Violet pushed off the floor and sat upright, looking at him. “And what did Sarah have to speak to you so urgently about?”
Henry hesitated for a beat before deciding he owed her the truth.
“My brother, Harold, left a child. I never knew of it until Sarah came to me. She and Harold had an affair. I have seen them provided for since, for Harold’s sake, although I have never met the boy.”
“Oh.”
He took a step forward, closing the door behind him. His wife startled then hurried to her feet. She made a great show of replacing the jars in their rightful place.
“Something else is on your mind,” he said, looking at the firm line of her mouth.
“I am vexed.”
He didn’t mean to sigh so loudly, but he did. “About your friend, I gather.”
“Yes.” She whirled to face him. “The people who came to this house today did so out of love for me and got a cold word and shoulder for it. They are my friends and you treated them horribly.”
“They might be your friends, but they came out of curiosity, not concern for you. If they were your friends, where were they when the six of you were shivering in the cold? The fruits on the woman’s bonnet alone could have fed you for days.”
“Mrs Bickle is Mama’s dear friend and has been like the second mother to me. And Letty ismyfriend. I do not need you to approve. I only need you to respect them becauseIdo.”
Henry scoffed. “And Mr Harris? How good of a friend is he for him to be present during my visit, during our contract signing, and even today? What is he to you? To your family?”
“He’s a friend. No more. He has been looking after our family for years. He was Father’s secretary. Now he helps around the property without pay. He prepares firewood, repairs holes in the roof, keeps vagabonds away.”
Henry laughed, the sound cynical in tone.
“What do you find so amusing?” she snapped.
“If Harris is a secretary, I am a lamb. There is nothing remotely secretarial about the man except perhaps his use of the letter opener for a different purpose.”
“That is nonsense.”
“We shall disagree. No matter. I do not want them near this house or near you any longer.”
“You cannot be serious!”
Henry took a step closer to his wife. She tilted her head back to look up at him.
“I am nothing but serious where the reputation of this family is concerned. We already have enough scandals between us to feed the gossip sheets for the rest of our lives.”
“They are not beggars! They are respected in their circles, and I care about them.”
He was about to avert his gaze from her flushed cheeks, rosy lips in a pout, when her hand turned his chin.
“And where areyourfriends? Where were they when thetonaccused you of murder? When you were grieving? I did not hear anyone speak up on your behalf, declaring your innocence. If they had, you would not have had to marry the likes of me.”
Her last words had him still. “The likes of you? You are not the same as your friends. You are a baron’s daughter. You are a lady.”
She lifted her gaze to him, her eyes wary. “Only in name. If I die in this house, the madwoman’s daughter, they will only say it was a kinder fate than my mother’s. And you? One more dead wife and you are finished, duke or not. So you see, your doom is mine now, and mine is yours.”
Neither of them moved. The candle on the workbench threw their shadows against the jars, and the stillroom was quietenough that he could hear the fire shifting in the kitchen range through the wall.
He did not know which of them closed the distance. Her hand was on his chest, flat against the bare skin where the gown had fallen open, and his hand was on her hip, and neither gesture had been planned or permitted. Her palm was cold from the flagstones. He felt it through his whole body.
His thumb found the ridge of her hip and pressed. When she did not pull away, he drew her closer. His mouth went to her throat—not her lips, because that was a thing he had not done since Elizabeth and he was not prepared to learn whether he still could. Her breath caught against his ear. The sound went through him like a fissure through ice, and whatever had been holding him in place gave way.
He gathered her skirts and found the skin above her knee. She stiffened, then did not. His hand moved higher, slow, deliberate, with none of the mechanical haste of the nights that had come before. When he touched her, she was slick without the oil, and the discovery of that undid something in him he had not known was still held together.
