Emrys was surprised by her response, but relieved, too. He'd been expecting a volley of questions once he'd opened the door to them, and because of that he didn't have any sort of prepared speech to deliver her. Still, the tone of this conversation felt better than the one last night. This wasn't an interrogation — not yet, anyway.

He ran his fingers over the rim of his glass while he considered what to say. "I'm not in love with this man I was seeing," he started. "But I've been attracted to men — and women — my whole life, and I don't foresee that ever changing. I think that's important for you to know. This isn't a one-time thing. This is who I am. For better or for worse," he concluded with a pained half-smile.

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Lou made this! <3

She wasn't aware she'd held her breath, but with her relief came a visible intake of breath. Of course, she was afraid he had some deep, all-consuming love for his mystery lover. When the rational part of her brain was overpowered by the petty, frightening parts in her heart, the worst-case scenario was all there was. Had he been in love, the right thing to do was to bow out gracefully, wish him all the happiness in the world, and lick her wounds in private. But Angelica had little interest in the "right" thing when it came to him. Whether there was love or lust between him and his other - she was grateful it wasn't the former - the idea that he'd been with a man and not miss Cosgrove was a relief. She had no idea what that said about her.

She weighed his words with care, this dual attraction baffling to her. She could see logical benefits to his situation, another man came without the fear of bastards, but the repercussions were dire. And this was how he lived his life. There would always be secrets, always be a part of his life in shadows. (Would that be so horrible if she was allowed into the shadows with him?)

"I did not know a person could want both." She gave him honestly. She knew men want other men and she knew they could bed their wives only out of duty - it was the prospect she'd pondered when Felix first proposed years before - and she couldn't stomach the idea of something as precious as passion being tarnished. She couldn't force her oldest friend into such a life; she couldn't do it to Emrys now. But Emrys was different and what he told her, what he gave her, felt sacred somehow. He trusted her with this and she would protect it. She would protect him. That was All. "That is brave of you, to tell me." She had prodded him for truth and trust on more than one occasion and here it was. He'd come back after the nightmare of last night and he'd handed her a truth that could ruin him. How did that make her care more?

She chuckled at his twist to the common wedding vow. This was shocking but didn't qualify as better or worse. What Angelica knew of worse would repulse him. But a lover that, somehow, wasn't loved and incapable of giving him a world of dark-haired, perfect bastards was a relief. That most definitely said something about her. "And what if who you are doesn't frighten me? No, I don't know why." She couldn't even be properly exasperated, which was new. "I don't know what you want, but what if I still want you?" She was grasping for her own courage when she made eye contact after that.

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MJ made this miracle!

Emrys looked at her warily. On the surface this seemed to be a move in his favor, but he wasn't sure he ought to trust how things appeared on the surface. He'd just told her he was unlikely to change and she said she wanted him anyway. Did she really know what that meant? Did she truly want that, or was she just willing to say anything at this point to buy herself more time to strategize?

"You want to be with me," he said, slow and deliberate. "— even if I continue other affairs?"

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Lou made this! <3

"I want to be with you," she reiterated. Specificity seemed vital at present. She went silent for a moment as she puzzled through her thoughts. "And there appear to be two solutions: demand you be someone that you are not and lose you or I accept your desires." Of course, she wanted him committed to her completely, but she had been a wife once. Wasn't it better to know her lover and his vices now instead of the inevitable heartache that came from secrets? Hadn't it torn her apart knowing there was someone else without ever knowing her name? Hadn't the idea of a Selwyn-Cosgrove wedding brought her to tears for the last week? No, it was better to have him with conditions than to pretend for the world that they are strangers in Society. She couldn't bear that now. "I want to be with you, but I cannot do it as your mistress."

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The following 1 user Likes Angelica Selwyn's post:1 user Likes Angelica Selwyn's post
   Melody Crouch

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MJ made this miracle!

Emrys' lips pursed as she spoke. At first, he didn't reply. He had known that she wouldn't offer him a simple yes or no; there would be conditions. She could have demanded that he keep things private enough that there was no cause for rumors, or been careful never to produce a bastard. Those would have been reasonable requests, and ones he could easily have agreed to. She could have tried for something closer to polite sensibility, like no men or no secrets, either of which would have been much more difficult for him to agree to. In the end, she'd only put out two conditions, one unspoken. The verbalized one: he would have to marry her. The silent one: she would be unhappy. She hadn't articulated it and might even have denied it if he'd asked her, but it was clear to him from the way she'd spoken, and her body language while she'd considered her words. I accept your desires was a passive phrase, indicating submitting her own will to his, overlooking her needs in favor of his. Maybe that could work for some women, but he knew Angelica too well to think that she was one of them.

