She wanted to know what love is. The corner of his mouth twitched. She thought she wanted to know what love is! The other corner of his mouth threatened upward. Fool! Silly girl! Idiot! Was that a violin playing frantically in the next room to a villainous monologue?

It stopped abruptly – and so too did his urge to pull in the reins on what could be the worst choice of his life.

“I cannot offer you the love of a child,” he conceded with a shrug of the hand, “but I can offer you the love of a man.”

He doubted she would earn it, and certainly not in the sense a woman like her was used to loving a man. But, if he could love Menachem even as tempting as it was to shoot him whenever he saw him, he could probably love a wife in the same grudging way.

Zechariah frowned. He had wished such a fate on her and every single Ward, including some of the male ones … but he had never expected it to come so close to home. He thought of Alice. How nice he thought her suffering would be, only to come face-to-face with her livid, rotten husband. There was a flicker of unease.

“Then stay with me,” he implored, putting a hand over hers. “There is a spare bedroom upstairs, and I am plenty able to afford a doctor for my soon-to-be wife and children. You could have a comfortable life, here.”