Chapter 2
Rosamund never had an affair.
I knew that.
Or thought I did.
Five years of grief had not changed it.
But fifteen years earlier, before we married, she had met Sebastian Vale four times without telling me.
That part was real.
The meetings almost ended our engagement.
Sebastian belonged to a rival family then.
Not enemy exactly.
Close enough.
When I learned about the meetings, Rosamund refused to explain everything.
She only said:
“I was fixing something that wasn’t mine to break.”
I hated that answer.
We fought for three days.
Then she told me enough.
Someone from Isabetta’s family had crossed Vale territory without permission.
A young man.
Twenty-two.
Stupid.
Terrified.
Sebastian wanted repayment.
Rosamund intervened privately.
The young man returned alive.
No feud.
No public humiliation.
I never learned his name.
Rosamund insisted.
“He deserves to grow past one bad night.”
That was her.
Infuriating.
Merciful.
Now I held a photograph designed to turn those meetings into romance.
Maribel dressed as my dead wife.
Sebastian standing too close.
A posed kiss in another print.
I looked at Isabetta.
“You were going to show me these?”
She stared at the floor.
“Eventually.”
“Eventually.”
“When?”
“After the wedding.”
Of course.
I laughed once.
No warmth.
“What story?”
She looked up.
“That Rosamund betrayed you.”
Celandine had followed us upstairs and stopped in the doorway.
Her face showed the disgust I was too controlled to display.
I asked:
“Why?”
Isabetta’s eyes filled.
“Because she is still in every room.”
There it was.
Not money.
Not murder.
Not succession.
A dead woman.
“She’s been gone five years.”
“No.”
Isabetta shook her head.
“Her portrait is downstairs.”
“Her charities use her name.”
“Your staff compare me to her.”
“Your mother still sets a place for her birthday.”
“And you—”
She stopped.
I waited.
“You still ask what Rosamund would have thought.”
That was true.
Sometimes.
Too often, perhaps.
But pain does not create permission.
“You hired a woman to wear her wedding gown.”
Isabetta whispered:
“I wanted you to stop loving a memory more than the person beside you.”
I looked at the staged photographs.
“You could have asked me to make room.”
May you like
“I did.”
That sentence stayed in the room longer than anything else.
