Jeffrey soon went back inside of Arundel, and though he had asked Skye to come with him, she opted to remain in the gardens a while longer. Now alone, she was both relieved that Jeffrey was gone and hopeful that he would come back.

Reckless hope aside, she knew she had to stay away from Jeffry until she figured out what demon had taken hold of her brain. Was that demon Mrs. Tifton, slithering around inside her head, planting wedding doubts, and worse – oh, much worse – inappropriate feelings about Jeffrey? Or was there no demon, and such feelings had not been planted, but were only now surfacing, and at the worst thinkable time? If that was true, how long had they been there? Forever?

None of that mattered. What did matter was that she was engaged, and her perfectly wonderful fiancé was waiting for her in the bed they shared, where he would be thinking of no one but her. But Skye? She was thinking about someone else – the exact someone else whom Dušek had, apparently, felt threatened by.

Skye was a fraud. She had decided that much. A fraud and a backstabber, a snake in the grass. How she could rectify this situation was a mystery to her. She didn't even know right from wrong, up from down. She knew one thing, though: she'd had a great thing going for her, and it was now more than likely she would fuck it all up. And not just with Dušek, but with Jeffrey too.

She would have to sit right here on this fountain until she came up with a plan. A plan for what was still unclear, but a plan of some kind needed to be made.

No plan had so much as begun to form when she heard the door open. For the second time that night, the sound made her stomach hurtle to her toes. Also for the second time, she correctly guessed who had made it.

It wasn't Jeffrey, but Dušek, dressed in his nightclothes and coming to see what had kept her from their room for so long.

He crouched down and took hold of her hands. "Are you alright, moje malá mořská hvězdice?"

Skye's hands were shaking – not in the least bit making her appear okay. Dušek's affectionate nickname for her was equally unhelpful.

Instead of answering, she asked, "Why?"

"Jeffrey told me I should come find you. He doesn't think you're okay. He's worried about you." Dušek kissed the back of her hands. "And so am I. Talk to me, love. What is it?"

Naturally, Jeffrey would send Dušek after her. He seemed to want to completely wreck her life. Skye frowned. That was a dishonorable thought, among so many recent others. If she could stack all of her dishonorable thoughts on top of each other, the tower they built would stretch first into the troposphere, then the stratosphere, through mesosphere, the thermosphere, the exosphere, and completely into outer space. Jeffrey had only wanted to help out. If she wrecked her own life on account of Jeffrey Tifton, that would not be his fault. It wouldn't even be his mother's fault, though Skye desperately wanted to blame her. No, the blame would be Skye's and Skye's alone.

"I'm okay," she lied. If that was wrong, she didn't know. This was all well beyond her capacity for moral reasoning. "I'm just…anxious for tomorrow."

Dušek smiled at her, so trusting, so unsuspecting. "Me too. It's a lot of people to stand in front of, isn't it?"

He knew Skye had a deep-rooted disdain for all public affairs, even when the only witnesses were her family and closest friends. It had frightened her to stand before them in a ceremony of love and life-long commitment, and though that was no longer her most pressing worry, it still did.

She nodded in agreement, nothing more.

Dušek kissed her hands again. "But it's only a few minutes, and after it's done, it will just be you and me and a wide open future. Then, no one else will matter."

That all sounded great, except Skye had a sneaking suspicion that there would be a certain somebody poking at her and saying, hey remember me? I'm still here and I still matter.

How odd it was that the worry had come on so suddenly. It hadn't existed yesterday, and yet, here it was, strong and unrelenting.

Skye was lucky that silence was comfortable for her and Dušek. It gave her time to look at him and to think. Their relationship was so easy; it had been from the very beginning. She hadn't lied to Jeffrey when she told him that Dušek had a soothing effect on her. No one was better at simmering her down, except for maybe Jeffrey – a thought Skye immediately scolded herself for. Again she wished that she could forget what Mrs. Tifton had said to her, or at the very least, squash the curiosity it had raised. She firmly told herself that was all it was: curiosity. It wasn't uncommon to have some doubts when about to commit yourself to one person for the rest of your life. A lot of people feared that commitment, wondered what they might be passing up. Wedding jitters, a little cold feet – it was all very normal.

A faint voice reminded her that normal wedding jitters were not brought on by the news that your best friend of fifteen years is in love with you. Skye criticized that voice.

But then she remembered Mrs. Tifton had said something about that. What was it? Your fiancé should be your best friend. You have a lot to think about if he's not.

Good grief, if she was looking to Mrs. Tifton for relationship advice, she truly was lost.

