It was not that he was dreading marrying Cordelia. He was not dreading it, and he wondered if he ought to be. When he thought of marriage to her, he imagined a warm room, a fire in the grate, a chessboard or a pack of cards laid out. Fog pressing against the windows, but the light inside the room gleaming off rows of books in English and Persian. He thought of her soft voice as he fell asleep, reading to him in a language he did not yet know. He told himself he was being a fool. It would be awkward and strange, a peculiar dance they would do for each other’s sakes to last out the year until
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