My Wife Sent Her Maid to My Secret Dinner With My Mistress — What She Handed Me Ruined My Life

Part 2

The woman across the table made a small sound that was almost a laugh.

It was certainly not amusement.

I lifted my eyes to the servant at last.

I found something in those quiet gray irises that I had not been prepared to find in the face of a person in plain gray at my elbow.

I found that she was not afraid of me.

I had been afraid of many things in my life.

I had chiefly feared disappointing my father before he died twelve years ago.

I had also feared being unkind by accident.

I believed myself to have managed those fears mostly well.

But I had not often been on the receiving end of a refusal that landed so courteously.

I set my linen napkin upon the table beside the paper.

I rose from my chair.

The chair did not scrape because the carpet was thick.

The wooden legs were felted carefully.

This room had been arranged originally for the entertaining of intimate friends in the previous century.

Intimate friends had required a floor that did not announce their presence.

I walked the four paces to the long window and looked out at the rain.

I did not see the rain.

I saw, instead, a morning sixteen years ago.

I had stood in a drafty chapel in my grandfather’s plain coat.

I had watched a slight young woman in white come up the aisle on her uncle’s arm.

I had thought, with the calm of a boy raised to expect arranged things to be endured rather than enjoyed, that her face was a kind face.

I had noticed that her hands in their delicate lace were trembling.

I had decided that I would try to be a man whose hands did not make hers tremble more.

I turned back from the window.

The servant had not moved a single inch.

The paper had not moved on the table.

The candle had burned a finger’s breadth lower.

I looked at the woman in the dark blue gown.

I looked at her white throat above the velvet collar.

I looked at the small ruby on a gold chain that I had given her at midsummer.

I had bought it because she had said she was tired of pearls.

I discovered that I did not wish to look at her at all at this moment.

I returned to the table.

I sat down again.

I picked up the paper.

I broke the wax seal.

I read the document slowly.

I read it twice to be sure.

When I had finished reading it the second time, I laid it down.

I smoothed the crease with the side of my hand.

“Tell her I will come,” I said.

“She did not ask you to come, Your Grace,” the servant said.

“She asked you to sign.”

I looked at her for a long moment.

The autumn rain went on.

The candle went on burning.

The partridge had finally stopped steaming.

I set my hand flat upon the paper.

It was as though I needed to keep it from rising of its own accord and walking out of the room.

“Then I will sign,” I said very quietly.

“And then I will come.”

The woman across the table said my name again.

This time her voice was thinner.

This time I heard the panic in it.

I did not answer her.

I took up the steel pen that lay in a small porcelain stand in the center of the table.

In this house even pavilions of secret suppers were furnished with the instruments of correspondence.

I dipped the nib into the ink.

I held it above the line where my name was meant to go.

What exactly was my wife planning to do to me?