"I'm excited for that future, Skye," said Dušek. "You are its brightest star."

Skye stared at their hands, clasped together in her lap. She managed a half-smile, but she felt sick. So sick that if she put her mind to it, she could vomit right into the fountain.

Dušek put his palms on Skye's face and lifted it to him. "I love you to the moon."

He kissed her, and Skye was comforted by that. Kissing was an easy way to shut out one's problems, and for a while, that was exactly what she did. She shut them out so well that she didn't notice when she started to wonder if Jeffrey's kiss could have the same effect on her. Skye had never seen Jeffrey kiss someone. He obviously had plenty of times, but not around her – at least not a good, solid kiss. She wondered how he liked to do it. She suspected that he was gentle, sweet about it, and probably a bit of a tease. He acted that way with a lot of different things; kissing was probably the same. She could see him doing it both confidently and tentatively, depending on the situation. Depending on the woman. She doubted Jeffrey had even once kissed a stranger at a bar, when it meant nothing and wouldn't be thought of for long after. No, kissing Jeffrey could only be the special kind of all-consuming kiss that you feel in your toes and that sends you home with a goofy smile on your face. It would be the kind of kiss that leaves you counting down impatiently to the next one.

When Skye started picturing herself as the person Jeffrey was kissing like that, rather than some hypothetical, faceless woman, she crashed back into reality.

Oh no. She seriously was in a heap of trouble.

She pulled away from Dušek. Penderwicks did not kiss their fiancés while thinking about other men. She smiled at him, as if she had done no such thing, but all the while she fended off unseemly ideas about what Jeffrey might be able to do with his stupid mouth.

Maybe Mrs. Tifton was right. Maybe she did have very little character. Dušek deserved much better than this. As did Jeffrey, who she was suddenly inclined to sexualize.

"Are you ready to come to bed?" Dušek asked.

Skye was not. She couldn't, not until she better understood why she was thinking all of these new things about Jeffrey.

"In a little bit," she said. "Don't wait up for me."

"Alright." He kissed her cheek, and then he left her.

Skye put her face in her hands. What she really wanted to do was gouge her fingers into her brain and scoop Jeffrey out of it. He was tangled in her every thought. Maybe there was a chance he did love her; Jeffrey's physical response to hugging her hadn't exactly ruled out the possibility. It was a mere chance, but that alone was enough to send her mind spiraling into the precarious land of what if. She was afraid to give thought to what might have happened if Jeffrey himself had delivered her that news. If he had confessed his love and kissed her, would she have let him?

No, she decided, because hearing it from someone other than Jeffrey had allowed her not to be angry with him. He wasn't the one violating boundaries and tipping her wedding on its head. He hadn't done anything wrong, so Skye didn't have the luxury of protecting herself through temper. There was nothing stopping her from recognizing that – as immoral as it was for her to do so – she did want him to kiss her. She just had to know; it was wrong, but if she went her entire life without ever kissing Jeffrey, she thought she might also spend it wondering what it would feel like. What it would feel like to do more than simply kiss him, if she dared be so honest with herself.

If he tried to kiss her now, would she stop him? If, only moments ago, instead of turning away from her touches, he had leaned in, would she have kissed him herself? She had practically given him the signal to go for it. She shoved the troublesome thought straight out of her mind, until she realized that was a mistake. This kind of problem wouldn't fade if ignored; it would fester and grow and consume her.

She had a great and devoted man waiting for her just inside the house – Jeffrey's house – and if she returned to him with nothing reasoned out, she would betray him.

Betray him more than she already had. Skye leaped from the fountain and took off running. She didn't know where she was going, only that she had to run until she felt a physical pain sharp enough to blunt the pain in her heart. She ran and ran, past the cottage, the spring house, and into the woods, where she stopped with a ragged gasp. She braced her arm against the nearest tree. She needed water, but she had none. She spat in the leaves to expel the extra saliva brought about by her sprint, and also because this was a night that deserved to be spat upon.

Skye wiped sweat from her face with her t-shirt and leaned against the tree trunk to catch her breath.

"Damn you, Jeffrey," she said between labored gasps. "Damn you."

She needed to stop doing that. What had Jeffrey done, other than be the best person he could be? That was his right, and if he made himself so great that it threatened Skye's self-control, that was her own personal problem.

She was going in circles, thinking the same things over and over without making any progress. She started to walk. Walking would help her think, though where to begin was the looming question.