He didn't know exactly what it would take to make her happy, but one thing was clear: his current lifestyle wouldn't do it. He'd thought back in January that he was attached to his lifestyle, but now he was realizing that he might not have minded a few changes. It wasn't the prospect of missing out on things that made him so change-averse, but rather that he didn't know if he could. Was he even capable of making her happy, or would a marriage to him doom her to misery, sooner or later?

He could make Miss Cosgrove happy. The whole point of the courtship had been determining whether or not that was the case, and he was satisfied that it was. She wanted to travel; to be surrounded by nice things; to have an entrenched position in wealthy pureblood society. He could do that for her without changing a thing about himself or his behavior. He wasn't so naive as to believe that she would be blissfully happy for the rest of her days after he slipped a wedding band on her finger, but at least he knew that if she became unhappy in the future it would be because her expectations had changed, not because he had disappointed them. He could live with himself if he married Miss Cosgrove and she eventually made herself unhappy. He wasn't sure the same could be said if he agreed to marry Angelica and immediately began making her unhappy — and between the conversation last night and this one, it didn't seem they had a particularly auspicious start.

Tension collected in his shoulders as though his body intended to form an armor to defend him from an incoming blow. He met her eyes, although doing so made his insides squirm uncomfortably. "If that is how you feel, then you cannot be with me," he said. "I won't marry you."

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The following 2 users Like Emrys Selwyn's post:2 users Like Emrys Selwyn's post
   Angelica Selwyn, Melody Crouch

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Lou made this! <3

Rejection was a palpable thing; she could feel it tighten in her throat, could feel the bite in her chest. This was senseless. She wanted him and was more than willing to bargain toward a mutually beneficial future. For a split second, she could see it and her body had had the audacity to feel relief, and for what? "After all of this, I hand you a way we can both be happy and it makes marrying me impossible?" And he had the nerve to look like he was the one hurting! "Do you understand what we could have together - all we could have if you would stop pushing me away?" The waver in her own voice was too much. As if it wasn't humiliating enough to have sobbed like a child against him last night, now she could feel the traitorous itch in her eyes again. Absolutely bloody not. She pressed a hand hard into her solar plexus, willing the ache to stay buried. Eyes screwed tightly shut, she forced herself to breathe as she replayed the last five minutes - the last seven months - in her mind. What had she done wrong? When it hit her, her free hand tightened into the fabric of her gown, fingers blanching at the pressure. "I am sufficient for your bed, but not your name?"

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MJ made this miracle!

Of course she didn't understand, but he could hardly expect her to when he hadn't explained. At this point, however, he decision was made and trying to articulate the nuances of his thought process would only have led to a long, ragged argument where she tried to convince him to change his mind. Painful as it was to hear these words from her, it was better for her to misunderstand his reasons now than to marry him under false pretenses. She'd confessed that she went into her first marriage blinded by affection and had regretted it — he would not serve as a sequel, even if she supposed this kind of torment would be easier for her to stomach. She'd said this was a way they could both be happy, but he didn't believe that. She was settling for far less than she wanted by offering it, and sooner or later it would start to chafe. Nevermind that it would make him miserable, too. Did she really expect him to go to a party and seduce someone while she sat at home seething or pouting or pining?

She had the hierarchy all wrong — the value he placed on his relationship with her was much higher than one he placed on the institution of marriage, not lower. But he didn't need her to understand all of that if things were ending anyway.

"I don't believe we would suit," he said, looking away from her and letting his eyes rest on the fireplace instead.

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Lou made this! <3

"Answer the question." The force behind the demand would have been embarrassing in another situation. Witches didn't demand, they suggested or nudged, but if he was throwing them away - her away - he had earned the fire in her tone. "You are running away from me and I will know why." Her eyes were open but narrowed, betrayal clear on her face. "You are wrong." Her vehemence fueled by the horrible tears threatening at the corner of her eyes. "Do you truly think I would ever have touched you if we 'didn't suit?' I would not have a bureau full to bursting with letters; I would not have poured my soul into words, accepted your gifts, or shared an ounce with you if we did. not. suit." He wouldn't even meet her eyes now, and that simple rejection, again his rejection, had pushed her too far. "Do you think I propose a match out of something flippant? That I haven't weighed my heart against reason every second I think of you, or measured you against every fiber of my late marriage? I know better than you ever could what becomes of a couple that truly doesn't suit. I also know what it is to reject the perfect partner because I want something better than perfect." She'd given Felix's standing offer continued thought in the last several months, but her dearest friend and his safety net weren't meant for her any longer, not since an intriguing devil took her home and kept her for the weekend.

