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He hoped so. His mother would give excellent advice. Still, he saw no need for his new bride to be corrected over her plate that morning. She had done little more than graze at the tray he had prepared the previous night before falling asleep, so it was only natural that she should be famished.

But he refused to intervene in the morning's discussion and let her mistake his logic for kindness.

"She needs to learn. The quicker she learns the ropes, the easier it will be," he said, exasperated, before turning back to the correspondence on his desk. Activity was heating up in France, and Napoleon's forces drew closer.

Surely they had far more important things to be discussing than his wife's stewardship lessons.

"I was thinking about her familiarity last night when I retired to my chambers…" Radnor pulled the notebook from his waistcoat, which he had produced yesterday, and prepared to continue, but Arthur slowly looked up from his desk.

"You were thinking about my wife, alone, whilst you lay in your quarters?" Arthur said slowly, considering each word his friend had just spoken.

He had seen how she smiled at Radnor and Laurence over breakfast, and how brazen she was in her affections towards strangers at the ball. That was another thing he hoped she would learn to curtail in time. Would such open affection encourage his friends to desire his wife?

Arthur observed Radnor's cheekbones darken slightly whilst Laurence, simply snorted. Not many people could make the usually stern and sensible Colonel embarrassed.

"Gods, not like that, Buck," Radnor said quickly. "I meant her name... and her eyes. What do you know of her lineage?"

He paused, disliking the answer's absence. It was a feeling he was entirely unaccustomed to.

Arthur always knew which course of action to take or how to answer a question. Mr Ellis had offered him a briefing on his new wife, which Arthur had declined at the time, seeing it as unnecessary. Now he looked at Radnor with his customary scowl, uncomfortable that his friend had placed him in this position.

"Not much," he gritted out almost regretfully. Knowledge had been his greatest weapon long before he had ever carried a sword.

He could deduce from the clothes she wore that she did not come from wealth. When he visited her chambers last night, he saw she owned very few possessions; her trunk already emptied, yet her wardrobe contained only three garments.

Arthur suspected she had probably been raised with many siblings in a home that inspired confidence, given her willingness to laugh loudly and smile so freely. And he knew for a fact that she came from the village of Windleham, but the extent of his knowledge of his wife ended there.

"Well," Radnor said carefully, "I think she could very well be the lost child of Lady Alice Harper."

Laurence let out a long, considerate whistle. Lady Alice Harper had been the Diamond of the Season some twenty years ago.

Arthur had been only around ten at the time, but she had graced every society paper in the country. It was rare for a diamond to have that level of attention, but the entire ton had been bewitched by her.

Radnor was three years older than Arthur and would have remembered her a little more vividly. At ten, Arthur had been skulking around the edges of drawing rooms whenever he was not away at boarding school.

But Lady Harper's true fame stemmed from a far more tragic reason.

She married Viscount Howe, a boorish and brutal naval admiral, which was likely why Radnor first made the connection, given that he came from a long line of military and naval families.

Whilst the Viscount was at sea, Lady Harper was rumoured to have had an affair with a foreign gentleman, said to be of Spanish or Indian descent, and she bore a child in the countryside.

She disappeared from society for several years before returning shortly after the Viscount's ship docked. A week following her reunion with the Viscount, she was found asleep upon a park bench in Bloomsbury Square.

It was a sleep from which she never woke.

Rumours spread rapidly that the Viscount had poisoned her, or worse. No investigation was ever conducted, which only fuelled the rumour mill. The tragic demise of one of society's brightest diamonds became the greatest scandal the ton had seen in years.

Eventually, Viscount Howe exiled himself to the colonies, unable to endure the endless speculation.

Nobody ever discovered what became of Lady Harper’s child. The longer Arthur considered it, the more plausible it became, but even if it proved true, Lady Harper was long dead. The knowledge could be of no practical use to either him or his wife, so Arthur simply stared at Radnor as he allowed himself to ponder.

Laurence, naturally, cut through their silent brooding.

"Well, would you look at that? Our Buck has potentially gone and scored himself a diamond legacy as a bride. Typical. Save some of that luck for the rest of us."

"This is merely conjecture for now," Arthur said curtly. "I would appreciate it if this information remained within Winworth's walls."

Sensing Arthur's desire to move on, Radnor nodded in agreement.