“When Hest first courted me, I was skeptical of his intentions. He was such an eligible bachelor, such a prize, and there I was, a younger daughter, not pretty and with no prospects and scarcely any dowry. It actually made me angry that he would court me. I kept thinking it was some sort of wager or cruel jest. I even resented how he intruded into my life and work. But as our courtship went on, he was so charming that somehow I persuaded myself that not only was I infatuated with him but that he concealed a similar feeling for me.” She gave a strangled laugh.

“Well, he concealed it very well, and continued to do so for all the years of our marriage. He has the cleverest way of twisting words, of delivering a compliment that leaves everyone at the table smiling for me while only I see all the barbs it carries. To everyone else, he shows such a fair face. He seems an attentive, even a doting, husband to our friends and families. Yet to me…” She turned suddenly to face him. “Is it me, Sedric? Do I expect too much? Are all men like him? My father was sometimes tender, sometimes merry, and always kind to my mother.

Was that only for show before us children? When they were alone, was he cold and boorish and cruel?”

There was such need in her question, such honest confusion that he felt carried back in time to when they had been much younger. She had sometimes asked him such questions then, in full confidence that he was older and wiser in the ways of the world. Without thinking, he took her hand, and then wondered at himself. How could his feelings about her weathervane so freely? It was mostly her fault that he was in the forsaken place on this dreary vessel, and now bonded to a simpleminded dragon. How could he feel sympathy for her?

Perhaps because it was mostly his doing that she was locked in a marriage that was equally forsaken and dreary, bonded to a man who regarded her with the sort of affection usually reserved for a dog with mange?

“Hest isn’t like us,” he said, and he wondered if he had ever said a truer thing. “I don’t know if he loves anyone, in the way that we use the word. Certainly he values you. He knows that you are his hope for an heir.” His supply of glib words suddenly dried up. “Oh, Alise,” he said, sighing. He put his arm across her narrow shoulders. “No. He doesn’t love you. Yours is a marriage of convenience. It was convenient to Hest to have a wife, to settle down and try for an heir. His parents had begun to insist that he behave as a respectable Trader’s son should. With you, he could present those aspects without changing his ways too much. I am sorry, my friend. He doesn’t love you. He never has.”

He was braced for her to collapse into sobs. He was prepared to comfort her as well as he could. He did not expect her to suddenly sit up straight and square her shoulders. She sighed deeply, but no new tears welled. She sniffed a couple of times and then said flatly, “Well. That’s that, then. It’s what I expected. Probably what I deserve. I made a deal with him. I keep telling myself that. Maybe now that I’ve heard the truth from you as well, I can believe it all the way through my heart. And decide what I’m going to do about it.”

That sounded dangerous. “Alise, my dear, there is little you can do about it, except to make the best of it. Go home. Live respectably. Continue your studies, and add to them what you’ve learned from this expedition. Have a child, or children. They will love you as you deserve.”

“And loving them, I could condemn them to having a father like Hest?”

He could not find a response to that. He tried to imagine Hest as a father and could not. Children and sardonic wit would not blend. Elegance and wailing babies? A supercilious smile and a five-year-old offering a flower. He cringed at each thought. She was right, he slowly conceded. A child might be what Hest wanted and needed, for the sake of providing his line with an heir. But Hest as a father was the last thing that any child needed. Or deserved.

Alise wiped tears from her reddened cheeks. “Well. I have no solution to my dilemma. I promised to be his wife, to lie with him, to give him a child if I could. I gave my word. It was a bad bargain to be sure, but what am I to do? Just sail up the river and disappear forever?”

Her query sounded almost hopeful, as if he might accede to such a wild idea.

“You can’t.” He spoke the words bluntly. She couldn’t know he was answering his own question as well. He wanted to run away almost as much as she did. But the Rain Wilds was no place for either of them. Difficult as things were at home, they didn’t belong here. As often as he told himself that he could not go back, he knew even more clearly that he could not stay here.

She hung her head, looking at the floor, almost as if she had lost something there. When she brought her eyes up to meet his, a blush reddened her windburned cheeks to an even darker shade. “I came into your room while you were gone. When I thought you might be drowned and forever lost to me. I felt terrible at how I had neglected you. I imagined a hundred terrible things had befallen you—that you were dead, or lying injured somewhere, stranded and alone.” Her eyes wandered over his face, lingering on his bruises. “So I tidied your room and took your clothing to wash, thinking that if you did return, you’d know how badly I’d felt. And in the course of doing that, of straightening your bedding and so on, I—what’s that?”