“For answering plainly.”
“You deserve that.”
She left without another word. The room felt different after she was gone. Nathaniel stood still, listening to the quiet of the house settle once more. Arabella’s visit had been necessary. It had closed a door that should have been shut long ago.
What unsettled him was not the past. It was the present. Margaret had not demanded reassurance. She had not pressed him. She had simply asked and waited.
It was settled, all of it, and yet the steadiness in his chest had shifted in a way he could not dismiss.
Nathaniel turned down the servants’ corridor and found Mrs. Hill in the morning room, reviewing household accounts with her spectacles low on her nose.
She glanced up before he spoke.
“She has gone, then?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
Mrs. Hill closed the ledger without marking the page.
“And how did that go?”
“As it needed to,” he replied.
She studied him for a moment.
“And Her Grace?” she asked.
“She asked who our visitor was.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“That it was settled. That she need not concern herself.”
Mrs. Hill removed her spectacles.
“And does she believe you?”
“Yes. I believe so, at least.”
“What I do not understand is why the girl found it appropriate to arrive here today of all days. You are on your honeymoon.”
“I do not mean to defend her, but it is not as though I am–”
But a sharp look from his housekeeper told him not to finish that sentence.
“Miss Arabella was part of my past,” he said instead. “There is no confusion about that.”
“No,” Mrs. Hill agreed. “There is not.”
He leaned back against the sideboard.
“You disapprove of her, I know. Believe me, I am not pleased that she arrived without warning, but at least it is done now.”
“I rarely waste energy on disapproval,” she said calmly. “I observe, that is all.”
“And what do you observe?”
“Tou have different priorities now, and you must act accordingly. You are no longer a man free to entertain old attachments, nor are you a man free to treat new ones lightly.”
