“You look so serious, Marielle.” His eyes seemed to bore into hers, wanting the answers to a thousand questions.

She tried to smile, and turned away before she looked at him again. “It's a difficult day…for both of us…” If it were otherwise, they wouldn't have been there. It still seemed remarkable to her that they were standing here together, after all these years, in Saint Patrick's Cathedral. “Have you come home for good?” She was curious about him. He looked bigger and stronger than he had before, more powerful, and as though he would tolerate even less nonsense. And difficult as it was to believe, his nerves seemed even closer to the surface.

He shook his head, wishing they could slip into a pew and talk all day. “I don't think I could stand it here. I've been back for three weeks, and I'm already itching to go back to Spain.”

“Spain?” She raised an eyebrow. His life seemed so integrally interwoven with Paris and their memories there; it was hard to imagine him somewhere else now.

“The war there. I've been there for two years.”

She nodded then. It made perfect sense. “I wondered once if you were there.” It was his kind of battle. “Somehow I had a feeling you would go.” She'd been right, and he had no reason not to. Nothing to lose. Nothing to gain. Nothing to stay home for.

“And you?” He looked pointedly at her. It was odd asking each other for news here, and yet they each wanted to know what the other had been doing.

It was a long moment before she spoke, and then she answered him very softly. “I'm married.”

He nodded, trying not to look as though she had caused him pain, although in truth she had run a dagger into a wound that had long festered. “Anyone I know?” It was unlikely, as he had lived abroad for the last seventeen years, but she looked as though she were married to at least an Astor.