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“And I suppose you’re sorry too! Well, don’t think you have any reason to apologize to me. Either one of you! I never thought you could do something so foolish, Dane.” The stare swung to Amanda. “Or you either, for that matter.”
    Amanda felt suddenly awkward and guilty, as if she’d left twenty of her twenty-eight years on the doorstep. She sought for something to bridge the gap and return her to equal footing with the older woman. “It’s just one of those things.”
    “Fools!” Martha interrupted gruffly. “Damn fools! Both of you.”
    “Martha, leave her alone.” Dane’s command altered the tension immediately and bridged the gap for Amanda. “The decision is made. Amanda could use your support, not this pointless castigation. As I said, she needs your tender loving care now.”
    “And what about your promise to give her tender loving care? A promise that was supposed to last a lifetime. What about that?”
    “Nothing lasts forever,” he answered with a shrug. “Circumstances change. People change. Some promises aren’t made to be kept.”
    Amanda tried not to show any surprise at his casual answer, but she couldn’t curb the hurt that wove through her. She felt Martha’s sharp look and forced herself to meet it. Searchingly, with slicing perception, the gaze examined her before sliding back to Dane with angry challenge.
    “That’s a namby-pamby excuse,” Martha said tightly. “You’ve hardly been married long enough to know the meaning of a lasting promise ... and to quit! Give up without a fight! I expected better from you both. How can you even consider such a thing?”
    “We’re not considering a divorce, Martha,” Dane interrupted her tirade with firm insistence. “The decision is made. Nothing you say can change that. Please accept our decision and give Amanda the support she needs.”
    Amanda’s feeling of hurt gave way to irritation that he again referred to her need for support and pointedly ignored his own.  If he felt the need for support at all.
    “He’s right, Martha.” Amanda added impact to his statements with a smooth voice and a deliberate tilt of her chin. “The decision is made—irrevocably.”
    “And the sooner we all accept it, the better.” Martha sank back onto the Boston rocker, her words, her eyes, even her posture admitting constrained resignation. “Is that the proper attitude?” Her gaze sought Dane in one last appeal for denial.
    Amanda wanted to look away from this obvious hurt, so unintentionally inflicted. She wanted to look away and yet she found her own gaze seeking Dane, seeking acceptance or denial or perhaps merely a hint of regret.
    The muscle in his jaw clenched and relaxed, clenched and relaxed, the only sign of his tension. “Yes, that’s the way I feel about it,” he said finally. Blandly, indifferently. “The sooner the better.”
    Of its own accord, Amanda’s gaze fell. Impatience. She recognized the sound of it. Dane wanted this uncomfortable discussion at an end. He wanted his marriage over. And he wanted her out of his life. The sooner the better.
    And that was what she wanted too. With a resolute sigh she leaned against the tapestried sofa cushions and waited for Martha to assimilate the inevitable and break the cloistered silence.
    Silence. Dane hated it. Almost as much as he hated the stricken look in Martha’s eyes. Almost as much as he hated the schooled composure of Amanda’s expression. He forced himself to stand, relaxed and waiting, although he was tense with the need to pace the room. His eyes traced the familiar, book-lined wall, the uneven combination of antique and merely dated furnishings, the woven rug covering the floor. Anywhere except at the slender figure of his wife.
    Yet he knew, without seeing, the quiet clasp of hands in her lap, the concern mirrored in the twilight softness of her eyes as she watched Martha, the regrets, the memories, that calm, impenetrable façade.
    Would he ever be free of