She kept her gaze on his face. “For being here,” she said. “For being at Chavensworth. For being kind.”
“I’d be a poor husband if I wasn’t at least kind to my wife.”
She didn’t know what to say to that.
He walked back into the bedroom, and she followed.
Although her trunks had not yet been delivered, his solitary trunk had been, and he opened it now, gathering up his clothing.
“You really need a valet,” she said.
“You say that because you don’t like to see me naked.”
On the contrary, she was becoming quite used to it. Perhaps even anticipating it, actually.
He went behind the screen to dress, and when hereturned, he wore a formal white shirt adorned with pins and tucks down the front, black trousers, and black leather shoes with silver buckles. He withdrew a jacket from the trunk and laid it on the rounded top before taking out a leather case.
“Are you going to work again?” she asked, as he walked into the sitting room and placed the case on the table between the sofas.
“Chavensworth has taken a great deal of my time during this last week,” he said. “I need to be about my own business.”
“Not diamonds,” she said.
“Not diamonds. I’m involved in a great many businesses.”
He sat on the sofa, withdrew a sheaf of papers from the case, and began to arrange them into stacks. In no time at all, he had created three stacks, one larger than the other two. From the leather case, he extracted a set of quills, a small vial of sand, and a curious cubic object.
She walked to the table, curious despite herself. She picked up the small ivory square and examined it from all angles. Although it was a lovely thing, heavily incised with flowers and birds, she couldn’t see its purpose.
“What is it?”
He reached out and took the ivory cube from her, set it down on the table, and pressed two spots at once. The top slid back to reveal a cork-topped bottle, cunningly concealed.
“It’s a traveling inkwell,” she said, delighted.
“I’ve tried more than one apparatus for carrying ink, and this is the best I’ve found.”
“Do you always work when you travel?”
He glanced up at her again. “I don’t like wasting time.”
“And this journey is a waste of time?”
“I think you’re deliberately misinterpreting what I said, Sarah.” He pulled one stack of paper toward him. “I can’t help but wonder why.”
She didn’t answer, annoyed at him. True, she wanted to know what he examined so assiduously, but to do so would be to advance a curiosity that probably wasn’t wise. Yet, they had few common bonds between them: a shared afternoon in her father’s study, her mother’s death, a knowledge of Chavensworth, perhaps.
She abruptly sat down on the sofa.
“Tell me about your businesses,” she said.
He glanced over at her.
“Are you commanding me, Lady Sarah? I don’t deal well with commands, especially uttered in that tone of voice.”
“You can be very irritating, Douglas. There, is that tone better?”
“Not appreciably,” he said. “Perhaps if you work on it, I’m sure you can manage to sound somewhat amiable.”