One thing, and only one thing, was very clear. She no longer had the privilege of keeping both Jeffrey and Dušek. It mattered nothing if Mrs. Tifton was right or wrong. If Jeffrey loved her, if he didn't – Skye was thinking about him in ways she shouldn't either way. To marry Dušek and stay in contact with Jeffrey while those thoughts were happening would be absolutely wrong. If she didn't marry Dušek— Skye stopped walking. Was that the question she wanted to ask now? Whether or not to go through with her wedding? The next day?

The point she had to make to herself was that if she didn't marry him, he would walk out of her life forever. He would have to. She needed to decide which of them she could say goodbye to for good.

It was an impossible choice. She loved them both – in different ways, in the same way, she didn't know. She had no fucking idea what she was feeling, aside from hopelessness and grief. Both men had played such important parts in her life. She would mourn whoever she lost.

If she didn't lose them both. She would, if she didn't play her cards right, if she made an impulsive choice and chose wrong.

She could make a pros and cons list. She had promised Dušek that she would be with him forever; she had made Jeffrey no such promise. So she would start with him, and she would start with cons.

Jeffrey lived in Europe. Con. His mother was conniving, pompous, and she hated her. A definitive con. There was actually a decent possibility that Mrs. Tifton was wrong about which Penderwick he was enamored with. Skye had seen him with Batty. Just the other night he'd been spinning her around and looking like he never wanted to do anything but dance with her. Lydia was certain that Batty and Jeffrey were destined to be married, and while Skye shouldn't care about that – Lydia was eleven, and Skye, once, had even said that Batty and Jeffrey were perfect for each other – she suddenly did care. She suddenly didn't like how perfect they were. Another cosmic con.

Dušek, on the other hand, shared an apartment with her in California. His mother was wonderful, and there was no question of whether he loved one of her sisters. He wanted to marry her.

Skye frowned deeply. Were those supposed to be Dušek's pros? That was insulting; they weren't pros. They weren't even about Dušek himself; all they did was counteract Jeffrey's few cons.

She gave up. A pros and cons list was a gross exercise anyway. It pitted Jeffrey and Dušek against each other, as if she were some great prize for them to compete over. There was a lot wrong with that thinking. Skye refused to be so arrogant.

As she made her way through the trees (she'd realized that it wasn't the safest for her to wander the woods alone and late at night), she came up with a healthier approach to her problem. This one would be about her intuition, not about which of them was better. It was offensive to imply that someone was.

She would rehearse a goodbye for both of them. One was bound to upset her more than the other. Her involuntary response would make her choice for her.

Right? Possibly. Hopefully. If not, she was defeated.

Again, she started with Jeffrey. He would be the reasonable goodbye, though reasonable did not mean easy.

"Hi Jeffrey, can we talk?" She felt foolish speaking to no one, but saying the words out loud would probably bring her the most clarity. She and Dušek would have to fly home as soon as she talked with Jeffrey (if she did), so she imagined that she was explaining that to Jeffrey after the wedding, maybe the next morning. "I know we planned on staying a few more days, but Dušek and I are going to leave today."

Great. Good start. Then what? She'd have to dive right into it. Dillydallying would waste everyone's time.

"I don't know how to say this the right way, because you're great, and I'm an idiot, but…well, here it goes: I think I need to…" It was a weak follow-up. Skye walked a little farther before she thought of any next words. "I think I need to put an end to our friendship."

Nope. Too harsh. Too abrupt. That would blindside him.

She scrapped everything she had come up with so far. "The other night, I wasn't entirely honest with you about what happened with your mother. You see, she told me that you—"

No. That sounded like an accusation, and there was no need to embarrass him. Again, she started over. She would have to be honest about herself if she wanted to be fair. "I've been doing a lot of thinking, and I've realized that I need to distance myself from you. Entirely, actually. It's not what I want to do, but I have to, because – I don't know when this happened, but I think I let myself…"

Let herself what? Fall in love with him? Had she? That would be too much to tell him even if she did know the answer. I might love you, sayonara? Talk about blindsiding him.

She tossed out that script too and began a fresh one. "This is really hard for me, and I need you to know that." It was hard already, and Jeffrey wasn't even there to hear her. Just thinking about it prodded tears into her eyes. She spoke softly now, beneath the threat of crying over a fake scenario. "I didn't want to admit this, but I finally did a couple nights ago. If I stay friends with you, it will have a negative impact on my marriage." That was decent. It didn't make her look super great, but it was the truth. She wasn't great right now. She wasn't even mediocre. "You're too important to me. Some of the things I think about you are…not appropriate for a married woman." She might want to leave that part out. He'd undoubtedly ask what things she was talking about, and she didn't want to have to say. "I know this is really unfair to you, and it's my fault for letting it happen."

