Henry watched the corner of her mouth lift, and watched it stay so for the space of a breath longer than it ought to have done.
“Cousin Edmund.”
His heir presumptive bowed a second time and walked past Henry without offering his hand. The door of the morning room closed behind him. Henry waited until he heard the front door close.
“Sarah.”
His wife did not look at the maid, but the maid was already on her feet and gathering her work into the basket. She curtseyed quickly and went through the door.
“That was very poorly done.” Violet did not look at him. She looked at the orchid.
“He understood.”
“He understood that you are rude. That is what he understood. He came on a kind errand. He was charming, and gracious, and well-mannered, and I had been alone in this house. And you sent him from the room as though he had insulted you.”
“I sent him away hastily out of fear that he may take your smile for an offer.”
“How dare you.”
“I mean it as a compliment. I had not supposed you capable of such charm. You certainly do not waste any of it upon your husband.”
The colour broke back into her face in two hot patches at the cheekbones, high and bright.
“I am as charming to you, Your Grace, as you are to me.”
“Our agreement said nothing about charm.”
“So we understand each other.”
She took leave of the room quietly, unhurried.
Henry stood in the empty room and listened to the rain upon the window. And to the fire eating its way through the last of the coal in the grate. He resisted the temptation to throw the orchid into the fire.
He waited until the house was asleep.
It had become his habit on these nights, this new habit of the married man, to put it off until he could put it off no further. He undressed alone. He sat in the chair by his own fire in his dressing gown and watched the wood burn down and listened for the small movements through the connecting door to cease. When he was certain Sarah was off to bed and his duchess in hers, he knocked on the connecting door once. He turned the handle.
The room was dim. A single candle had been left burning on the small table beside the bed, and the fire had been let go low.
She was sitting up against the pillows in the white nightgown that buttoned to the throat. Her hair was down. Her hands lay loose at her sides upon the blanket. She did not clutch the linen this time.
“Your Grace.”
“Violet.”
She did not look at him. He had not expected her to. He moved to the small table in the corner of the room and retrieved the vial from the drawer. He drew the dressing gown off his shoulders and laid it across the chair. He felt the night air upon his back.
He turned to the bed with the vial in his hand and saw that her eyes were on the canopy. Her chin was a little lifted. Her throat showed pale in the candlelight, the small notch at the collar of the nightgown rising and falling more quickly than her stillness elsewhere accounted for.
He set one knee upon the mattress and paused when she spoke.
“Your Grace, will you put out the candle, please?”
He returned to the small table and blew out the candle.
Turning back to the bed, he kneeled. The mattress dipped with his weight. He took up the vial and uncorked it. The musty scent of the oil came up between them. He drew the hem of her nightgown up above her knees, and she made no sound, no movements. The skin of her thigh under his palm was warm. He put a little of the oil on his fingers and brought them to her, resting his hand there a moment before he moved.
You hardly touch me either.
