His horror was absolute. “Are you suggesting a divorce?”
My heart caught with hope. Was he about to reach for my hands, tell me that he loved me, and beg a thousand pardons?
No. Instead, he barked, “Who is he?”
“Who?”
“The other man in your life.”
“Besides our sons or the forty thousand soldiers I’ve sent parcels to?” It was either quip or cry. I’d been fending off lechers from the age of nine and more serious suitors since the age of sixteen; it offended me to think he suspected me capable of succumbing now. “There isn’t any other man in the picture.”
Willie snorted. “Why else would you need a divorce? I pay your upkeep. I let you do as you please. What could possibly make you risk all that unless some man is promising more?”
Sometimes my husband was a worldly sophisticate and other times he was positively obtuse. “Do you think so little of me? Perhaps you’d raise no objection against a discreet extramarital adventure on my part, yet surely divorce is a more honorable course . . .”
Amongst the Chanler brothers, errant wives running off with lovers had become an epidemic. I’d had a front-row seat to the family’s private heartbreaks and public humiliations; I didn’t wish to subject Willie to such a thing, no matter how richly he deserved it. So I sipped my champagne, fighting tears. “I fear we must accept that our marriage is a failure and—”
“There’s nothing wrong with our marriage.”
He couldn’t believe that, could he? “Willie, we’ve spent more than five years apart!”
“What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?” He motioned to the waiter to bring him another drink. “You knew who I was when you married me.”
How torn I felt between arguing and agreeing. Ours wasn’t, after all, an arranged marriage, and I hadn’t been a child-bride. I’d known that ours wouldn’t be the most conventional sort of marriage, but love made any sacrifice seem worth it. Until Willie, I’d always fought my way through life on my own. But for a few happy years he’d fought for me—and with me. When did all that change?
Now he glanced up from his cold soup. “How many years did your precious Lafayette spend away from his wife, do you think?”
At this comparison I almost spit my champagne. “So modest! Why not ask how often Caesar was absent from Calpurnia?”
“You’ve forgotten the good times.”
I sighed. “Marriage should be made of more good times than bad.”
“By God, ours has been!”
Was that true? I remembered sun-drenched summers yachting off the coast of Spain. Amber-leafed autumn escapades, riding horses and picking apples. Glittering winter parties with politicians at Tammany Hall. Springtime in the South of France to visit his ocher mines. Life with Willie had never been dull for a moment; but one couldn’t sustain marriage on moments so few and far between.
The salmon arrived and Willie didn’t even pick up his fork. “Have you considered your reputation—the scandal of a divorce?”
My heart ached that scandal was all he seemed to care about. “Times have changed.”
“Not as much as you believe.” His mouth curved with a touch of callousness. “Society may forgive one divorce, but they won’t forgive two.”
He’d never done that before. Never raised the specter of my long-forgotten first marriage. I’d been young—a chorus girl blinded by a handsome lead actor. I’d been honest with Willie about it from the start, and he’d said he had no use for virgin brides. He’d promised to erase every other man from my memory, and he’d done it too. So much so that I’d quite nearly convinced myself my first marriage had happened to someone else.
Now he’d shattered my delusion, and I wanted to throw my drink in his face. As if daring me to do it, he went on. “My family doesn’t know everything about your past, and what they do know they’ve forgotten. I made sure everyone else in society forgot it too. A divorce will dredge it up.”
“You could stop the gossip for the sake of your children, if you cared to.”
“Wishful thinking.” He leaned back in his chair, smug. “My sisters tell me it’s notoriously difficult to find proper seating arrangements for ex-spouses at social functions. If a hostess must choose between my ex-wife and one of my many Astor family relations, whom do you think they’ll invite? Perhaps you’ve spent so many years at the top where I put you that you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be at the bottom.”