They began after the children were asleep, when the house had settled into its nighttime quiet and the only sounds were the crackle of the fire and the distant murmur of wind through the garden. Rhys would be in the study, pretending to read correspondence or examining estate reports, and Mel would appear in the doorway with her particular knock, two quick raps that had become as familiar as his own heartbeat.
Their main topic of conversation was about the children.
Anna’s advancing studies and her increasingly sophisticated organisational systems. Viola’s emerging confidence, the way she had begun to speak in full sentences rather than whispers, the drawings that now included not just her sisters but herself.Thistle’s latest expeditions and the growing menagerie of creatures she had convinced Mel to help her classify.
“She wants to write to the Royal Society,” Mel reported one evening, her voice carrying that particular blend of exasperation and admiration that Thistle seemed to inspire in everyone. “She has compiled a list of observations about toad behaviour that she believes will revolutionise natural philosophy.”
“Will it?”
“It is a remarkably detailed account of Brutus’s eating habits and preferred sleeping positions. I doubt the Royal Society will be moved to revolution, but I have not discouraged her from attempting it.”
“You never discourage any of them from attempting things.”
“Discouragement is the enemy of learning. Children should be allowed to fail at ambitious projects; it teaches them more than success at easy ones.”
These conversations stretched longer with each passing evening. The children gave way to books, to philosophy, to the wider world beyond Hartfell’s walls.
He discovered that she read Hume and Locke, that she had opinions about the social contract that would have scandalised most drawing rooms in London. She discovered that he had actually read the parliamentary reports he was supposed to be attending to, that he had views on tenant reform and agricultural improvement that did not align with the dissolute rake persona the gossip sheets had constructed.
“You read Adam Smith?”
The question came on an evening in the fourth week, when they had somehow wandered from discussing Anna’s mathematical aptitude to the broader question of education and its relationship to economic prosperity. Mel was seated in her usual chair, a cup of tea cooling beside her, her expression caught between surprise and reassessment.
“I read everything.” Rhys set down his own cup and met her gaze.
“Being a rake leaves a lot of empty hours. When one is not actively gambling or scandalising society, there is quite a bit of time for reading.”
“That may be the saddest thing you’ve ever said.”
“Wait. I have more.”
Something shifted in her face. The careful composure cracked, and what emerged was… the sound of laughter.
It was brief and had escaped her lips clearly against her will, clamped down almost as soon as it began. But he heard it. He heard the genuine amusement in it, the surprise at her own response and the brief liberation from the control she usually maintained.
It was the most beautiful sound he had heard since Celeste sang to the girls.
“You should do that more often,” he said, before he could stop himself.
The laugh disappeared, replaced by her more familiar guarded expression.
“Do what?”
“Laugh. Let yourself find things amusing without immediately suppressing it.”
“I don’t suppress…” She stopped, apparently recognising the absurdity of denying something she had just demonstrated.
“I am simply… measured. In my responses.”
“You are measured in everything. It’s one of your more frustrating qualities.”
“I wasn’t aware that my qualities were the subject of your evaluation.”
“You evaluate everyone. You told me so yourself.‘I observe. It’s what I do.’I am simply observing in return.”
She was quiet for a moment, her fingers wrapped around her teacup in that particular way she had when she was thinking carefully about what to say next.
“And what do your observations tell you?”
