CHAPTER SEVEN — A MAN WHO WANTED TO LEAVE

Martin Kersey found Catherine in the conservatory shortly after noon.
She had been cutting dead leaves from a potted camellia, using small scissors that shook whenever she thought of the coming supper.
Martin removed his gloves before speaking.
“Julian tells me you have been asking questions about the portraits.”
“He tells you everything, apparently.”
“Catherine, I never intended for this to become cruel.”
She clipped a leaf and let it fall.
“Then you should have left the moment cruelty entered the plan.”
Martin looked toward the conservatory door.
“You found the letters.”
“I found what he had written to you.”
“They were never meant for you to see.”
“Neither was the resemblance of my cloak hanging in the schoolroom.”
He took a step toward her.


“Julian is frightened.”
“Of what?”
“Of losing the life he has built.”
Catherine stared at him.
“He is prepared to ruin an innocent man because he cannot endure his neighbors knowing whom he loves.”
Martin’s expression flickered.
The fact that she had spoken the truth without disgust seemed to unsettle him more than any accusation.
“You think I haven’t begged him to abandon this?” he said.
“Have you?”
“Yes.”
“Then leave him.”
Martin shook his head.
“He would follow.”
“Then tell the truth at supper.”
“Men have been beaten and imprisoned for less than what you suggest.”
“And Samuel may be beaten or sold away for what you are allowing.”
Martin placed his gloves on a bench.
“I have never laid a hand on him.”
“That will not matter when Julian’s hand closes around the paper with his name.”


The conversation might have ended there, but Martin made the mistake of defending the photograph.
“It does not show anything indecent,” he said.
“It only suggests that two people were standing close.”
“Then why must Samuel identify himself?”
“Julian believes the guests will accept his account more readily if a servant confirms it.”
Catherine set down the scissors.
“Was that your suggestion?”
Martin said nothing.
She could see his answer.
She moved past him toward the door.
He caught her sleeve, then let go immediately.
“Please,” he said.
She faced him.
“I have lived twelve years inside a marriage that was a performance for people who never asked whether either of us was happy.”
“Catherine—”
“I can understand your fear without making someone else pay for it.”
Martin sank onto the bench.
For a moment his careful manners abandoned him, and he looked like a man too exhausted to protect his own secret.
“Julian told me there would be no injury,” he said.
“He said Samuel would be given work in the mountains where no one knew the story.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I wanted to.”
Catherine watched him study the dirt beneath his polished shoes.
“You know what that means.”
He did not answer.
She walked out without offering comfort.
Later, alone in her bedroom, she took out the letters again.
She had initially seen them as a weapon against Julian.
Now they seemed like proof of an intimacy that could not excuse either man’s conduct.
Catherine placed them beneath a book on the bedside table.
She intended to keep them available, but not to use their private words as a public spectacle.
The crime Julian was arranging belonged to his actions, not to the love he was afraid to admit.
She had finally begun to understand the difference.