20 September, 1894 — after this — Bristol

It was often fashionable to take carriages to parties even when it was more convenient to travel magically; a show of extravagance that one had so much time to kill. It was an extravagance they'd forgone tonight, and Emrys was glad of it. They still flooed to the same address — appearances, and all — but he didn't have to fend off conversation for a forty-minute carriage ride after the night had wrapped up.

"We're going to the Pembroke ball at the end of next week, is that right?" he asked brusquely as he strode back into his own house. Their next joint social engagement was likely the next time he would see her; this was as good as a dismissal. He had no desire whatsoever to unpack anything she might or might not have noticed tonight.

---

For the better part of the last hour, Angelica had been quiet. She had her emotional masks firmly in place when they flooded to their host's home. Dinner had seemed normal, except she was separated from Emrys. At the time, this was a blessing. She thought nothing of the attention she was paid at dinner. At least at first. By the time the party moved to the parlor, things felt decidedly different.

She'd started counting her host's drinks. He didn't seem tipsy but had little control over his tongue. His compliments came readily and often. When his wife joined them, Angelica was certain the flirtations would end. She was wrong and very confused. The other witch must have been drunk. It was the only explanation Angelica had for the amount of giggling and casual touch that was happening. As angry as he made her, she still looked for Emrys. When she found him, she begged with her eyes, and she needed him to save her in a way she would happily let him gloat about later. Emrys' presence only made the interaction more baffling. Once Emrys joined them, their hostess made multiple comments about Angelica being new to the group. It went from a strange comment to infuriating by the end of the evening.

When they arrived at Emrys' home, Angelica was firmly perplexed, the tension of their earlier interaction and the odd conversations at dinner winding her tight. She made no move to leave him, she followed him without warning, her head obviously wrapped up in solving her mystery. "What was happening with our hosts at dinner? That woman was, I don't even know what she was."

---

Emrys wasn't entirely surprised that she followed him into the room, or that she ignored his clear dismissal. She was tenacious; especially so with something she didn't understand, or didn't want to understand.

"Cheerful?" he supplied, sardonic. He knew what Angelica meant, but wasn't inclined to fill in the gaps for her unless she managed to actually ask the question. "Engaging? Blond? Caucasian," he continued with a shrug. "In possession of a fairly good cook."

---

Her eyes narrowed as he proved determined to be himself this evening. "And fully lacking any sense of discretion. And her husband. They fueled each other." She chose to ignore his tone; she could play this game, too. She pushed instead. "You were right there, Emrys. You are not blind. What was going on tonight?"

---

No, he wasn't blind; neither was she. This was precisely why he hadn't wanted her to go tonight. As much as he'd tried to tell himself maybe it would be a perfectly mundane dinner party to her eyes, he'd always known she'd pick up on something or other. If it hadn't been the hosts it would have been one of the guests. Though some of the guests were less 'safe' invites than he would have expected; considering that, they'd actually been rather more discreet than they might have been.

"They were playing the same game, and they thought you were playing too," he said; the words were cryptic but his tone was more weary than anything. "They thought we were playing."

---

"What game is that, Emrys? What game was I telling these people I was playing by attending tonight?" Angelica was curious but also working on over a year of stifled expectations and heartbreak. She was not in the mood for his guessing games, for any of his games tonight. "In plain words, please. You know I am a simple woman." She almost dared her puckish husband, but was expecting him to further frustrate her, no matter what she asked.

---

Emrys threw his hands up in exasperation. This was going to be his fault, now. What game was I telling these people I was playing by attending tonight? she asked now, after it was over and done, after he'd told her he didn't want to go. After she'd said there was nothing he could say or do to convince her to stay; after she'd accused him of keeping secret mistresses. Now she was going to be offended by what she'd walked into the middle of, and she was going to blame it on him, as though there had been anything at all he could have done to prevent her. (Other than not marrying her, years ago — but he'd tried, oh he'd tried).

"They wanted to fuck you," he said — and yes, maybe the profanity was slightly spiteful, since she'd antagonized him with plain words for a simple woman. "Him, her, either of them, both of them. You, me, either of us, both of us. Together, separately, whichever. Does that illuminate the evening for you?"

---

Angelica had a snarky response half-ready as soon as he engaged. She was ready to fight and engage, but then he tried a tactic she hadn't prepared for. In any way. She stared at him, unable to believe what came out of his mouth. Angelica was not fragile; she wasn't going to faint at a coarse word or fake shock at him speaking plainly before her. It was the subject matter that had her currently searching for words.

She examined the night's interaction in light of what he told her. It was too odd of a statement for him to invent because he knew by now that she would investigate. She reexamined her conversations, "she's new," now having a connotation she was absolutely mortified by. Emrys' hesitance to include her almost made sense if her hosts had expected something to happen tonight. Angelica considered, truly considered, what would have gone differently had she accepted any of the gratuitous invitations to explore the grounds of her host's home. Her mind could more than illustrate the scenarios he mentioned, her face heating in embarrassment. He may expect such things over dinner, but she was quickly reminded of just how long it had been since anyone had done anything resembling fucking her. Any other second, she would be resentful of her husband for said state, but she was still caught on another oddity.

"And you aren't angry at me?" It sounded small and scared, and she flinched upon recognition. She'd been married before, and she knew what jealousy meant when it wasn't hers. Emrys had never been violent, had never harmed her, but there was always a first time. Angelica prayed it wasn't tonight.

