“Will you come?” John asked.

“I think not,” Michael said sharply. As if he cared to witness their anniversary celebration. Truly, all it would do was remind him of what he could never have. Which would then remind him of the guilt. Or amplify it. Reminders were rather unnecessary; he lived with it every day.

Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Cousin’s Wife.

Moses must have forgotten to write that one down.

“I have much to do here,” Michael said.

“You do?” Francesca asked, her eyes lighting with interest. “What?”

“Oh, you know,” he said wryly, “all those things I have to do to prepare for a life of dissolution and aimlessness.”

Francesca stood.

Oh God, she stood, and she was walking to him. This was the worst-when she actually touched him.

She laid her hand on his upper arm. Michael did his best not to flinch.

“I wish you wouldn’t speak that way,” she said.

Michael looked past her shoulder to John, who had raised his newspaper just high enough so that he could pretend he wasn’t listening.

“Am I to become your project, then?” Michael asked, a bit unkindly.

She drew back. “We care about you.”

We. We. Not I, not John. We. A subtle reminder that they were a unit. John and Francesca. Lord and Lady Kilmartin. She hadn’t meant it that way, of course, but it was how he heard it all the same.

“And I care for you,” Michael said, waiting for a plague of locusts to stream through the room.

“I know,” she said, oblivious to his distress. “I could never ask for a better cousin. But I want you to be happy.”

Michael glanced over at John, giving him a look that clearly said: Save me.

John gave up his pretense of reading and set the paper down. “Francesca, darling, Michael is a grown man. He’ll find his happiness as he sees fit. When he sees fit.”

Francesca’s lips pursed, and Michael could tell she was irritated. She didn’t like to be thwarted, and she certainly did not enjoy admitting that she might not be able to arrange her world-and the people inhabiting it-to her satisfaction.