away from our table. That’s when my husband’s artificial leg, with its sock and garter, sailed past me and struck the waiter in the middle of his back. I gasped as the poor man dropped and Willie’s prosthesis clattered to the floor. The whole restaurant hushed to a tinkle of forks dropping on plates and cups upon saucers. Then my husband shouted, “Do I have your attention now, sir?”
I was paralyzed with mortification as waiters rushed to help their felled companion, who, fortunately, was not hurt. Then Willie’s dark, drunken laughter was the last straw.
The last straw!
God knows, I’d tried to make this marriage work! I’d weathered years of his wanderlust, abandonment, and neglect. I’d forgiven and excused his failings as a father. I’d turned a blind eye to likely infidelities and refrained from prying into his secrets. I’d tried to care for him even when he wouldn’t let me. I’d been understanding about his addictions to alcohol and morphine. And I’d put up with casual cruelties. But in that moment I knew, deep down, his dark laughter wasn’t only at the expense of the poor waiter. He was laughing at me too.
I took my napkin and flung it on the table. Then I rose with all the dignity I could muster. “As it happens, I do prefer you as a drug-addled half-wit!”
I was done feeling sorry for him; if he could find the strength to hurl an artificial leg across a restaurant, then he didn’t need or deserve my pity. Certainly not my company or my marital devotion. I was sick to death of trying to make this work. I was determined to get on the first ship home I could find, but when I turned to go, Willie blocked me with his crutch. “We haven’t had our salad.”
“Don’t make me tell you where you can stuff your salad!”