---

He often forgot how fragile she was. Most of the time, honestly, because she projected such strength in everything she did; most of the people who knew her didn't see it, and it was easy to forget. Then a moment like this would come along and lay it all so bare it was impossible to ignore. He turned back to face her, halting his progress towards leaving. She'd been following him pace for pace, and now that he'd turned towards her they were closer than they had been all evening.

"No," he said gently, and just that.

---

The wave of relief was visible, audible. She considered it a victory, when something she thought she knew about him proved true. Angelica wouldn't have minded his jealousy, would have welcomed it and the investment in her she believed it to signify, but the reaction frightened her. She could call Emrys many things, but, thankfully, brutal hadn't been one of them.

"Thank you." And she meant it. "I will do my best to be better prepared, in the future." Even as she said it, Angelica wasn't sure what that meant. Parties, where the hosts participated in indiscriminate seduction, weren't covered in debutante manuals.

---

Her response arrested him. For a long second he hovered, hesitant, tongue pushed against the back of his teeth. He knew what he wanted to convey, but not how to phrase it to really get the message through to her.

"We don't have to go to these sorts of parties," he eventually said, after discarding two other versions. I wouldn't love you any less for not being interested and I wouldn't love you any more for trying. Best to steer clear of the concept of love, he had decided.

---

"I don't know if I want to avoid them." The honesty surprised her. She had no frame of reference for this, no way to put her questions into words. She was baffled, but Angelica didn't run from puzzles; she dissected them, solved them, and wrung every usable bit of knowledge from the subject. The puzzle that mattered most was him.

"I cannot tell you how I feel about it because I don't understand." She walked him through her logic, needing to clarify what she could of this. "And I want to understand." It was one thing to know he had secret pursuits; it was another to find she didn't have language for what she witnessed. Any other moment, this might strike her as funny. She'd always considered herself worldly.

---

Emrys frowned. He assumed her comment about being better prepared in the future was placating; that she didn't like it, but was willing to pretend to for his sake. She had always done that, ignoring her own desires in favor of what she supposed his to be. Even when he told her not to; even when he told her it drove him mad trying to second-guess what she actually wanted. This could still be that; she could merely be trying to brush past his first refusal, pretending for his sake. If it wasn't — he didn't know quite what to do next.

"Understand," he echoed. What was there to understand? Part of him didn't like the word — felt it might be code for some kind of criticism, which was what he'd expected. He hadn't wanted to tell her what this party was about beforehand because he hadn't wanted to weather her reaction. He still felt the sting of her laughter after he'd admitted to sleeping with men; still felt the spectre of that conversation over every subsequent interaction in their relationship. He had never willingly admitted anything to her again after that. So it was easy to read her phrasing as having an unspoken phrase: I don't understand how people like you...

She said she wanted to understand; he didn't know if he trusted her to.

---

Her frown matched his, but confusion fueled hers. “Understand. Comprehend. Make sense of.” Her own dislike of not knowing only aggravated by his echo and lack of explanation. She watched his face carefully, looking for some signal as to where his brain had taken him. As was so often the case now, Angelica couldn’t read him.

She made some meaningless hand gesture, like that could will him to understanding her. It was rare she wanted anyone to read her thoughts, but life would be infinitely easier of her husband had any concept of her hers. “I want to understand. We were invited and you knew what was happening. Obviously, you’ve done this before because I have never been that out of touch with a room in my life.” If he was going to make her suffer in her ignorance, she might as well make it easy on them both and admit to it.

Her eyes flicked from his to his lips, she couldn’t help it. She missed him, all the parts of him he denied her now. She’d become more familiar with reading his displeasure and dismissal in the turn of his mouth or the squint of his eyes. “I have to understand because I think these parties must make you happy. I want you to be happy; I want us both to be happy, but you have to help me.“ The urge to reach for him was strong, but she resisted, knowing how easily he would bolt if he felt trapped. “Emrys, please. I want to know. Please let me try.”

---

He'd been right to hesitate, because there was the confirmation, read between the lines: she would subject herself to this for his sake. Angelica once again offering to become a martyr for the cause of his happiness. And once again jumping to conclusions about what his happiness entailed. Emrys crossed his arms over his chest, visibly uncomfortable. He wasn't surprised he'd made the short list for the hosts when they chose their invitees for the night, because he had run in these sorts of circles for long enough. He'd even slept with more than one of the guests in attendance tonight. That didn't make this some integral part of his character... but he didn't know how to communicate that to her without admitting to too much of his past, too much of himself.

"We don't have to go to these parties," he said, echoing his earlier words while he struggled to find his next ones. There was the assumption underlying her offer that he didn't like, the implication about what sort of person he was that spoke to a fundamental misunderstanding. He didn't want to talk about it, didn't want to open a conversation that long and fraught and emotionally draining, but he also seemed incapable of entirely ignoring it when he responded. "Sleeping with other people isn't going to fix us."

---

It was only experience with him that kept her from screaming at him. It didn’t keep the exasperation from her voice. “Neither is refusing to let me try. I tell you I’m curious about something that I want to understand, and you cannot help but be condescending.” She was so tired of this constant repulsion, the need to shove her away. “I want to know you, all of you, and you reject me. It hurts, can you understand that?"

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