He moved his thumb, her breath changed. He did it again, and her hand came to his forearm, not to stop him but to hold on. He kept his mouth against her throat and felt her pulse hammering there and worked at her with a slowness that had everything to do with the fact that he did not want it to stop, until her grip on his arm tightened and her breathing went ragged and a sound came out of her, low and startled, that she had clearly not intended to make.
He had not known he wanted this. Not the act, the act he had managed after their wedding, but this: his wife shaking against him, her composure undone by something he had done with his own hand.
He lifted her onto the workbench. Two jars went to the floor and he did not care. She pulled him closer by the lapels of his dressing gown, and he took her there with the candle burning down and her face buried against his shoulder, and when she cried out it was not the sound of a woman enduring something but the sound of a woman who had forgotten, briefly, to be afraid.
Then it was over.
The cold came back to him by degrees. He stood away and set his clothes to rights. He found the handkerchief in his pocket and held it out without looking at her. She took it.
Something about the nearest corner of the room caught his attention.
“What is the matter?” she asked.
“There is something different about this room. I cannot say what.” His eyes moved around the walls. “There are nights I think this house is listening.”
He tied the gown and left her sitting on the workbench among his mother’s jars.
Henry found himself weary the next morning, his wife’s words circling his mind in a relentless loop.
Your doom is mine now, and mine is yours.
He had been at his desk for two hours and accomplished nothing. The ledger was open to the same page it had been open to when he sat down. The pen had dried twice. The headache from the brandy had settled behind his eyes, a dull steady pressure he had earned.
He dipped the pen. The pen hovered over his ledger. He could not recall what he was about to write.
Mrs Greer knocked twice and entered with the straightness of spine that meant she was bracing for his reaction. She had been his governess before she became the housekeeper, and she was always the one who brought him the news no one dared.
“Good morning, Your Grace.”
“Good morning, Mrs Greer.”
“Her Grace had gone out two mornings past in the ducal carriage. Alone.”
He did not look up from the ledger. His agitation, which had not been put out completely since his marriage, was simmering now.
He turned a blank page. “And?”
“Her Grace was upset when she returned. She had been crying. Or near to it. She said she was perfectly well, but she didn’t seem well to me, Your Grace.”
Henry stopped pretending nonchalance.
“Did she say where she had been?”
“Sarah said Her Grace had gone to a herbalist. Renshaw’s on Lamb’s Conduit Street.”
He put the pen down. He lined it up with the edge of the blotter. He did not look at Mrs Greer.
“Her Grace told Sarah in confidence, but Sarah thought it best to inform me given the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
“Apparently the proprietor suggested Her Grace try Covent Garden.”
Henry leaned back in his chair. “Did she tell him who she was?”
Mrs Greer touched her temple. “She did, but the man didn’t believe her and chased her out of the shop.”
Henry’s chair scraped back from the desk. “Why is she still wearing servant’s clothing?”
