He stepped back, gave her space. She wished that he had stopped her, interrupted her, argued with her. Anything.
“Of course,” he said. “I shall see you later this evening, I’m certain.”
There was nothing certain about it. They had gone plenty of evenings where they hadn’t seen one another. She rather expected that tonight would be no different.
“Splendid,” she said instead.
Every step she took up the stairs, she wished that he would call out to her, that he would stop her. That he would pull her into his arms and kiss her. The world always made sense when they were kissing, didn’t it?
But he didn’t stop her. And she didn’t ask him to.
And that regret sat heavily with her as she spent the rest of the evening alone, with a coldness inside that she simply could not seem to shake.
CHAPTER 27
“Today, I am full of energy,” Phoebe said by way of introduction as she breezed into Clio’s drawing room a few days later. “By the by, did you know that there is a very angry man roaming your halls? He looked at me and just sniffed.”
“Oh, that’s Matthew,” Clio said, rising to brush a kiss against each of Phoebe’s cheeks. It seemed as though they were dispensing with the pleasantries, which, after several days of cool politeness with Hector, was a welcome change. “He still thinks he’s going to inherit, and so he sees us all as dreadful interlopers in his rightful home.”
She rolled her eyes pointedly to punctuate what she thought ofthatnotion.
Phoebe, who had immediately begun using her avowed energy to plump every cushion in the immediate vicinity, stopped what she was doing and shot Clio an incredulous look.
“But I thought the terms of the will were that Hector needed to marry a suitable woman to inherit,” she said.
“They were,” Clio agreed.
“And you are eminently suitable, by anyone’s standards,” Phoebe observed. “How far can you track back your family tree? Five centuries?”
“More or less to the Conquest,” Clio corrected. “If you read far back enough in history, it basically reads, ‘And they decided to call the land England, and there was a fellow called Lightholder over on the left.’”
“So …” Phoebe let the word draw out. “Is this Matthew fellow just stupid?”
Clio prayed, in her heart of hearts, that this would be the moment that either Matthew or his snobbish wife was walking past and eavesdropping, something she’d caught them doing more than once. Since she didn’t hear thethumpof someone dropping dead from shock and offense, she assumed her prayers were unanswered.
Typical.
“He’s trying to make a case that marriage isn’t enough,” Clio explained. “That the late duke’s codicil really means continuation of the line, which means an heir.”
“That,” Phoebe said flatly, “is a stupid argument—so, honestly, I must return to my original assessment. However, I assume that the trustees are all men?—”
“Oh, why ever would you think so?” Clio asked dryly. Phoebe tipped her head in acknowledgment but kept speaking.
“—so, one cannot trust them to understand the mechanics of childbearing, I suppose. Timelines, in particular, seem crucial here.” She looked down at her own middle with a fond smile. “It took ages for Aaron and I to conceive, and I assure you, it was not from lack of trying.”
Horrified, Clio put her hands over her ears. She didn’t think of herself as uncommonly prudish—if she ever had been, Phoebe, Ariadne, and even Helen would have put an end to that—but she didn’t need to heardetails.
“You are married to my brother, so I have chosen to believe that your babe appeared out of thin air, thank you very much,” she informed Clio. “As any other belief would mortify me into the ground.”
Phoebe gave her a smile like the cat who had got the cream, and Clio shuddered.
“Fortunately,” Phoebe said, finally deciding that the cushions were arranged to her satisfaction and flopping back onto the settee with a contented sigh, “if they are men, they are also highly susceptible to trickery. Which means that you don’t have to actually produce a child—which is good, as that would beimpossible—in the next few weeks. You just have to convince them that one is forthcoming.”
Three minutes ago, Clio had been sitting quietly, working on an embroidery project that she’d been casually chipping away at since the previous winter, and sipping tea.
Now—somehow—Phoebe already had a plan to solve a problem that she hadn’t known existed ninety seconds previously.
Someone ought to put her in charge of more things, Clio thought. The world’s problems would evaporate in a flash.
