Indeed, she had—far more extensively than he had done, come to think. But he wasn’t about to let a small thing like logic get in the way of his good idea.
“You are married now,” he said. She looked like she was considering striking him. “It is now my duty to ensure your safety.”
“Your duty,” she repeated acidly.
Ah, well, yes, he probably could have chosen better words, given that the last time they’d alluded toduty, he’d been using it as a euphemism for taking her to bed and pleasuring her until she was drunk with it under the guise of ‘producing an heir.’
And then, he’d promptly not done any of it.
“My honor,” he amended.
She didn’t look convinced.
“So, to summarize,” she said, and Hector had never had a pretty governess. Still, it was hard not to imagine Clio in that role now, as she stood there all prim and proper and full of barely suppressed rage—and harder still not to find the image alluring, “you plan to accompany me to ensure my safetynow, but then you are going—at some unknown point in the future, I might add, since you haven’t seen fit to give me the details—to leave me behind while you return to the North?”
Ah, what a concise report on the utter bloody mess he’d made of his life.
“I’m still here now,” he said, because blindly agreeing seemed like a trap, even if she were correct. “So, we will go together.”
Clio looked like she had more to say about this act of high-handedness, and he almost wished she would say it. He understood their footing when they argued. Perhaps it would even lead to something productive between them.
But the words died before they made it past her lips.
“Fine,” she said flatly.
“Fine,” he agreed.
And then she left, leaving him wishing that he’d said more, even as he was entirely unsure what those words should have been.
“Do you think you’ll break this one, too?”
Hector addressed his comment out the window of the carriage, his tone entirely casual, but Clio jolted anyway. They’d already been riding for the better part of an hour, and they’d spent it in utter silence.
It wasn’t that she didn’t have things to say. She had a million things to say. She just feared that if she let any of them out, she would devolve to the kind of hysterical shrieking that made men dismiss women out of hand.
Or, worse, she might reference how cursedlyhandsomehe looked in the watery morning light as they made their way to the Godwin Estate.
So. Silence was better, if not a great deal more awkward.
Until, of course, Hector baited the hook.
“I beg your pardon?” Clio asked reflexively.
He turned almost lazily to look at her.
“The carriage,” he said, gesturing to the ducal conveyance, which was surprisingly practical, given what Clio knew of Hector’s showy younger brother.
Clio had barely seen Matthew, who was residing primarily at his club, in the weeks that she’d lived in the same house as him. His wife, Anne, was a more common presence, but she’d greeted any overtures that Clio had made with a sniff down her nose. Their young son, Michael, was more pleasant, but in the way that all children of that age were pleasant enough if you discussed the kind of things they liked. Jon, at present, was fond of dogs and had spent a cheerful half hour telling Clio about all the dogs he’d ever seen when she’d visited him in the nursery.
Now, though, Clio caught up with Hector's meaning.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Are you asking me if I am going tobreak the carriage?”
There was a gleam in his eye that Clio hadn’t seen since before their marriage, and she wasn’t certain if she was heartened to see it or dismayed at the threat it posed to her sanguinity.
“Aye,” he said shortly.
She really, truly should not rise to this obvious bait.
