What uses were wishes anyway? Everything seemed so bleak and unpromising. He had never seen life look so dark and unoptimistic, not even when his father had died. He had no idea how to handle his new reality.

"A lie has never sounded so sweet," slipped out bitterly before he could stop it. Because, for himself, this still felt like a betrayal. He knew Ford had not actually done anything with that young woman. But he had been alone with her in a state of undress and had let things be read in a way that found him now having to marry her.