Intent on ignoring Rosamund and Michael, Edith instead contemplated the crumpled cigarette lying in the table's crystal ashtray. Her nerves were fraught enough to consider taking up the popular pastime and asking for a new one from Tom's cheap looking packet.
Tom was still lecturing: "I would think that when a man agrees that you should marry another man so he can bed you without divorcing his lunatic wife, you cannot possibly view the details of this said lunacy as a forbidden subject."
"I thought you liked Michael."
"Matthew liked him. I trusted Matthew's instincts. But my liking him has little to do with his suitability for you. I liked Strallan, and yet he broke your heart."
That broken heart fluttered for a brief moment. It had been years. It was time she stopped feeling this way every time someone mentioned his name.
"Michael loves me. He won't break my heart," she declared.
"Yes, well, far be it for me to suggest you've read too much Bronte and romanticised Gregson. And far be it for me to suggest this entire idea of yours can only end in one way, and that involves more heartbreak."
"You don't think you've left this all a bit too late to discuss? If you had such thoughts, why are you only speaking out now? We got married today, Tom. You want us to seek an annulment? I was rather looking forward to being a boring wife of an agent."
Tom laughed, without humour. "Is that why you need Gregson, Edith? To add some intrigue and excitement to what would be a boring life with me and Sybbie?"
"Why should you get everything you want, and not I?" she blurted out without thinking.
Tom flushed. His reply was justifiably bitter: "This isn't what I want, Edith."