Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas

the sort to throw tantrums.”
    “I can't believe he left town already,” said Freddie. “He arrived only yesterday afternoon.”
    “There is nothing keeping him here, is there?” Gigi said.
    They were in the back parlor where they usually took tea together, a room done in shades of lavender: the upholstery amethyst brocade, the draperies lilac velvet, and the tea service white with borders of wisteria. In her youth she had disdained all but the primary colors, but now she appreciated a broader segment of the spectrum.
    And so it was with Freddie. At eighteen—or perhaps even twenty-three—she'd have scoffed at an alliance with such a shy, unworldly man. She'd have seen him as an embarrassment, a burden. But she had changed. The only thing she saw when she looked at Freddie was the shining goodness of his heart.
    “Where did he go?” Freddie asked anxiously. “When will he be back?”
    “He didn't bring a valet, so there is no one to tell us anything. I wouldn't even know he had gone off somewhere if Goodman hadn't overheard him telling the cabbie to take him to the train station.”
    She was incensed that he made free use of her house and her staff without informing her of his movements—the least courtesy, surely. She was also profoundly relieved by the small respite of his absence.
    The way she had ogled him this morning—at his torso, which seemed to have been sculpted by the hands of Bernini himself, smooth, lean, lithe, with long, beautifully sinewed arms like those of a seasoned sailor—could she have done anything more mortifying short of dropping her handkerchief and falling to the floor in a dead faint?
    She and Freddie sat down side by side on the chaise longue. “Tell me what he wanted,” said Freddie. “He must have wanted something.”
    She had been able to think of nothing but what Camden wanted. Even now, with him miles away, she was still distracted and tense. Disaster, that was what he wanted. For what else could bedding her achieve but somehow, somewhen, calamity on an epic scale?
    “He is not convinced that we should be divorced for something as trivial as me wishing to marry someone else,” she said. It was beyond her to tell Freddie that her husband meant to invoke his long-abdicated rights and shag her until she showed something for it. Nor could she reveal that she would submit to this connubial copulation, while planning to make use of every device ever invented to block conception.
    What was it about Camden that turned her into such a chiseler and now a double-crosser? “But he's willing to be reasonable. If we are still determined to marry in a year's time, he'll let the divorce proceed.”
    “A year!” Freddie exclaimed. Then he breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, if that's his only condition, then it's not half so bad. We can wait a year. It will be an awfully long year, but we can wait.”
    “Freddie.” She gripped his hand, gratitude inundating her heart. “You are so good to me.”
    “No, no! You are the one who's good to me! Everyone else thinks I'm clumsy and dense. You are the only person who thinks I'm all right.”
    On any other day she'd have preened with pride, to think that at last she possessed the depth and maturity necessary to appreciate a diamond of the first water like Freddie, when all about her, men and women were still blinded by superficialities. But today her depth and maturity truly made their presence known. She was more than humbled; she felt unworthy. But she could not say it. Freddie looked to her for strength and guidance. She must not tumble off her pedestal now.
    “I am most certainly not. I know for a fact that Miss Carlisle thinks highly of you.”
    Miss Carlisle was in love with Freddie. She was dignified and self-contained about it, but she could not conceal it from Gigi. Normally, Gigi would not have pointed out such a thing to Freddie. But these were not normal times, and her guilt overshadowed her possessiveness.
    “Angelica? Really?