It sounded absurd. Jeffrey had been important to her long before she had met Dušek. That wasn't what had changed. She talked to Jeffrey less now, far less, and she was still having this problem. The biggest change was Dušek himself. That seemed a lot more like this was all her fault because she had started to date someone else in the first place.

What did that even mean – someone else? Would she have dated Jeffrey if he had asked her out? She'd empathically said no when they were teenagers, but it hadn't really been him that she rejected, not specifically. She had rejected the thought of a boyfriend, whoever he might be. She'd had no need for one, and she had scorned high school romance. She still did, for the most part. She didn't see the point of wasting time falling in love with people whom, nine times out of ten, you will fall out of love with and leave. Not everyone was Rosalind and Tommy. Most people weren't.

By the time she had aged, established herself, her education, and her career enough to be receptive to romance, Jeffrey had already left the United States. As far as Skye had known, he had long moved on from her by then.

Skye caught her breath with the sinking realization that she hadn't seen Jeffrey in person – not one time – since she had become interested in a boyfriend. She had last seen him at her undergraduate graduation, and at the time, Jeffrey hadn't even been single. He'd brought his then-girlfriend with him, some redheaded girl named Barbara, who had been all over him, driving everyone bonkers with her obnoxious flirting and excessive touching.

About a year after that, Skye had met Dušek. Would things have been different if Jeffrey hadn't moved to Germany? If he had visited her in California? Would she have developed a crush on him then, when the timing would have been acceptable? Would she have noticed Dušek at all?

Each of these musings were as hazardous as they were disloyal. But which was more disloyal – to ask the questions, or to ignore them and marry Dušek as if they didn't exist?

It was time to explore the hypothetical situation in which she did not marry Dušek.

"Dušek, I have something important to discuss with you." That did sound like she was a businesswoman setting up a meeting with a colleague, but that wasn't the reason that Skye stopped. The correct thing, the moral thing for her to do had dropped into her brain like a ballpoint pen pitched from the top of the Empire State Building.

She had been approaching this entire problem like it was hers alone to figure out – her choice to decide what did or did not happen with her wedding, and that was all wrong. The only fair approach was to talk to Dušek now, before she knew anything concrete about Jeffrey. He needed to know that she was having doubts, that she was struggling with a fast emerging desire for Jeffrey. He should be the one to decide if he wanted to leave her, or if he was forgiving enough to stay. She could sit here all night, she could decide that she wanted to marry Dušek, but if she didn't tell him the truth, he would get married without knowing what he was getting himself into. Who he was getting with. He might not want her anymore after he'd heard. He might leave.

He also might not. In fact, Skye was more inclined to think he wouldn't. Likely, they wouldn't get married as planned, but she didn't think he would leave her. He gave second chances. He gave third chances, and he gave her the benefit of the doubt – always. Hell, he probably wouldn't even ask her to drop Jeffrey. He would trust her to do the right thing, stupidly, but nobly. Then, Skye's future would be set. There would be no choice for her to make after that. She would have to stay with Dušek, if only to pay him back for benevolence.

Oh. Oh fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. She said it out loud. "Fuck."

She wasn't thankful for the forgiveness and trust she knew Dušek would hand her. She was disheartened by it, like he would be standing in her way. Because if Dušek left her, she would be free to want and to have Jeffrey, if he would have her.

If the thought of breaking up with Dušek made her feel free, then she knew. Perhaps she had known all along. Skye laid down the weapons she held against her heart, and she let herself want – will Jeffrey to love her, because she wanted the freedom to love him back. She wanted a life in which she could talk to him every day and no one would ask questions or criticize her for it. She wanted to see him often, not just once every few years. She wanted to visit him in Europe and be shown around his favorite places, introduced to his friends. She wanted to spend holidays with him, start mornings and end nights with him, and for once in her life not live hours and hours apart.

Fuck it: she wanted to sleep with him.

Skye turned back for Arundel. Jeffrey might still be awake, and even if he wasn't, this was the kind of conversation she could wake him up for without feeling too terrible.

She emerged from the woods behind Arundel Cottage, where Cagney was sitting on the back porch with his wife, Natalie.

"I told you I heard someone!" Natalie said, triumphantly hitting Cagney on the arm with every word.

He ducked out of the way of her batting hand, laughing. "Yeah, Skye sure got the drop on us. We're dead, and it's all my fault."

Skye hadn't meant to sneak up on them. She was so caught up in her own world that she hadn't heard them talking. "Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

"You didn't," Natalie promised.

Cagney snorted. "She's lying."

"Sorry," Skye apologized again. "It is pretty late."

