“I’m sorry,” he repeated, “sorry that I kept you when I didn’t know how to care for you. The truth is, loving you took me by surprise. The way love feels ambushed me. It feels brutal. Like an unstoppable force. It demands to be accommodated, against reason, regardless of all that might have been before, and I had too little practice to master it well. I suppose I thought I could remain who I was, and still begin anew with you, but that was wrong. You did right, asking me to let go of Rutland. But I had lived with rage for so many years I saw it no longer; it was part of me, and had I let it
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