Ethan’s expression tightened.
“Ella, I didn’t do this to humiliate you.”
“Then what do you call it?”
He looked at the mask in his hand and seemed, for the first time since she had known him, ashamed of it.
“I took on Don Armando’s appearance because I wanted to get to know you—not as a rich man, but as a man.”
Ella stared at him.
Those were the words he had apparently been waiting to say.
They did not make her feel better.
“That doesn’t make sense,” she said.
“You came to me as a rich man anyway.
Everyone knew Don Armando was rich.”
Ethan nodded slowly.
“They knew he had money.
But they didn’t see someone young, admired, or powerful.
I wanted to know what someone would do when there was nothing attractive about the person attached to the wealth.”
Ella’s eyes filled.
“So I was an experiment.”
“No.”
“You watched me.
Every meal.
Every conversation.
Every time I couldn’t smile at you.”
He had no denial for that.
She remembered his gaze across the dining table.
The questions he never quite asked.
The strange comment about understanding the value of a person.
She remembered the butler saying everything his master did had a reason.
The clues rearranged themselves inside her mind until her entire marriage looked different.
“You were weighing me,” she whispered.
Ethan looked away.
That was answer enough.
Ella’s tears finally fell.
She had expected, when she agreed to the marriage, that she might sacrifice love.
She had prepared herself to live beside a man she did not desire because her mother’s lungs needed medicine and her brother needed school fees.
She had told herself she could endure discomfort if her family could survive.
But she had not agreed to be secretly examined.
“I told myself I was the dishonest one,” she said.
“I thought I was terrible because I married for money.
Every night, I felt guilty because you were kind to me and I couldn’t love you.”
Ethan’s face changed.
“Ella—”
“And all that time, you were lying too.”
He said nothing.
She wiped her face angrily.
“Maybe my reason was money.
But at least you knew my reason.
I never hid it from you.”
That landed harder than anything she had said before.
Ethan placed the mask on a nearby table.
Without it, without the heavy clothes and altered posture, he looked nothing like the man she had married.
Yet the voice was still his.
The restraint was still his.
Even the way he watched her now was familiar.
That made the truth more confusing, not less.
“You are right,” he said.
Ella blinked.
