My Dear Shadi,

If there was one skill I acquired over the years I spent with Reza, it was the ability to set things aside and get on with business. I suppose I had actually been doing that my entire life; the business had simply changed. But while my life before Reza had been interspersed with long silences, with him it was a nonstop whirl. There were times when it seemed my only times of quiet were alone in bed—which I often would not get to until midnight or much later—or perhaps in a carriage between engagements.

To all outward appearances, I carried off this public life well. There was never a disparaging sentence about me in any society paper, and if there was some private whisper, these never made it into a public forum. I smiled, learned to speak of the weather in a handful of languages. I read, I danced, I went to the theater. I appreciated my life, but there were times when I longed to strike out from my front door and find myself running through the fields or the woods or any place so long as it was private and wild and free.

I wanted a different kind of company, and a different kind of solitude. I wanted quiet evenings, good conversation with people I loved. I did not want to be a mere spectator to someone else's life. What I wanted was probably what I could have had with Feridoon, had he been a private gentleman instead of a servant of the Shah. But even Feridoon had his limits of what he found a worthwhile topic of conversation, whereas I had developed a curiosity about… everything.

However, all of these things were set aside and I got on with business. I did not spend my hours mourning what I had lost, nor lusting over what I could not have. But everyone has those moments, the quiet just before you open your eyes in the morning, when you still have the picture of your dreams drifting before you.

Nadir had been wise to be cautious when I came to visit. The very next time I went to go see him, a few weeks after seeing Erik, Reza spontaneously popped up just before I settled into the carriage.

"I have a mind to see the old Daroga," he said.

"Can you really call him old?" I teased. "You're of an age." Nadir was actually a bit younger, but since I didn't really want irritate my husband, I did not feel compelled to be overly specific.

Reza took the comment in the spirit it was intended and laughed as he stepped in and sat across from me. "I'll have you know that I was quite a young man… when Fath Ali appointed me to foreign service."

"I wouldn't know," I replied. "I hadn't been born yet."

He reached across and tweaked my nose. "See? I will enjoy speaking to a sensible adult. Impertinent woman!"

It was times like these, when Reza and I could banter between the two of us, that I felt my growing discontent was silly—if not somewhat unforgivable. But just as Feridoon never thought to be anything but a public servant because it was his duty, Reza would never have wanted to be a private gentleman because public service was his lifeblood. That I would have chosen something different for myself was immaterial. I was a wife, and I had chosen that.

I did not worry about bringing Reza with me unannounced. There had been something deadly serious in the way Erik had bid me farewell that I would have been shocked to find that he had not left the area as he said. And, on the off chance it was just a bit of the old melodrama in his soul coming out to play, I knew I could trust him and Nadir to be quick on their feet. When Darius opened the door, I took the precaution of telling him to announce Reza. It was unnecessary. Darius simply bowed us in, and went to procure another teacup.

Nadir and Reza got along perfectly well. They were of a similar generation, came from a similar class, and had both been thought bright young things by the same old Shah. We passed a pleasant visit, and I was touched when Reza concluded by inviting Nadir to dine with him and some of the others at the Embassy. Nadir accepted with wry humor, only detectable to one who knew him very well.

I truly do not believe Reza was nosing around for a conspiracy, but he was sharp. In the carriage, his eyes glinted in amusement.

"Ah, zanam!" He laughed and I perked my ears up. While he was liberal with his pet names, that was not a term that came up much: wife of mine. "I should have known you had some skeleton hidden in the closet."

I'm ashamed to say that my first thought was, Erik's never been in my closet, just behind my curtains. But I knew that was not what he meant. I shrugged and played at his game. "You know my skeletons, shohariman. I warned you."

"So you did," he agreed magnanimously. "And, as far as embarrassing relatives go, Nadir Khan is not the worst one to be stuck with. And the connection is remote enough that it could be broken with ease."

I thought of the last few hours Reza had spent chatting with Nadir, drinking his tea and smoking his pipe, and remembered all over again how heartsick the machinations of the Shah's court—no matter the physical distance—made me. But I gave Reza my undivided attention and asked, "Is that what you would like to happen?"

He shook his head. "No, no, ma belle. There is no need." I was curious about what would have qualified as a 'need,' but simply nodded. "Really, I simply wonder what led to his fall from grace?" He gave me an inviting look, but I could only shake my head.

"I had long since departed court life, and Nadir and I did not keep in contact," I said truthfully.

"And he did not say, when last you visited him?"