"What were you doing in the woods?" Natalie asked. It was almost midnight.

Skye shrugged. "I just wanted some fresh air."

"Big day tomorrow," said Cagney.

Big day indeed. He had no idea.

Skye just nodded. She bid them good night and continued back to the house. Cagney and his wife had been a lucky interruption. She had been ready to run straight to Jeffrey's bedroom and tell him everything, but the short stop at the cottage had provided Skye with a bit of sense. Her relationship had to be over before she told Jeffrey anything. If she wanted him badly enough to end her engagement, then no matter what Jeffrey said – yes, I want you back; I'm sorry, I don't feel that way – she had to respect Dušek enough to let him go. She knew, in her heart of hearts, that if she spoke to Jeffrey first, and if he turned her down, she would be tempted to keep it all a secret from Dušek and marry him as planned. She was happy with Dušek, not the happiest she could be, she now knew, but happy.

She didn't think she would actually make such a terrible, selfish choice, but she hardly knew herself anymore. It appeared she had never really known herself at all. In case she would fall into the coaxing hands of self-indulgence – whether by settling for Dušek (if Jeffrey didn't love her) or through infidelity (if he did) – Skye had to take the single most precautionary measure against such sin. She would talk to Dušek first. She had to send him away to find a better woman, who would love him properly, who would see him and only him. Skye couldn't do that anymore.

She only wished she had realized all of this sooner. It hadn't yet happened, and already she despised herself for how badly Dušek would be hurt. She hoped to every potential higher power that it wouldn't be so badly that he would abandon the prospect of love and marriage. She poured her heart into a prayer – please, please don't let me have that effect on him.

She knew how it sometimes went. She had seen it for herself. Whatever had happened between Alec and Mrs. Tifton had been so awful that he hadn't tried for another wife. Jeffrey had told her once that his father refused to date. He hadn't since his early twenties, and he likely never would again. Guilt would extinguish Skye if Dušek made that same choice. He wanted to get married. He wanted a family. He deserved to be loved wholeheartedly, and he would be, so long as he knew that. He wouldn't want to hear it from her, but she would tell him anyway.

It was far too late for her to speak with Dušek now. She would let him sleep, and in the morning, they would talk. He was an early riser, and she wouldn't wait long. Upon daybreak, she would go to him and say what she must.

The farther Skye walked, the worse she felt. Her heart was heavy, but it pounded. Each thud of it battered her with an insult. Idiot. Villain. Traitor. Bitch.

With every awful and true word, Skye's stomach churned, her chest tightened. This was not what was supposed to happen. She had never expected to ever, ever wound someone she loved so deeply – and she did love Dušek. She loved him and valued him, and how she would look him in the eye and tell him she was leaving him on the morning of their wedding, she did not know. She didn't know how she would face her family and admit what she had done. She didn't know how she would be able to ask Jeffrey to trust her after this – and she didn't know why she was still fucking thinking about Jeffrey.

She didn't know how she could be expected to live with herself, that was the gist of it. So many would pay the price because she had been naïve and cowardly, afraid of the truth. She had been a fool, and Dušek, innocent and unguarded, would suffer for it.

Skye couldn't breathe. She gasped and gasped, but her lungs would not fill. She stumbled, suddenly on her hands and knees. Her arms trembled so terribly that she nearly met a face full of grass. She couldn't feel her hands. Beads of sweat rose to her face. She was choking, wheezing until she coughed. She wretched, but her stomach only flipped, it did not empty.

When the panic subsided, she sat back on her haunches with a shiver. She put her hands on her head and counted out her breaths. Minutes she sat like that, breathing in and breathing out, her eyes closed but unable to shut out the face of the man she had used and deceived in order to deceive herself.

She staggered onto her feet and trudged back to Arundel, luckily without further incident. Inside, she didn't return to her room. Dušek could have the bed; she wouldn't crawl into it with him as if there was nothing wrong. Instead, she took a blanket from the nearest closet and settled onto the drawing room couch. She set an alarm for 5 a.m.

For an hour, Skye tossed about, her mind racing with dread, fabricating possible outcomes for the morning. She thought about how best to explain herself to Dušek. There was no good way. She could be gentle, she could rip the bandage off, she could sob at his feet, but there was nothing that would protect him from the pain he had no idea was about to hit him. There was nothing that could protect her.

Skye thought and she cried for what felt like forever, but eventually, even the most encumbered mind surrenders to exhaustion. At long last, she escaped into sleep. There, in her dreams, where she was free and unburdened by conscience, it was Jeffrey who was inside of her.