The Professor's Captive Wife novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Why He Married Me

I'd never knocked on the study door.

In two years, I'd never once gone in after he shut it.

I knocked at ten o'clock that night, and I didn't wait for him to answer.

He was at his desk with a lamp on and a book open that he wasn't reading.

The leather couch was against the wall under the window.

There was a pillow on it, and a grey wool blanket folded into a perfect square.

The sight of that blanket made me angrier than anything Theresa had said.

"You're back in your classroom tomorrow," I said.

He took off his glasses.

"The chair called this afternoon."

"You didn't tell me."

"You were at the café with the student." He set the glasses down on the open book. "And then you went to see Theresa."

"How do you know that?"

"Her assistant has worked in that office for three years. He was my student." Eliot's voice was very dry. "He sent me an email that said, in full, 'Your wife brought pastries. It was incredible.'"

I almost laughed.

I didn't let myself.

I walked to the middle of the rug and stood there, the way I'd stood in the faculty club.

"Why did you marry me?"

He went still.

I'd asked it a dozen times over two years, usually at dinner, usually lightly, so he could pretend it was a joke.

This time I didn't make it light.

"Don't get up," I said. "Don't go make tea. Don't tell me it's late. Answer it."

He looked at me for a long time.

Then he said it, in the same quiet voice he used to read aloud.

"Because I couldn't breathe when you left a room."

I stopped breathing myself.

"The first night you served my table, you told the dean of engineering his wine was corked, and it was. You were right, and he was furious, and you didn't apologize." He looked down at his hands. "I came back to that club four nights a week for six months to watch you not apologize to people."

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