Read William Monk 18 - A Sunless Sea for Free Online

excellent and it was hardly the issue between them; any distress she felt now was emotional.
    He felt awkward and knew that in his immaculately tailored clothes he must look out of place in this room with its drab walls, and too many family pictures on every surface. What could he say that was honest? Why had he come?
    “I wanted to talk to you …,” he began. “To see if we could understand each other a little better, perhaps move toward some kind of reconciliation …” He stopped. Her face gave nothing away, and he felt both foolish and vulnerable.
    Her fair eyebrows rose. “Are you saying what you think you ought to, Oliver?” she asked quietly, no lift in her voice. “Paving the way to justify yourself because you want to set me aside with a clear conscience? After all, you need to be able to tell your colleagues that you tried. It would reflect poorly on you if you didn’t. Everyone would understand that an eminent lawyer like you would not wish to be married to the daughter of a criminal, but you should at least not make that offensively clear.”
    “Is that how you think of yourself: the daughter of a criminal?” he said with far more edge to his voice than he had meant to.
    “We were talking about you,” she responded. “You are here; I did not come to you.”
    That also hurt, although he should not have expected her to come to him. Right or wrong, it was always the man who pursued—except perhaps with Hester. If she had quarreled with someone she cared for, whether she had been right or wrong, she would have sought them out. He knew that from the past. Was he unfairly comparing Margaret with her? Hester had faults as well, but big, brave ones, never a pettiness of mind. He was the one who had not been daring enough for her. He should not be petty now.
    He took a deep breath. “I came hoping that if we spoke, we might heal at least some of the breach between us,” he said as gently as he could. “I have no idea what the future will bring, and I was certainly not trying to make excuses for it. I don’t need to explain myself to anyone else—”
    “Which is as well, because you can’t!” She cut across him. “Not to me, or to my family.”
    He kept his temper with difficulty. “I was not thinking of you as someone else.” They were both still standing, as if physical ease were impossible. He thought of asking if he could sit down, or even simply doing it, but he decided not to. She might take it as an implication that he thought he belonged here, and that he saw it as a right, not a privilege.
    “How were you thinking of me, then?” she asked.
    “As my wife, and—at one time at least—also as my friend,” he said.
    Without warning the tears filled her eyes.
    For an instant he thought that there was hope. He started to take a step toward her.
    “You threw that away,” she said quickly, raising her head a fraction, as if to ward him off.
    “I did what I had to do!” he protested. “Everything the law allowed me, to defend him. He was guilty, Margaret!”
    “How often do you repeat that to yourself, Oliver?” she said bitterly. “Have you convinced yourself yet?”
    “He admitted it to me,” he said wearily. They had been over all of this before. He had lived out the whole wretched tragedy for her—Ballinger’s desperate fight for life, then finally his admission of guilt. He had given her few details, to spare her distress, and her knowledge of details that were ugly and cruel, things she need never know.
    “And that’s enough for you?” She flung the words at him like an accusation. “What about the reasons, Oliver? Or didn’t you want to know them? Can’t you for once be honest and stop hiding behind the law? Or is it all you know, all you understand? ‘The book says this! The book says that!’ ”
    “That’s not fair, Margaret,” he protested. “I can’t work outside the law—”
    “You mean you can’t think outside it,” she corrected him, her eyes