“Problem?” Ambrose asked, tossing the letter on the little glass table by his favorite chair and crossing his arms.
Zeller cleared his throat, running his gloved fingers over the curling ends of his neat, white mustache. “You wish to receive the lady here?” he asked, glancing around like he wouldn’t recommend it.
“Where else?” Ambrose asked impatiently. “Is there a new sitting room I’m yet unaware of?”
The mustache twitched. “Very good, sir,” said Zeller judgementally, and then he turned to leave, evidently pleased to have delivered a side helping of uncertain anxiety along with his announcement of Vix’s arrival.
As a result, Vix got to enter the room to find her soon-to-be husband wearing a grimace.
Curated, icy thing that she was, she barely blinked, simply setting her reticule on the sideboard, looking around the dusty parlor, and saying, “Good afternoon, Ambrose,” like this wasn’t the first time she’d come to see him in person in weeks. “You aren’t dressed.”
He looked down at himself, and finding his body to be fully covered in the appropriate amount of textile, looked back up at her in puzzlement. “I’m not naked.”
“For the ceremony,” she clarified, raising her brows. “I’m not sure why I assumed you’d be wearing your kit all day long, but I suppose I did expect it.”
He looked out the window, just to ensure that the sun was still only about midway through its journey over the sky, then back at his fiancée. “I usually only need a modest four or five hours to get dressed, Vix.”
“Is that all?” she replied with a tiny curve of her lips. “How austere.”
He gave a tired chuckle, gesturing to the chair to the right of his own, on the other side of the little glass table holding the cursed letter he’d been suffering when she arrived.
She tilted her head gratefully and crossed the room to sit, allowing him to follow her with his eyes as she moved.
“Tell me,” he said, “have you had any correspondence reacting to the banns? Any shocked figures from your past or present, demanding to know why they were not alerted directly to your impending nuptials?”
She gave a fluttering little sigh. “Not half so many as I’d hoped, after the announcement in theStandard,” she said, waving her hand. “Two acquaintances from school wrote to drip saccharine congratulations all over me in ink, but I knew neither of them well enough to either enjoy or resent the effort. You?”
“Oh,” he said with a wince, nodding at the letter, “just my mother.”
She paused, surprise flickering across her face as she reached out to pluck the letter from its perch, her eyes scanning the lines with quick precision. She released a narrow little breath like she could feel his pain.
“It likely should have occurred to me,” he said, watching her read it, “that my parents might notice my name during the bannsin their own godforsaken Sunday service. But, you know, it really did not.”
She cut a glance at him over the top of the letter, dry and flat. “She wants to know if I am pregnant,” she informed him, like he hadn’t read the damned thing himself.
He gave what he hoped was an apologetic face, though he suspected it was more of a visage of pain. “You’re not, are you?”
She huffed out a little breath that almost sounded like amusement. “No.”
“She will be disappointed to hear that,” he said. “I think?”
She snorted then, her hand coming up quickly to brush over her amusement, dark eyes crinkling at the corners.
He looked at her in affront.
“I am sorry,” she said, shaking her head and setting the letter aside. “But if you were my charge, I should have already sent you to bed without supper.”
“My dear woman,” he said sadly. “I’m afraid Iamyour charge.”
She shook her head. “Absolutely not. I am done governing children. If you wish to abstain from dinner, you shall have to enforce it on yourself.”
“Pity,” he said with a long sigh. “If you haven’t come here to punish me, then to what do I owe the pleasure?”
She blinked at him, as though she herself was not certain. “It seemed like it would be odd,” she said, tilting her head, “to only see you at the ceremony, after only having spoken through tailors and butlers for some weeks.”
“Odd? According to my parents, that is the hallmark of a healthy marriage,” he said with a crooked smile.
“Ah, then perhaps I am remiss,” she answered with a shrug. “I suppose I am also restless. There are many hours to pass before it is time to begin dressing and traveling and so on. I will be quite alone once you leave to be honored.”
