“When William is bothered by something he can’t resolve, he organizes things. Last spring, when there was a problem with the tenants’ cottages, he reorganized the estate accounts. When the solicitor sent that confusing letter about the trust, he alphabetized the correspondence files.” A slight pause. “The day after we got back from Brighton, he reorganized the entire library by publication date.”
Cecily held Isadora’s gaze for a moment. She thought of William in the drawing room—the composed certainty of him, the green eyes that gave away very little, the studied ease of a man who had decided how he was going to handle every room before he entered it.
She thought of a library arranged by publication date.
“I didn’t know that,” she murmured.
“Most people don’t.” Isadora shrugged. “He prefers it that way.”
A brief silence settled over the three of them. It was Letitia who broke it, because Letitia, Cecily was already certain, was constitutionally incapable of leaving a silence alone for more than thirty seconds.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You may,” Cecily said. “I reserve the right to answer or not.”
Letitia grinned at her, like she had just decided she liked her and saw no reason to be subtle about it. “Are you going to stay?”
The room went still.
Isadora looked at her hands, which told Cecily everything—she had wanted to ask the same question and had decided against it, and was now waiting with the careful stillness of someone who had learned not to want things too visibly for the answer regardless.
Cecily looked at Letitia. At the directness of the question, and the thing underneath it that was not as careless as it appeared—the particular watchfulness of a girl who had lived in a house with uncertain arrangements before and had learned to ask about them early rather than late.
“I intend to,” she answered steadily. “For as long as I am able, I intend to stay.”
Letitia held her gaze for a moment. Then the grin returned, smaller and more real. “Good. William is significantly less frightening when there is someone who answers him back.”
“I don’t find him frightening,” Cecily declared with triumph.
“No,” Isadora muttered, looking up with a small smile as if she recognized something she had been waiting to see. “I didn’t think you did.”
CHAPTER 10
Cecily found him in the study.
She had not gone looking for him immediately. She had taken a tour of her rooms with Mrs. Eldridge first, said the right things about the view and the furnishings, unpacked nothing because her trunks had not yet arrived from London, and sat on the edge of the bed for approximately four minutes, telling herself she was gathering her thoughts.
What she was actually doing was losing her nerve and recovering it and losing it again in a fairly consistent rotation.
Then she stood up, smoothed her skirt, and went to find her husband. The word still felt strange.
She knocked.
“Come.”
He was at the desk when she entered, coat off, sleeves rolled to the elbows in the way of a man who had returned to work the moment ceremony permitted it. Papers were spread before him in the organized pattern of someone who had a system and kept to it.
He looked up when she came in, and something in his expression shifted. Cecily didn’t even want to read it.
“Duchess.” A slight pause. “Is your room satisfactory?”
“It is very comfortable, thank you.” She closed the door behind her with quiet care. “I won’t keep you long. I only wish to—there are some things I’d like to establish. Between us. While we are still at the beginning of this arrangement and have not yet formed habits that are difficult to break.”
He set down his quill and leaned back in his chair with the easy composure of a man who had all the time in the world, which she was coming to understand was simply how he occupied space.
“By all means,” he allowed.
Cecily clasped her hands in front of her and looked at him directly, because looking away would concede something she was not prepared to concede.
