Now she was looking at him as if he were an idiot. ‘You do realise I have been approving the menus of every meal you have eaten, since our wedding day?’
He had not. Food appeared at regular intervals each day he was at home. He had never bothered to ask the housekeeper what was involved in the preparation.
‘If you had been home last night, you would have eaten braised veal prepared according to a recipe handed down from my mother.’ She paused for emphasis. ‘My real mother, not Marietta.’
She had never spoken of her mother. But by the loneliness in her voice, now, she had loved and been loved in return. Had she chosen the meal to ease homesickness? Or had she been trying to send him a message with it? If she had, he had ignored it by staying at the club. ‘I am sorry I missed it,’ he said, surprised to find that he was. ‘You must make it again for me some time.’
She smiled and nodded. ‘As you wish. Be sure to inform me of the day of your departure, so I might plan accordingly.’
‘My departure?’
‘I assume you are planning to go back to London and abandon me here so I will not be able to cause more trouble,’ she said. ‘The only thing I do not know is the date you are leaving.’
Perhaps she was right when she claimed he’d treated her as a child. He had never thought that she would understand the meaning of this trip, much less plan any part of her day according to his presence or absence. He’d meant to leave as soon as he had assured himself she had adjusted to her new surroundings. Apparently, that had already happened. He could go tomorrow morning, if he wished.
‘You do have plans, do you not?’ Now, she was patiently waiting for him to admit the truth.
‘Nothing specific,’ he said, baffled by his own words. If this was a contest, he had won it by removing her from all the things that might cause him embarrassment. She had not fought the removal to Richmond. She was not planning to argue with his departure. He was free to do as he liked, just as he had been before marriage. And yet…
He shook his head again. ‘I thought…think… I… I think I will stay for a few days. Perhaps a week, or two. London gets so oppressively hot in July. And there is much about the house here that needs tending to.’ He had not seen Sargent in some time, either. It was hardly fair to the dog to pat him on the head and get immediately back on his horse. The more he thought of it, the more foolish it seemed to ride out immediately just to avoid a woman who had not been bothering him in anyway.
She smiled and nodded. ‘Mrs Pimm and I shall plan the menus only a few days in advance. You have but to inform me, should you change your mind.’
‘It will not upset you to have me here?’ he asked. A voice in the back of his mind argued that it did not really matter if it did upset her. It was his job to make the decisions and hers to defer. But the fledgling diplomat in him countered that she was more likely to be agreeable if he did not actively try to provoke her.
‘Upset me.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I hardly know you well enough to be upset by your behaviour. As far as I can tell, you do not do very much of anything.’
‘I do notdothings?’ Did she think him idle? Or useless in some way?
She shrugged, as if annoyed that he would take offence. ‘You run the club, of course. But for once, let us not speak of it. Beyond that?’ She shrugged again. ‘I do not shadow your every step to see how you occupy yourself. You have spent a fair amount of your time attempting to organise me, of course.’
When he thought back over the last week, he had expended a surprising amount of mental and physical energy trying and failing to gain her obedience. He had not thought it would be easier to command a battalion than a single woman.
‘I do not enjoy your constant criticism,’ she added.
‘I noticed,’ he said, trying not to smile.
‘But after living with Marietta for seven years, I am inured to such things.’ She sighed.
‘You do not like her,’ he said, stating the obvious.
‘It does not matter,’ she replied. ‘I thought, at first, there might be some way to get rid of her. But I was a child then and did not understand that was not how marriage worked.’ She frowned. ‘I could not fathom that the woman brought into the house to mother me would not want to, or that it might be possible for my father to love someone who did not love me.’
‘I notice you write to your father often,’ he said. He had seen her sitting down with pen and paper on several occasions and noted the regular letters in the outgoing post. ‘What have you heard from him in return?’ But he knew the answer to that, for he had seen nothing from him in the incoming mail.
‘I suspect he has been too busy for letter writing. Not everyone is as regular a correspondent as I am.’ She touched a napkin to her lips, as if signalling the end of the meal might be some distraction. ‘Shall I ring for coffee, or would you prefer to take port?’
She was preparing to retreat to the parlour and leave him alone to have a glass and smoke in peace. And what would she do? Likely, she would write a letter to a man who showed no sign of answering. Fred held up a hand. ‘It seems rather a silly custom for you to withdraw when there are just the two of us here. Why don’t we go to the library? There is something there that might interest you.’
They rose from the table and she followed him down the hall, with Sargent walking between them.
What he was about to do was probably a mistake. It was a ridiculous thing to give to any woman. He need not have bothered to think of it as a gift. He could have simply referred her to the shelf in the library where it sat. Though he was normally quite clueless about such things as the feelings of others, he was not so big an idiot that he could not sense the heaviness in the air around his normally spirited wife.
She had a right to be melancholy. He had begun the day by driving her to into the country with the intent of abandoning her there like an unwanted animal, then bought her off with a cheap trinket. He’d demonstrated that he had no idea of her knowledge or ability when it came to running a house. He had accidentally commented on the fact that the father she clearly loved had not taken the time to write even a single line of congratulations to her after the marriage.
And though he had given her the loyalty of his favourite dog, he hardly deserved credit for it. He had not intended that to happen. Nor could he look at the chronically depressed expression on Sargent’s floppy face and tell himself that this was the sort of dog one should offer to a pretty young girl who was probably near to tears herself.
When they arrived in the library, she poured his glass of port as he searched the shelves for the book he thought she would enjoy. As he glanced back at her, she tipped her head to the side as she so often did when intrigued. But this time she bit her lip as if actively trying not to appear too eager for his attention.