"I did not command you to feign love for me. All I ever asked was the truth, and now that you give it to me, you push me away. I am here because I chose you, but first, I chose me. I chose to disrupt the life I built for something better, and every ounce of that improvement is you. Every moment of doubt has been about you, but on the other side, every time, the thought of you is worth the risk. I have been more alive, more myself, in the last months with you than I have been in years. I wake up in the arms of a man I know keeps others in my absence, and yet, I'm satisfied." She'd gone to her feet at some point, sitting still no longer an option when every atom was vibrating. "I am satisfied, I am alive, I am intrigued, and against my best judgment, I fell in love with a brooding man that seems intent on making us both suffer. I fell in love with my poet, and then a secretive man with the golden earrings. I fell in love with a man that seemed to worship me and then tested every boundary and proved himself worthy of my desires."

"And when you chose another for reasons I can never understand, I came. I came, and you tell me it is not this girl, but another man that gets to see the rest of you, and I was so relieved." She laughed, but it was a watery, anguished thing. "I was relieved this morning because I believed that you had finally trusted me. And now," she shook her head, the loss in her voice drowning out most everything else. "I am willing to share you with whomever he bloody is because I want you to be happy. And I will not accept that the man brave enough to come back to me today to explain his needs will now throw everything away without an explanation. Emrys, I will not."

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MJ made this miracle!

For the first time since she'd first brought up Clarissa Cosgrove's name yesterday, Angelica seemed to understand. He couldn't brush her off, because everything she was saying was the truth. He was momentarily speechless — which was fine, because she had speech enough without his interrupting to add fuel to the fire.

When she'd finished he still didn't know what to say. The only thing that came to mind immediately was a rebuttal of her assessment of him. Your history has shown you to be a poor judge of men's characters, he could have said, but that would have been cruel. Emrys could perhaps be cold while trying to get them out of this conversation with all possible speed, but he could not be cruel.

He stood, less for any real need and more because this felt like the kind of moment in which he ought to be evenly matched — as though she were an opponent rather than a lover, and he needed to avoid surrendering the high ground. "I could never throw you away," he began, quietly and seriously. "But I cannot accept your terms. I cannot marry you."

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Lou made this! <3

She was exhausted. There had been a pause in the fighting last night when the seemingly inevitable happened, but all of it: sex and sleep had just been different battlefields than his drawing room. She felt herself puffing up reflexively, for all the good it did her when he was still a head taller. His voice cut low, forcing her to quiet to catch his words (she hated that trick), and she didn't bother to restrain the snapped shake of her head, the gesture all she had in the moment. "You are right now. You do every time you avoid telling me why. And stop telling me what you cannot do. You have all the power in the world and you'd use it to cage us both. And I still don't know how I lost you." And that was what hurt the most.

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MJ made this miracle!

She'd lost him at everything you want and nothing that I want, but he wasn't sure how to tell her that. He would have preferred not to tell her at all, but Emrys was sensing that she was unlikely to leave without some sort of explanation, and he didn't think he could stomach lying to her.

"I don't trust you," he said, though of course he couldn't stop there. He'd trusted her with a secret he didn't share with anyone, even if he hadn't told her intentionally. "I don't trust your judgement when you say we can both be happy with this arrangement. Yesterday you spoke as though you thought I'd given this no consideration." Her jibe about how he would react when Miss Cosgrove wanted to redecorate his parlor stood out as a particularly egregious example of this. "I've thought it through. I thought it through before I ever met you. I know exactly what I want in a wife. Someone who will be amused and distracted by silly little luxuries like weekends at Brighton and shopping trips to Paris. Someone who won't care much if I'm 'working late' several nights a week. Someone who wouldn't think to ask many questions. Someone who might eventually think it quite convenient if we mainly lived in separate residences. If you say you can be happy with that kind of a life —" Emrys huffed and his expression changed, looking dour and almost petulant. "— then you're lying. To me, or to yourself."

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Lou made this! <3

How was she still capable of being offended when all he'd done was question her? It still was possible and brutal efficiency of I don't trust you made her flinch. It stung deep enough that the impulse to retaliate came just a moment too late as he continued. Whether this was meant to mollify or ruin her was under review.

