“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I was not the one who stormed out of the house in a snit.”Shehad merely stormed upstairs.
That muscle flexed so hard she would have sworn she heard it creak with the strain of it. “Men don’t have snits,” he said, with a fierce rap of his cane upon the ground as if to punctuate the declaration.
“Then what would you call your behavior, if not a snit?”
“It was—I was—” Plainly he was unaccustomed to being called to account for himself. “Ah, hell. I suppose it was a snit.” He lifted the cane to tap the bench. “Budge up,” he said.
“I was here first!” She relaxed her fingers, which were in imminent danger of crushing the assorted bits of fruits and vegetables in the cup of her palm.
“It’s my damned bench!” A harsh sound rent the air, too severe for a sigh. “Damn it all, Phoebe, I’m trying to apologize.”
“Are you? You’re not very good at it.” Still, even that small acknowledgment was the tiniest salve to her wounded pride. She scooted a few inches to the right. Not quite enough room for him to comfortably fit in the space she had vacated, but then shewasstill angry.
Somehow he made himself fit nonetheless, stretching out his injured knee and bracing his cane across his lap and hers. “No, I don’t suppose I am. I don’t have to do it very often.”
“Ah,” she said, in a dry tone. “I suppose you’re one of those men who are never wrong, then.”
“No. Likely I’m wrong a great deal. It’s just that I don’t often feel the need to apologize for it. And anyone who’s got a problem wiv it can go ‘ang.” His gloved fingers pinched off a sigh that emerged through his nose. “But you’re not just anyone,” he said. “You’re my wife.”
Phoebe gave a disdainful sniff and bent down to offer Hieronymus a slice of strawberry.
“Iamsorry,” Chris said. “I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”
“If you shout at me, I am going to shout back.” Hieronymus chomped his way through the strawberry and gave her a stare of disappointment when she hadn’t another slice of it to offer. “I was only trying to help,” she said. “It’s what you married me for.”
“I know,” he said.
“Are you going to shout at me again?”
“Probably,” he said. “I’ve got a hell of a temper and not much practice in restraining it. Sometimes I’m a miserable arse about it. So, yes, I’ll likely shout at you again. But I’ll apologize. Eventually. If I’m wrong.” His shoulder nudged hers. “And I won’t forget my waistcoat next time.”
Phoebe supposed it was more of a concession than she had expected of him. “I worked quite hard upon dinner,” she said. “Your whole staff did.”
“I realized that,” he said. “Earlier this evening. I went to visit Charity—”
“Charity?”
“My mistress,” he said. “I’ve got a flat in Cheapside. She lives there.”
“Oh.” Was that why he’d returned in so slovenly a state? Some strange feeling fluttered behind the cage of her ribs. Not jealousy, exactly—she’d known he had a mistress and had felt no small amount of relief over that fact. But a certain vaguely unsettled feeling that one small argument had sent him fleeing into her arms.
“She said you were right. Not in so many words, but the implication was clear.” Chris rubbed at his jaw, scraping his palm over the stubble that still covered it. “You’d like her,” he said. “She speaks her mind. Like you.”
“Youdoneed a valet,” Phoebe said with a huff. “I’m a little offended that you’ll listen to your mistress, but not to me.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “I didn’t listen to Brooks, either. But I’llconcede that you’d have reason to know, and that I ought to have listened—or at least not taken such offense.” He muffled a laugh beneath his palm as Hieronymus turned up his beak at the raspberry Phoebe offered. “Cabbage,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“He likes cabbage. And grapes, and blueberries. Apples, when they’re in season. He won’t eat them dried. He’s sick unto death of oranges. But then, so am I. Here,” he said, and took her hand in his, collecting the remaining bits of fruit. “Feed him from the palm of your hand. He’s an overzealous eater at times; you’ll be less likely to get bitten.”
The scant moonlight revealed strange stains wreathing his knuckles, and a bit of torn fabric. “What has happened to your gloves?” she asked, pulling her hand out from beneath his to touch her fingertips to a stain, and they came away red.
He gave a small hiss of pain. “Blood, most likely. I was still angry when I left Charity. Found some deserving fellow to take it out upon.” At her blank stare, he clarified, “My old flat is above my…office, as it were, and there’s a brothel next door. In my younger days, the madam paid me to teach a lesson to gents who got too rough with her girls.”
“And there was someone to—to teach a lesson to this evening?”
“Always is.” He winced as she plucked at the buttons of his gloves, delicately rolling the fabric up his wrist and toward his fingers. “Ow. Careful,” he said as it stuck to his bloodied knuckles.
