“I’ve been spending more time in the gardens.” Cressida accepted the bread the footman offered. “We took the rose walk this morning.”
“We.” Lady Seymore did not make a production of the word. She simply placed it with care and let it sit. “Excellent. Theodore, the roses are extraordinary this year.”
“I said as much this morning,” Theodore said.
“Good. That is exactly what I thought.” A brief pause, immaculate in its timing. “Now, I was going to ask about your plans for the summer, and I imagine we shall get to it. But I find myself thinking of the long term. You’ve been married for what, eight weeks?”
“Eight weeks,” Cressida confirmed.
“Eight weeks.” Lady Seymore set down her wine. “The nursery here is very fine, you know. The east-facing windows get the morning light beautifully. I always thought it a great pity it sat empty.”
Theodore’s hand, which had been reaching for his wine glass, stilled, and Cressida noticed. She also noticed the particular quality of his stillness.
“The nursery,” he said, his voice neutral.
“Indeed. I imagine you’ve both given it thought.”
“I haven’t,” he said flatly.
Cressida looked at him across the candlelight. “Surely it’s a conversation worth having.”
He looked back. “It’s not a subject for the dinner table.”
“All right,” she said pleasantly. “We’ll discuss it afterwards.”
A hint of irritation flashed across his face at having his dismissal so cleanly redirected. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
The table held its breath.
“I beg your pardon?” Cressida said.
“I mean exactly what I said.” He reached for his wine, unhurried. “Do not get your hopes up.”
Her eyebrows lowered over her eyes. “Why not?”
Lady Seymore had gone very still, obviously paying extremely close attention but pretending as though she was not.
Theodore set his glass down. The ease that had been present in him this morning, however cautiously, had receded entirely. In its place was the careful, level distance Cressida recognized from the first weeks of their marriage—the look of a man who had retreated to ground he trusted.
“The scandal sheets.”
Those words arrived without ceremony, abrupt and cold.
Cressida felt the injury move through her chest, followed immediately by something steadier and older: the refusal to absorb a charge she had not earned.
“No,” she said.
“No?”
“No, I did not leak anything to the scandal sheets.” Her voice was level. “Miss Oakley wished to marry Lord Emerton. My engagement stood between her and that ambition. She possessed the means, the motive, and the opportunity. She was present at my parents’ house when my grandmother and I spoke in the garden, and she had heard enough.”
“That is a theory.”
Her eyes flashed. “It is the only theory that accounts for every fact in evidence.”
“Then it is a false theory!”
Chapter Twenty
