"I hope you're very happy together," Oz shot back, with a withering look that said I dare you. He did not seriously think Thomasina would try to sleep with anyone else, because most people out in the world were boring and tiresome. Certainly she would be hard pressed to find someone who could hold a candle to him — and this wasn't merely arrogance informing his thinking, it was experience. He'd had affairs nearly the whole time they'd been married, and he'd had his fair share before they'd been married as well. Sophia was the first who meant anything beyond sex. The rest of them — the women he found for evenings out mostly so his party with Locke wouldn't look unbalanced — were tedious before, after, and sometimes even during the sex. He was quite skilled at being charming even while he was inwardly rolling his eyes, but he didn't think Thomasina could stomach it. Though if anything was going to propel her to power through all of that, it would probably have been to spite him — maybe she was up for it after all. They'd have to see how tonight ended.

He took the shot he'd poured. "What do you want to hear?" he asked as he poured another. When he'd finished he took the glass in his hand and turned to face her, leaning on the sideboard. "That she meant nothing? That I didn't love her? That it's over? That I'm sorry?"

Oz would tell Thomasina any of those things, if she wanted to hear them. Some of them might even be true, but he hadn't done a close enough self-inventory to know; he hadn't expected to have this conversation, so he hadn't thought through what questions she would ask and how he might answer them. But he would tell her anything, because as long as she didn't catch him lying, it wouldn't make any difference. That was what she was angry about tonight: that she had to have this conversation at all. She wasn't angry that Sophia existed, she was angry that she had caught him and now had to know about it.

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