“Funny to seeyousimilarly leg-shackled,” Hubb retorted.
“Do you miss your bachelor freedoms?”
“No,” Hubb said.In Piers’s observations, most men behaved after marriage much as they had before it.Hubb, loyal by nature, had never struck him as the kind of man to humiliate his wife by affairs.There was a bit of a pause, then Hubb added, “I think it is Katherine who sometimes regrets it.”
Piers moved a large stone with his foot, turning it over and discovering nothing more interesting than mud and moss.“What makes you say that?”
“It had been arranged between us before I even went to Oxford,” Hubb said.“By our families, largely.We were too young.I told her to consider herself free if she preferred someone else.Noble, was I not?”
“Or hopeful?”
“No,” Hubb said simply.“There was no one else for me.”
“But there was for her?”
Hubb nodded.“I didn’t think I’d care.I was so young and foolish when I came to Oxford that I didn’t really know all I had in her.But when I came home again, I knew.Too late.”
“You weren’t exactly faithful yourself, Hubb.”
Hubb shrugged that off.“Young and foolish.Wild oats.Women aren’t meant to feel the same.Oh, don’t misunderstand me.She was faithful in body.Just not in spirit.”
“And you suspect the letter in her reticule was from him?And she didn’t want anyone else reading it?”
“Not that it matters,” Hubb muttered.“But yes, it springs to mind.”
Piers searched his face and returned to the ground around him.“Talk to her.”
“Talk?”Hubb said.“Do you talk to your...?”He broke off, biting his lip.
Your kitchen maid?Your street urchin?Piers said tranquilly, “My wife?Yes, as it happens.”
“Just not about Claudia Algernon?”
Piers blinked.“Claudia?There is nothing to tell.”
“Not sure Claudia—or Lady Petteril—would agree with you there, old fellow.”
That effectively silenced Piers, while he thought of April’s attitude of patience and waiting, and his own avoidance of remembering the blurry past.It wasn’t all part of the blackness that had consumed him in the last months before he left Oxford for good.And by avoiding the whole issue, he was giving it legs to run on...
Casting all that aside for later, he said, “Edward didn’t try to flirt with Mrs.Hubb, did he?”
“He looked, but only once.”
And at least once at Claudia.Had Hale really been asleep at two o’clock last night?Had Professor Algernon?
Appalled by the direction of his own thoughts, he was almost relieved when Hubb said impatiently, “Intelligent men, educated, civilized men, do not beat servants over the head for impudent disrespect.They dismiss them.Or have them dismissed.”
In theory.The trouble was, everyone had a temper.Even Piers.Even Mal.And definitely Hale.
