“You look tired,” she heard herself say. The sort of observation that belonged between people who cared about each other’s wellbeing. She was not—she had told herself repeatedly, at increasing volume—such a person.
“I am quite well.”
“You are a dreadful liar.”
“I am an excellent liar. You simply pay closer attention than most.”
She rang for tea. Poured it. Handed him the cup, and this time their fingers met deliberately—or at least without effort to avoid it—and the contact lasted one second longer than necessary.
They sat. Rain streaked the windows. The fire spoke. For a while they simply existed in the same room without the excuse of Clara or a meal or a public performance.
“Clara has requested that Thornwick acquire a companion,” Rosamund said. “A smaller dragon. Blue. Named Marigold.”
“A blue dragon named after a flower.”
“She was adamant. And Marigold must be able to sing.”
“Naturally.”
“You will have to provide the singing voice.”
“I do not sing.”
“Then you shall learn. Clara does not accept excuses.”
He held her gaze. The amusement in his face softened the severe planes into something that made the air feel thinner.
“What else did you love?” he asked. Quietly. “Before.”
The word carried the weight of everything that had been taken—the house, the gardens, the parents, the life—and he laid it down between them without flinching from what it meant that he was the one asking.
“Music. My mother played the pianoforte—not well, but every evening after supper. And gardens. We had a walled garden in Hertfordshire. Roses my mother planted the year Clara was born. Lavender along the south wall you could smell from the lane.” She stopped. The memory arrived whole, vivid, merciless. “I thought it would always be there.”
He did not offer comfort or platitudes. He listened with the full weight of his attention, as though what she told him mattered more than the papers on his desk or the letters awaiting his seal.
“And you?” she asked. “Have you ever wished for a different life?”
“Once. I believed duty would be enough.”
“And now?”
A log settled in the grate.
“Now I am no longer certain.”
A loose page slipped from the edge of the desk. They both reached for it.
Her gloved fingers closed over his bare ones. Warm, solid, there. A heartbeat. His hand tightened—fractionally, involuntarily—before discipline took hold and he pulled away.
He straightened. Turned back to the fire.
“Forgive me.”
“There is nothing to forgive.”
She crossed the room. Reached the door. Her hand rested on the frame.
She did not turn back.
