A week of silence hardened inside me like frost in leaded glass. Kathrin fussed over me in secret—broths delivered to the solar, ginger steeped in honeyed milk, lavender tucked beneath my pillow.
But whenever Alistair crossed our path at dusk, she and I moved as if in a tableau: no solicitous hands, no glances toward basins or discreetly opened windows.
"Your color improves," Kathrin murmured one morning, catching me in the breakfast room before Alistair descended. "Does ginger help?"
"Yes." I kept my voice low, ears straining for his footfall on the stairs. "Though the smell of eggs still—"
The door opened. Alistair entered, and we froze like guilty thieves. He barely glanced our way, moving to the sideboard where cold meats waited. His morning coat hung loose on his frame—when had he grown thin?
"Good morning, son," Kathrin attempted.
"Mother." He didn't turn. "Helena."
My name on his lips sounded like an afterthought. I watched him pile his plate mechanically, his movements precise and lifeless.
By day, he vanished into the tower study, shutters latched, candles guttering in his stale dark.
By evening, he ghosted the corridors with ledger-dust on his cuffs, offering cool nods for servants and no words for his wife.
"Will you join us for the winter fair on Saturday?" Kathrin asked him. "The whole estate expects—"
"I have obligations." He cut her off, already moving toward the door. "The accounts won't balance themselves."
"Alistair." I stood, surprising myself. "When did you last take air? You're pale as parchment."
He paused in the doorway, his back rigid. "My health is my concern."
"And mine." The words escaped before I could stop them. "I'm your wife."
He turned then, and his gray eyes swept over me—not with hatred, but with something worse. Distance. As if I stood behind thick glass he couldn't breach.
"I know what you are." His voice carried no venom, only exhaustion. Then he left, footsteps precise on the stone.
"What has happened between you two?" Kathrin demanded once his footsteps faded.
"I don't know." The lie burned my throat. "He shares our bed but builds walls I cannot cross. Months now—he comes to our chamber late, rises before dawn, speaks only when necessary."
"The estate troubles weigh on him," Kathrin said, though doubt colored her tone. "The harsh winter, the tenant struggles—"
"He barely touches me." The admission escaped in a whisper. "Even when he... when we..." I couldn't finish. Those mechanical couplings, his careful hands, his eyes always fixed on the canopy above—duty without desire.
"Men and their moods." Kathrin's hand brushed my shoulder, but her comfort felt hollow. "Perhaps the fair will lift everyone's spirits. Fresh air, music, normalcy."
But Saturday brought no relief. Alistair declined immediately—those eternal obligations—and Kathrin's temple throbbed so violently she retired to bed with a cold compress.
So I went alone, my carriage wheels crunching through fresh snow as we descended into the village square.
Kettledrums thumped a martial beat, and ribbons flared like small fires against the white-draped stalls. Children shrieked with delight at a puppet show while merchants hawked roasted chestnuts and mulled wine.
I saw him immediately—Nathaniel Crowe, the estate's licensed hunter, hired to clear foxes and other nuisances from our lands.
He stood near the weapon-smith's pavilion, wearing a weathered coat and a falconer's glove, though no bird perched upon it. Three village women clustered around him, laughing too brightly at whatever story he spun.
My pulse quickened traitorously. I should have turned, found another path through the crowd. Instead, I drew close enough to catch his eye over the women's shoulders.
"Ladies, if you'll excuse me." His voice carried that rough honey tone that had first undone me. "Duty calls."
He fell into step beside me as naturally as breathing, and we moved through the fair like any lord's hunter reporting to his lady. To watching eyes, nothing improper. Just estate business.
"You look pale," he said quietly. "Are you well?"
"A word," I murmured, not answering his question. "Privately."
We stopped at a stall selling dyed wool, pretending to inspect the skeins while snow gathered on our shoulders. "That time between us was the last," I whispered. "I cannot betray my husband again."
Nathaniel's laugh was soft, not cruel, but unbearably confident. "You say that every time."
"This time I am absolute."
"The third time you've been absolute." His fingers brushed a skein of crimson wool, and I remembered those same fingers in my hair. "Yet here we are."
"We are here because I'm dismissing you properly. Face to face. No more notes, no more meetings in the grove—"
"No more afternoons in the hunting lodge?" His voice dropped lower. "No more crying my name when you—"
"Stop." My cheeks burned despite the cold. "That woman was desperate and foolish. I've recovered my senses."
"Have you?" He turned to face me fully, and his dark eyes held that intensity that always made me feel hunted and desired in equal measure. "Is that why you sought me out the moment you arrived? Why your hands shake even now?"
I clasped my trembling fingers together. "I sought you out to end this cleanly."
"Like you ended it last month? And the month before?" He pulled me suddenly into a quiet angle between a gingerbread stall and a shuttered apothecary, his body blocking the view from the square. "Don't pretend there's nothing here. You feel it."
"I felt neglected," I shot back, anger safer than truth. "You were a diversion while my husband forgot me."
He flinched as if I'd slapped him, then struck where it hurt most. "And he's with you now? Strange—I see him riding the grounds early in the mornings, attending to his duties, yet you look more abandoned than any widow I know."
"That's not—"
"He shares your bed but might as well be a ghost, isn't that right?" His hand rose to cup my face, thumb tracing my cheekbone. "You're drowning in that house, and he doesn't even see you."
"Enough." I jerked away from his touch. "My marriage is not your concern."
"Your happiness is."
"Since when?"
"Since the first time I found you crying in the stables. Since you told me he hadn't touched you in weeks. Since you kissed me first, remember?"
The memory slammed into me—my desperation that day, the way I'd grabbed his shirt and pulled him down, tasting surprise and gunpowder on his lips.
"I was weak," I said. "But I'm stronger now. I owe you no explanation, Nathaniel. Keep your tongue about what happened between us and let this die."
I turned to go, but his hand closed on my wrist, firm enough to stop me but gentle enough that I could have broken free. I didn't.
"One last thing," he said, and before I could protest, he pulled me against him. The kiss was brief, hot, devastating—a brand that seared through my winter clothes and careful resolutions. When he broke away, he smiled that hunter's smile that had always been my undoing.
"What was that?" I demanded, breathless and furious.
"Advance payment for my silence."
"That is low, even for you."
"Perhaps." He released me, stepping back into the crowd's view. "But effective. Your color's returned, milady. You look almost alive again."
I fled then, pushing through the fair toward my carriage, tasting him on my lips and hating myself for wanting more. Behind me, I heard him call out cheerfully to someone, playing the loyal retainer perfectly.
In the carriage, I pressed my palms to my still-flat stomach and wondered whose child quickened there—the husband who looked through me like glass, or the hunter who saw too much.
Either way, I was trapped, and Nathaniel's kiss burned on my mouth like evidence of sins I couldn't stop committing.