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"She told anyone who would listen that no duke in his right mind would wed so abruptly unless an heir was the sole object." Charlotte picked up her tea again. "She is not entirely wrong about the timing, Adelaide. The expedition departs within weeks."

"The expedition has been planned for a long time."

"And the wedding was arranged in days." Charlotte sipped her tea. "I am not saying the ton is correct. I am saying the ton is talking, and they will not stop."

Adelaide smoothed her napkin across her lap. The sunlight warmed her hands where they rested in her lap, and the biscuit sat untouched on the plate. She had known the gossip would come. She had not known it would cut quite so close to the bone.

Charlotte set her cup down again. She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a confidential murmur.

"I must ask you something, and you need not answer if you do not wish to."

"Since when have you ever required my permission to ask anything?"

"Since the question matters." Charlotte's eyes held hers, steady and serious. "How are you, Adelaide? As a wife watching her husband prepare for a voyage that may kill him?"

The question landed in the quiet room like a stone dropped into still water.

Adelaide looked at her tea. The surface caught the light, small ripples spreading from where her hand trembled against the cup.

"I entered this marriage with open eyes, Charlotte. I knew what it was."

"And what was it?"

"A matter of mutual benefit." Adelaide kept her voice even. "He required a wife to secure the trust and the estate. I required—" She paused, gathering her thoughts. "I required something of my own. A life beyond Ashwood Manor. I understood the terms from the outset."

"And those terms did not include romance?"

"They did not."

"Or grand gestures?"

"Those either."

"Or devotion?"

Adelaide picked up her teacup. She drank, finding the tea had gone lukewarm, before setting it down again.

"Devotion is not something one expects, Charlotte. It is something one earns, or does not."

That is a lie. Every word of it is a lie.

The thought rose in her mind. She had not entered this marriage expecting nothing. She had entered it hoping for everything. And in the weeks since, hope had curdled into a deep, desperate hunger. She had begun to crave the brush of Julian's fingers against hers when they reached for the same journal. She had bloomed beneath the rare warmth of his smile across the breakfast table, leaning toward it the way a pressed flower leans toward moisture.

And when he withdrew, when his face shuttered, and his boots retreated down the hallway, and the adjoining door clicked shut between them, something inside her folded in on itself.

Charlotte reached across the small space between them and took Adelaide's hand.

"Dearest. You are allowed to want things."

"I want nothing I have not been given."

"That is not what I asked." Charlotte squeezed her fingers gently. "I asked whether you are permitted to harbor expectations. And you are. Every wife is."

"I am not every wife. I married a man who is still in love with his brother's ghost."

The words escaped before Adelaide could stop them. She pulled her hand back, her cheeks burning.

Charlotte did not flinch. "Perhaps. But a man who carries that much loyalty in his heart is a man capable of profound love, Adelaide. Even a marriage born of practical convenience can grow into a devotion neither party anticipated."