"That it was another errand set by the Shah, well outside his police duties— one that he had no way to accomplish." I said the words carelessly, having edited and reedited them in my head over the weeks. "He is philosophical about it."

Apparently, I could conceal things from Reza quite well.

Nadir's situation did improve somewhat from the association with us. His pension was delivered on time and in whole for the first time in years. The random assortment of imported foods I would send—as a memory of home, of course, not charity—earned me many a grateful look from Darius. And while he would grouse at being my unofficial escort to some informal occasions, I think he was glad to have a semblance of a social life.

I was therefore quite surprised when I asked if he wanted to attend a performance of Le Prophète and was met with a vehement refusal. I remembered then his passing mention of Erik helping in the construction of the Palais Garnier, and ventured to ask if that had anything to do with his disinclination to go.

"If only that was the whole of the matter," he sighed. His eyes, those beautiful, unusual green eyes, dulled. I had not yet grown accustom to his older face, his greyer hair. And now whatever weighed on his mind made him seem older still.

It did not take much prying to get the story from Nadir: the affair of the opera ghost and the soprano. Indeed, Nadir had quite a lot of commentary to accompany the particulars of the incident. The exact details of that sad occurrence we have consigned to the past. I know you read of them when that exposé came out in Le Gaulois a few years ago—though I will comment that as investigative journalism, it left something to be desired. But at the time, it was still very much a private tragedy and I think Nadir was glad to tell of his experiences from start to finish, without editing himself or stopping every two minutes to explain something of Erik. There was nothing on that score that could surprise me. I knew too well.

I suppose it is not to my credit that I was not terribly shocked. Perhaps I was too quick to absolve Erik. But I still lived in a world where a man might die for being on the wrong side of land dispute, or for taking the wrong lover, or for following the wrong prophet. I knew that sometimes doing the right thing and doing the thing to survive were not always the same. Perhaps that is why, time and again, Erik had my sympathy. I never saw myself as his better. I had no moral high ground over him. Circumstances had never prompted me to the shedding of blood, but who was I to say definitively that I would not be capable of just as many terrible things as Erik if pressed? When tragedy befell me, I had always had a protector to stand with me. Who was there to help Erik?

I pitied everyone involved. There was no denying that a little restraint on Erik's part could have saved many from grief, but restraint was not one of Erik's stronger qualities. I felt sorry for the soprano, and was glad she had made her escape. Had I not also become entwined in high drama without ever having gone looking for it?

But I also felt sorry for my friend, who had been alone for so very long. Those old conversations in Mazandaran had revealed the poor, neglected boy hidden in the brilliant, unstable man. I had built an image in my mind of Erik the afflicted, one in need of mercy, and could not be rid of that idea. In the end, I simply let Nadir speak, and I withheld my judgement. There was only one aspect of the story that truly bothered me as much as it baffled me, and I would have to wait to hear the story from Erik's own lips before I knew how to really feel about it. But that seemed increasingly unlikely, as the weeks turned to months and spring started to come upon Paris but not Erik.

Reza was very satisfied with the results of his time in Paris. Several members of the diplomatic staff had been replaced, many a good impression had been made at a splashy soiree, and I could tell he was itching to get on to something new.

"The New Year in Paris," he said one evening after one of those parties, "and then back to London. The Shah is most keen to fix British interests in the tobacco industry." He tapped his cheek thoughtfully. "I think I will switch from pipes to cigarettes. A nice gold holder will garner attention."

He kissed my cheek and retired to his room. It was the last conversation we were to have. I was up late with a book, and heard the inauspicious thump some time after one o'clock. I pulled on a robe, knocked at the door that connected our rooms, and when there was no answer, I went in.

The doctor later told me that Reza had tried to arise from his bed as he suffered his heart attack. He had been knocked unconscious from striking his head against the bedframe, but it had already been too late.

In the end, one becomes a widow in the same way: your husband, the person you are supposed to be closest to in the entirety of the world, perhaps the person who is the entirety of your world, is gone. There was no great difference to sitting on the floor of a bedroom in Paris, Reza's poor head in my lap, than hearing of the knife shoved through Feridoon's poor ribs at the city gates. Both were losses. Both were endings. I didn't feel any more equipped to deal with Reza's death as a matron nearing forty than I had felt as a girl approaching twenty.

But I also had the same person there to help. After I sent for the doctor, I sent another note. I asked for Nadir's help, again.

I just didn't know, exactly, what I was asking for.

More to come soon. My hand cramps and all this talk of death has given me a headache.

Mojgan Khanum