Percy may not have intended to make her feel worse, but with everything that had already gone on, and then trying to explain social class hierarchy in a time when it wasn't nearly as prevalent in society here. At least, it hadn't seemed as such to Marguerite. Of course, she hadn't needed to prostitute herself to take care of Armand, either. Had she needed to, she would have because she knew herself well enough to know that she'd have taken whatever course of action necessary even here.
Proof of her being human really didn't make any difference. All it did was haunt her. She knew Chauvelin would never feel guilt for anything he had done. The only reason he had run here was because he didn't want to get caught. The pain he caused? He undoubtedly thought it was his right. He thought he could possess her. And being human meant making mistakes and having to live with them. It meant that no one was perfect and while she fully accepted her personal faults, how she could see red and not think rationally it didn't make it any easier. It just reminded her she was alive even when she wished the guilt didn't haunt her here as much as it did.
She wasn't naive. She knew about the whispers. She had dealt with them both in France and those who thought her a traitor for marrying an aristo and forsaking the revolution that had truly forsaken the people, and she had heard the whispers in England. The upper society wives who had nothing better to do than gossip. Oh, she could make them think she was unaware. Could be hostess and guest, do the role just right but she had always been an outsider. There had been no one there who understood or really tried to. Marie briefly, but she had known that they would have turned on Percy as well if the truth were known.
The step back was all it took for her heart to feel like it was breaking. It didn't matter how small it may be, she had still noticed. She understood, of course she understood. Hadn't she already lived through this in one lifetime? Hadn't she dreamt of it and felt that pain night after night? Yet there had been hope. A chance to start over and now he was dead in the dreams and she had no idea what to think any more. The fact he didn't think she trusted him?
"What?! No!"
From an outsider, it could look that way, but how was she supposed to explain it? Just because she had been given her proof on how his society would have reacted to anything 'lower' than an actress when that was the world he had grown up in? Where his friends existed, a lifetime of connections?
"I felt you wouldn't want to insult me by asking and that's why you would ask Armand." That was the easier one to address but she knew that if they were going to have this heart to heart, be honest, she had to go into the rest of it. "If I didn't trust you, I never would have married you. I never would have introduced you to Armand. No matter what people thought, it was never about money or comfort. It wasn't that I didn't think you would throw us out.. I was just afraid and fear makes us do stupid things, it clouds our judgement."
Looking at Percy as he remained standing, Marguerite shook her head.
"We grew up in completely different worlds, Percy. Those experiences, they shaped us and coloured our reactions. And I can't ask you to understand that, I can't ask you to understand how growing up as I did, fighting for everything means that the automatic reaction is fight, hold on, do whatever it takes. And i wouldn't want you to know that life. I wouldn't want to drag you down because of it."
His apology was just met with a tired nod.
"I'm sorry, too. And if you want me to leave, I will."