Married to Bridgewater.
If she had to help the people of the borderlands, Michael thought, why couldn’t she build them a hospital or something? Why did her work have to involve putting herself in the way of a man like Bridgewater?
He stood out of the rain, under the eaves of the stables, his heart feeling like a large bruise inside his chest. He gazed abstractedly at the white-capped river, running fast, and thought that was about what he felt like doing too.
Logically, he understood her explanation of how it had happened. She’d wriggled out of Bridgewater’s grasp enough times that one more time would have pushed him to the edge of flat-out suspicion. But emotionally, Michael was finding it hard to accept.
She’d sworn it didn’t mean anything to her. And of course it wouldn’t. She hated the man. Michael had no doubt about that.
But she was married.
There was something concrete and unchangeable about marriage—well, certainly his, at least until it changed completely—and even more in this time. One couldn’t get a divorce in 1706, not easily, and in this case, not without the intervention of the House of Lords, which meant it wouldn’t happen unless Bridgewater wished it to happen. It was almost as if Undine had been encased in a deep-sea diving suit. Michael could still see her and talk to her and even hold her, but there was a layer there now that hadn’t been there before.
He kicked his small bag of belongings, still wedged where he’d left it, between an overturned trough and the stable wall.
Why did she call you here?
She needed somebody—anybody.
No. She needed someone with a special set of skills. More important, she needed a man she could trust.
Great. So I’m a man she can trust. Maybe what she really needed was a brother. Or a dog. Here, Toby! Good boy!
Oh, I see. So you’re willing to help her, but only if she sleeps with you?
You know what? Fuck off.
Why did you come to Morebright’s home?
To tell her what she needed to know.
Lord Hay had no messengers? Come, Michael. Why did you come to Morebright’s home?
To help her.
So how has your job changed?
He groaned. But it had changed. It had. It didn’t matter how long he argued with himself.
Was a marriage still a marriage if one of the parties went into it with no intention of it being real?
The answer was yes and no, and no matter how he tried, he couldn’t find a way to sort that out.
He opened his hand and looked at what she’d given him.
A small twist of orange paper that, with a tear and a shake, she’d said, would take him back to the National Rose.