“Rosamund tells me you have been addressing the drainage on the Kent estate. How fascinating.”
“Rosamund is generous with the word ‘fascinating.’ The reality involves mud, money, and a surveyor who believes all problems can be solved by digging a larger hole.”
“And can they?”
“In my experience, Miss Whitby, the size of the hole is rarely the issue. It is the direction of the water.”
Eleanor’s eyebrow rose a fraction. Rosamund, who had been watching this exchange with the focused attention of a woman observing a fencing match, reached for her wine.
The meal proceeded. Eleanor asked questions—about the estate, about Clara’s schooling, about whether Tristan had considered engaging a music tutor for the child, since she appeared to have inherited her mother’s ear. Each question was a probe, and each probe was conducted with such impeccable courtesy that only someone who knew Eleanor very well would have recognised it as an interrogation.
Tristan recognised it. Rosamund could tell by the faint sharpening at the corner of his mouth—not irritation, but the dry amusement of a man who appreciated competent opposition.
“You are examining me, Miss Whitby.”
“I am having supper, Your Grace.”
“You are having supper the way a barrister has a conversation.”
“My father was a barrister. I shall take that as a compliment.”
“It was intended as an observation. Whether you take it as a compliment reveals rather more about you than about me.”
Eleanor set down her fork. Regarded him with an expression stripped of all social varnish.
“You are right. I am examining you. Because the woman sitting between us is the bravest person I have ever known, and she has endured more than any woman should, and I will not apologise for wanting to know whether the man she married is worthy of what she has survived.” She picked up her fork again. “The soup is excellent, I must say.”
Tristan was quiet for three beats. Then he said, “I… do not know how to be a husband. But I am willing to learn.”
Eleanor looked at him. Looked at Rosamund. Looked back at him.
“That,” she said, “is the first honest answer I have received from a man in four years.”
Rosamund drained her wine glass.
After supper, Eleanor collected her pelisse and her Cowper and paused at the front door. She held Rosamund’s hands.
“He is not what I expected.”
“No. He is not.”
“I do not say this to defend him.” Eleanor’s grip tightened. “But a man who admits he is not worthy and means it—that is a man who knows the weight of what he is asking to hold.” She released Rosamund’s hands. “Do not punish him for being human, Rosa. You have both been punished enough.”
She stepped into the evening. The door closed. The hall went quiet.
From the study, the sound of a chair being pushed back. Footsteps. Tristan appeared at the far end of the corridor, his coat off, his collar loosened. He stopped when he saw her.
“Has Miss Whitby rendered her verdict?”
“She pronounced the soup excellent.”
“And the duke?”
Rosamund looked at him—standing in the half-light of the corridor, his hair slightly disordered, his expression carrying the careful blankness of a man who cared more about the answer than he was prepared to show.
“Under review,” she said. “But the early results are promising.”
His mouth did the thing—the fractional shift that was not quite a smile but contained the structural components of one, held back by a discipline she was beginning to find less admirable and more maddening with every passing day.