"My judgment?" Her outrage at that forced interjection, but he wasn't finished making this worse. He'd thought of marriage before meeting her, not a surprise giving his place in her life, but his arbitrary list of 'wife' was egregious. "Of course that wouldn't make me happy. You've described a mistress - and a highly vapid one - and not a wife." Of course she'd entered this situation with her own definition of husbands and wives, the difference was she came with experience on the matter. "I want to be your wife, not a simpleton pet."

The 'moody child' look he gave her would have been amusing, and almost endearing, if the stakes were lower, but she very nearly rolled her eyes anyhow. She didn't bother to keep her hands from pressing into her temples as if she could massage away his insulting assessment like a headache.

"Emrys," She prayed for some new source of patience she didn't possess, "I have already been more a wife to you, in all but name, than that. Why would that change?"

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MJ made this miracle!

Exactly! he thought a little frantically. She was so close to understanding him, but they were still a step out of sync, and he wasn't sure whether they were ever going to fix it. He didn't know what else he could tell her to make it more clear, when he'd already laid it out so precisely.

"You're not listening," he said, though he wasn't sure that was accurate. She was listening, because she was responding to the things he said. She wasn't hearing him. Was it that she was struggling to connect the various points of their conversation, or was she intentionally misunderstanding because she didn't want to give up on the idea of marrying him? "That's what I want from a wife," he insisted, speaking firmly and deliberately. "And why I won't marry you."

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Lou made this! <3

"Fine." It was far from fine. "As you have so clearly grasped the makings of a good wife," could a person drown in sarcasm? "Would you be so kind as to explain to me what my place is in all of this?" The brief hope that reason would come to him feeling farther and farther from reach the more he spoke. "Explain to me how you have not discarded me when you expect me to continue as we are when you bear none of the risk or responsibility for this." There were things they had never discussed, solely because she'd made the foolish assumption that he did care for her, in his own way. It was something she had no wish to ever discuss with him, but his pig-headed insistence made any consideration for his discomfort irrelevant. "You will have your affairs, as all men do, regardless of me, but your wife would have protections. Whatever your dalliances, she is first in your affections, as far as the world knows. She can be seen with you without anyone raising a fuss, she can know you are safe without raising suspicion the next time there is some catastrophe at sea," there was always going to be another shipwreck or lost fleet.

"Most importantly," she absolutely loathed him for making her give words to this, "If she were to find herself in a delicate situation, she doesn't lose everything. Were such a thing to happen to us, what exactly do thing becomes of me? What happens to your toy then?" His characterization of her their first night together still holding more space in her mind than she'd like.

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The following 1 user Likes Angelica Selwyn's post:1 user Likes Angelica Selwyn's post
   Melody Crouch

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MJ made this miracle!

As she began speaking Emrys was ready with an answer. Her place in this was clear, from his perspective: she could continue on as they had been, or she could leave. He could offer her nothing else, and the choice was ultimately hers to make. When she brought up a delicate situation, however, it brought him up short. He hadn't considered the possibility. Why hadn't he considered the possibility? He thought he'd looked over this from every possible angle. He was always so careful to think things through. But it had been so long since Trystan had whispers of a bastard, so it hadn't been at the forefront of his mind. Emrys had been living under the same rules for so long that he had blindly trusted they would continue to protect him, and hadn't realized he'd been breaking them all with her. He didn't have affairs with fresh-faced debutantes; previously, he'd always seduced married women, where it hardly mattered if they found themselves pregnant. In his mind he must have grouped Angelica with them, rather than the debutantes — or perhaps in a category all her own. Certainly, he had never evaluated the risk.

Stupid. So stupid. It wasn't the first time he'd made a bad decision in the heat of the moment, but that was exactly why it was so crucial to think through everything beforehand — so that even in the heat of the moment, you couldn't ruin everything with one bad choice. That was how he'd survived so long with the lifestyle that he had. He set rules and protected himself from his own impulsive choices. At least, he always had before.

"I'm sorry," he managed, and for a moment couldn't think what else to say.

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The following 1 user Likes Emrys Selwyn's post:1 user Likes Emrys Selwyn's post
   Melody Crouch

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Lou made this! <3

The shift in his eyes from that stubborn resolution to panic was immensely satisfying. The petty thought feeling all the more appropriate as she could see him scramble mentally to figure out how he had missed something so obvious. Considering his brother's reputation, Angelica wasn't certain how the thought of children and consequences had escaped him. It was one other facet of all of this that she had considered. Repeatedly. Still, the look she did give him was disappointment instead of smug. "Sorry enough to explain why you would rather share your life with a stranger than someone that cares for you?" Her face clearly demonstrating how little she believed him capable of that right now. "Or is that something else you think I shouldn't know?"

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MJ made this miracle!