“What is it?” he asked wearily.
There was a beat longer of this glance-based exchange, which Ramsay appeared to lose, as he leaned back in his chair with a sigh.
“It’s just that—Hec, you don’t seem terribly happy about it,” he observed.
“I’m happy,” Hector said—a reflex rather than a true expression of feeling.
Ramsay raised his eyebrows and took a long sip of his drink. When Hector didn’t rise to this bait, Ramsay kept going, forcing Hector’s hand unless he wanted to watch his oldest friend half-drown himself in whisky.
“Oh, fine,” he said, putting down his own glass, its contents barely touched. “I am relieved that it’s over, I just … It isn’t quite as satisfying as I might have hoped.”
More eye contact from Ramsay and Jonathan. Hector decided he was too tired to be annoyed by this—or by the clear implication that these two men had been talking about him when he wasn’t around.
This time, Jonathan lost.
He coughed politely. “And why do you think that might be, Your Grace?”
“That was weak,” Ramsay accused.
“It was a guiding question!” Jonathan protested, all politeness gone.
“If he was going to get there himself, don’t you think he would have done it by now?” Ramsay countered.
“He is myemployer, as you might recall!”
Ramsay looked disgusted.
“This is why we shouldn’t have dukes, you know,” he said, apparently to both of the other men present. Then, he fixed his attention firmly on Hector.
“You are sad,” he said, as if explaining a very simple concept to a very small child, “because you are fighting with your wife.”
“No, I’m not,” Hector said at once, again reacting on impulse more than anything else.
Ramsay’s eye roll was frankly a work of art. “Are you trying to convince me that you aren’t fighting with her, or that you aren’t sad about it? Because Icanlist all the reasons why both of thosearguments are stupid, blatant lies, but you could also just give in and save us all the time.”
Jonathan must have thought this was a bit too harsh, because he added, “We have seen rather less of Her Grace than usual of late. The staff has only noticed it because … well, she’s quite well-liked below stairs.”
Despite himself, Hector felt a smile creep across his face. Aye, shewouldbe well-liked by the staff, wouldn’t she? She’d become good enough friends with her former governess that the woman had relocated to England on Clio’s recommendation—goodness knew that she wouldn’t be the kind of lady of the house that would make unreasonable demands.
And yet Clio wouldn’t be an absent figure, one that the staff hardly knew, if given free rein over the house. He thought about her comments about the decor with a bittersweet pang of fondness. She didn’t live and die for fashion like some people did, but she wouldn’t let her home remain a relic, either.
It was too easy to let these kinds of thoughts coalesce into something more pointed and far, far more painful.
I miss her.
“It doesn’t matter,” he told his friends on a sigh—because, yes, no matter what noise Jonathan might make about his employment, theywerefriends, too. “She never truly wanted me, never truly wanted to be married to me.”
He sounded so wretched at the admission that this was followed by one of the most awkward pauses of Hector’s life.
And then, Jonathan snapped.
“Oh, but that is just sostupid,” he said, surging to his feet. “Honestly, Your Grace, I am sorry—but that is very, very stupid.”
“Bravo,” Ramsay said with feeling.
Hector wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t quite summon the energy.
“I don’t know,” he said, haltingly, feeling out the words as he went. It had been a long, long week, and everything felt so dreadfully hard. “Maybe there was a chance, at one point. I mean—there was obviously an attraction?—”
