Yesterday, the table had been lively with Dahlia and Helena, but tonight, dinner was once more a solitary affair.
Her friends had left, as all guests did. Rhys, despite all the talk of cohabitation and marriages of convenience, had simply vanished.
“Will you be needing anything else, Your Grace?” Mr. Grayson asked.
Celine blinked at the untouched roast, then at the untouched wine. “No, Grayson. Thank you. I’m—” She almost saidfine, but the word seemed a cruel joke tonight. “You may clear the table.”
She pushed back her chair and left the room before the butler could reply, her slippers soundless on the marble as she navigated the echoing hallway.
She could have walked straight to her rooms, could have buried herself in the limp remains of her embroidery or the long-abandoned romance novel. But something restless and sour kept her moving. It was as if her skin was too tight for her bones.
The scent of roasted duck and charred lemon trailed behind her as she passed the hallway that led to the west wing. She almost missed the figure in livery, nearly collided with him as he rounded the corner bearing a tray heavy with covered dishes and a bottle of the better brandy.
The footman paled and made a noise like a startled bird. “Beg your pardon, Your Grace. I was?—”
“Who is that for?” she demanded, her voice sharper than she had intended.
He shifted the tray from one arm to the other. “His Grace. In his study.” He bobbed his head, as if this might excuse the breach of dinner etiquette.
Celine stared at the tray, then at the footman, who was only doing his job, and finally at the closed study door down the hall. She took the tray from him, ignoring his protests, and walked with purposeful strides toward the study.
When she reached the door, she did not knock. She shoved it open with her hip.
Rhys looked up from the battered copy ofA Stolen Glance—the same volume she’d finished reading last week, the one with the infuriatingly oblivious lovers—and blinked at her over the rim of a brandy glass.
He wore no coat, only a linen shirt with the cuffs undone and a blue waistcoat that looked like it had seen better days. His hair was mussed. There was a patch of ink on his right hand, just below his thumb.
“Celine.” He hastily set the novel down, as if he’d been caught reading something far more salacious. “Is something the matter?”
She set the tray on his desk with a thud. A few drops of sauce leapt from beneath the silver dome and stained the open ledger.
“Is something the matter?” she hissed, fixing him with a glare she hoped would bore straight through his skull.
He seemed taken aback, but not enough for her liking. “If the kitchen sent the wrong wine, I’ll?—”
“It’s not the wine.” She leaned both hands on the desk, placing herself directly between him and the comfort of ignoring her. “It’s you.”
He blinked slowly. “Me?”
“You are, without question, the most spectacularly obtuse man in England.” The words spilled out, raw and almost foreign. “You’ve spent the last week hiding in here, pretending there is nothing unusual about eating every meal alone in this mausoleum of a manor, and you have the nerve to act as if you’re surprised to see me?”
He stared at her, his amber eyes wide. “I didn’t realize?—”
“Oh, please do not insult my intelligence by pretending you didn’t notice.”
She could feel the anger now, finally, blessedly, outstripping the sadness that had settled in her chest since her friends left.
“You know exactly what you’re doing. You’re following in your father’s footsteps as if he were a dance tutor—neglecting and treating your wife like a piece of inconvenient furniture.”
She realized she was shouting, but she didn’t care.
“At least your father had the decency to occasionally summon your mother for state dinners. You can’t even be bothered to sit at the same table.”
Rhys’s mouth twitched at the mention of his father, but he did not interrupt. He only watched her, his hands now clenched on top of the stained ledger, his jaw tight.
“Do you know what it’s like,” she continued, “to spend every day alone, with nothing but memories for company? To be married in name and never see your husband except when he deigns to pass you in the gardens, or when he wants to remark on the state of his tenants? I suspect you do. I suspect you know exactly what it’s like, and you’re recreating it by choice.”
She looked down, searching for words, and found only the tray, its contents already cooling.
