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for him — was one of her attractions. She was a beautiful girl and he had visions of all that white skin laid bare for the first time just for him.
    He wanted to make Marianne understand his decision. He disliked being at odds with her. But she barely paid him any attention.
    "What is it, Marianne? What is troubling you?"
    She stopped pacing and looked at him. "Nothing is troubling me. It is just ... there is something I want to tell you and I don't know how."
    "You may tell me anything, my dear, as you well know. Has something happened?"
    She gave an odd, sheepish little grin. "Not yet."
    "Tell me, then. What is it?"
    Marianne chewed on her lower lip for a moment and furrowed her brow, as though measuring the words before speaking. Her fine brown eyes sparkled with suppressed excitement, and he realized that whatever she had to tell him, it was not something dreadful. She had the air of a child with a rousing good secret, and looked much younger than a woman approaching thirty. It had been a long time since he'd seen this side of her — not since David's death, in fact — and Adam was utterly charmed as he watched her.
    She walked back to her favorite wing chair, retrieved the ubiquitous paisley shawl, and wrapped it around her shoulders as though girding herself for battle. Standing tall, she looked Adam square in the eye and said, "I am going to take a lover."
    Adam stood stunned and silent for a long moment. A lover? David's wife was going to take a lover? It was the very last thing he might have expected her to say.
    "You are shocked," she said. "I suppose I should not have blurted it out like that. Perhaps you should sit down." She took her seat by the fireside and nodded toward the matching wing chair on the other side of the hearth that had been "his chair" for as long as he could remember.
    "Yes, perhaps I should." He took the chair and sat rather stiffly, too tense for his usual comfortable sprawl. A small knot of anger tightened in his gut. "This is rather big news, is it not?"
    "Are you disappointed?"
    It was something of an understatement, though he was not sure why this news should affect him so strongly. He supposed it was that he'd always thought of her as David's woman. To imagine her in another man's arms was almost blasphemous.
    "Do you think less of me for wanting to take a lover?"
    "My dear Marianne, I think the world of you, as you know, and nothing could ever make me think any less of you."
    "You do not believe it to be a betrayal of David's memory?"
    Adam fell silent. It was precisely what he thought, but it seemed churlish to say so. Especially since he knew it to be an irrational, emotional reaction. David was dead, after all.
    "You do believe it." Her hand balled up into a fist and pounded the arm of the chair. "Blast it all, Adam, I thought you, at least, would understand. You are acting just like Lavinia Nesbitt."
    "Good God. Do not tell me you made a similar bold announcement to David's mother."
    She snorted in disgust and glared at him. "Of course not. I am not that stupid. But apparently you want me to spend the rest of my life as a martyr to David's memory, just like she does."
    Did he? Adam did not want to think so. What had he expected? That she would remain alone, and possibly lonely, for the next forty or fifty years? As he looked at her, he realized how ridiculous a notion it was. Marianne was a strikingly beautiful woman. Naturally other men would want her. Hadn't he always harbored a twinge of attraction for her himself? But she'd been David's woman, and always would be.
    "No, I don't want that for you," he said. "I am sorry, but it is difficult for me to imagine ..."
    A blush colored her cheeks. "You don't want to think of me with any man but David."
    Adam shook his head. "It's a complicated notion to get my brain around, that's all. The two of you are inextricably linked in my mind. It's hard to think of you without him."
    "But he's gone, Adam. It's not as though I'm planning to be