Oh, how he wished he could believe her. She made the case well for what she wanted and it seemed cruel to deny her such a small request as an honest conversation, but there was enough in her letter to give him pause. The qualifying: she accepted him because his lover would never have his bastard. The buried blame: your vague allusions before we married were not enough to warn me as though he had not told her plainly and catagorically that if they married he would make her miserable. It wasn't his fault she hadn't believed him.

Maybe he could have looked past the hints of strife in her letter and tried once more in good faith, had not the specter of their last meeting still hung over his head, captive to her after she drugged herself.