The Gentleman's Gambit (A League of Extraordinary Women, #4)

by Evie Dunmore

“If I were to marry, I would only marry someone I loved,” she finally said. “Of course you would,” Hattie exclaimed. “I would still need time to just be inside my head. You know that I don’t eat or drink at regular times when I’m focused on something. I wouldn’t care about going to bed before midnight or hosting a social event and I would walk around thinking about the page I should write or translate whenever I’m not at my desk. Don’t tell me a husband wouldn’t come to resent this. He would begin voicing perfectly reasonable demands about my availability, about keeping a schedule, about acting like a regular wife. I would feel guilty. I would resent him, too, but because we love each other, we try. In the end, I would have to choose between the happiness of the man I love and living in a way that suits me, which is dreadful; either way we are probably so enmeshed by then that ripping his soul from mine would leave an open wound. We would both be in worse condition than we were before.