Still half asleep and not quite registering why she had woken up in the first place, Anna rolled over in bed, hand reaching for her husband only to meet cool sheets instead. Swallowing a noise of protest, she looked blearily around the dark room… and saw the bedroom door ease open. Edwin slinked silently in, shutting the door and sitting on her vanity stool to take off his shoes. It was far too late for him to have been out, but she knew for a fact that this wasn't the first time he'd done it. Nor, she was starting to suspect, did his sudden keeping of odd hours have anything to do with managing Howard Stark's paramours as he kept claiming.
Paramours? Perhaps. Just not Mr. Stark's… And she was tired of the awful wondering. She was a naturally quiet woman by nature, but when she was angry, she made it known – and now? Now was going to be one of those times.
Giving up on her guise of still being asleep, she sat up, rubbing her eyes as she accused Edwin flatly, the fact that her accent was already thicker than usual giving away her irritation, "You're late."
"Anna!" he started, eyes snapping towards her in the darkness. "I'm sorry I woke you. Mr. Stark needed my assistance getting home. He had a bit of a late night, I'm afraid."
Anna narrowed her eyes, assessing that statement. It wasn't a lie – until very recently Edwin always rubbed his ear when he lied, and he hadn't moved to do so now – but it wasn't the entire truth either. He'd gotten good at telling those half truths over the past little while, she'd noticed, and she was finished dealing with them.
"Would you please for once tell me the whole truth?" she ground out, glad they couldn't see one another's expressions in the darkness. "It's nearly midnight; where have you been?"
"I told you. With Mr. Stark."
Anna lowered her head into her hands, raking her fingers through her shoulder length hair as she steeled herself and asked carefully, "These paramours you keep bringing up – are they Mr. Stark's or yours?"
"Anna!" he yelped, sounding genuinely hurt as he moved from the vanity stool to the edge of their bed, putting his hand on her shoulder. "Of course they're not my own!"
She jerked away from his touch, saying as hot tears gathered in her eyes, "I know that this thing we have isn't perfect – there're too many holes in our life together where our other soulmates should be – but I'm your wife, and I know when you're lying to me. You've been doing a great deal of that recently, and I want the truth – now!"
His hands fisted together in his lap and he sighed wearily, saying, "Very well; I suppose it is time. Perhaps you'd like a cup of tea? I'm afraid it's going to be a rather long conversation."
Anna nodded, climbing warily from bed, pulling a robe on, and trailing him into the kitchen. She slid into a seat at their table for two and watched him move around the kitchen, putting the kettle on.
As soon as she was seated, he began to speak, asking with his back still to her while he pulled the kettle out of the cupboard. "You are aware that Mr. Stark's vault was cleared out and that he was being blamed for it, correct?"
"Of course."
He filled the kettle with water, still not looking at her as he explained, "Tonight that situation was cleared up, but it's been a bit of an ongoing process… and those are the proceedings that you haven't been aware of until now. The matter has required a fair bit of espionage, actually, and no one wanted you to end up in the crosshairs." The kettle was set on the stove, the burner flipped on, and he finally turned to look her in the eye as he declared gravely, "I never imagined it would make you doubt me, beloved. If I had…" he shook his head, saying fiercely, "You are worth more to me than Howard Stark will ever be, and I need you to know that."
The intensity in his voice worried Anna, made her wonder just how much more there was to this story, how much more was going on behind his bright eyes, and she nodded, saying gently, "I do, Edwin." She forced her tone to be a little lighter as she admitted, "I suppose it's Mr. Stark's fault that the thought even crossed my mind."
The teakettle whistled as Edwin shook his head. "Even with his influence, I must have failed you somehow for you to consider that I would be unfaithful to you in that way."
He turned back to the teakettle and filled two cups, more to hide the gleam of tears in his eyes as much as anything else Anna suspected, as she revealed gently, "It's the lies that bother me more than anything else, Edwin; I've already resigned myself to the fact that you and I aren't meant to live in monogamy."
Halfway between the stove and the table, he nearly dropped the cups he was carrying as he managed, "What?"
She smiled a little as she reached out and caught the cups, setting them on the table as she reminded him, "Our soulmarks, Edwin. There are seven of them and I'm not naïve enough to think that I'm going to be the only woman soulmate that you have, or even the only one of your soulmates that you bed. Nor, for that matter, do I expect that you'll be the only one of my soulmates that I sleep with… but I do expect every one of my soulmates – you and whoever else they may turn out to be – to be honest with me. The fact that you haven't been… that's what upsets me."
Edwin slid to one knee in front of her chair, taking her hands in his and squeezing them tightly as he searched her eyes, seeming to find whatever it was he needed in their depths before he nodded as if prodding himself onward and declared, "Anna, I hate having kept this all from you, and I love you more than my own life."
"And I you," she responded gently, punctuating her words with a slow kiss.
He pressed a kiss to her knuckles and moved to sit in the chair opposite her, saying determinedly, "Alright then… about our soulmates."