“Then that money will be paid right away from my dowry.”
“But I promised Mr. Denby—”
“Youpromithed Mr. Denby. I didn’t. A wine merchant need never let anyone run up a bill that large. I didn’t know you drank that much, Phineath.” Her eyes narrowed.
My husband should be moderate in drink.
He was relieved he could tell her the truth. “I don’t anymore.”
“Well, the bill ith very high. A right-thinking man would have cut you off, long ago. But I take it you jollied him along.”
“I did. Don’t I jolly everybody along?”
She turned back to the window. “Don’t even think about it.”
“About what?”
“Trying to jolly me.”
His wife was an Amazon indeed. A brutal warrior who wielded a quill and a ledger instead of a sword and shield. He sat in a chair in the corner of the study, keeping his mouth shut unless she asked him a question.
She sat behind his desk and called the servants in one at a time and interviewed them and discussed their futures and whether they might be happy if she found them a position somewhere else. She gave Markham a list of merchants and told him messages should be sent to all of them that Lord and Lady Burchester would be available tomorrow to discuss a partial settling of accounts.
She ate no luncheon, and Phineas did not really feel he could, either.
At four o’clock, she stood from the desk.
“We mutht go.”
He stood, too. His legs were stiff. “Where, darling?”
“Pall Mall.”
She went to her bedchamber. To get a hat and a coat, he thought. When she came back, dressed for going out, she was carrying the painting he had given her for her birthday. He had asked Jones to bring it to the rooms with Caro’s other things during the wedding breakfast yesterday.
Yesterday, when they had been so happy.
“Oh, Caro.”
“I’m thorry, Phineath.”
“No, Caro. Not the painting. Not your gift.”
“We have to have the money to pay a bit on every bill tomorrow.”
“But not that. My watch, instead. My ring.”
She looked down at the picture. “All right. We’ll go to a jeweler’th. But we’ll take the painting, too, if the watch and the ring are not enough.”
Phineas held his breath until the jeweler named a sum Caro said was sufficient.
In the carriage on the way home, his purse heavy with coins from the sale of his watch and ring, Phineas looked at the painting leaning on the seat next to Caro.
“I’m sorry you don’t like the painting. It was rather stupid of me to pick a shipwreck, but I liked it so much, I thought you would like it, too. But I can see it’s rather gloomy and not at all something you would want. You can sell it if you’d rather not keep it.”
She blinked. “I l-love it. My brother told you.”
“No. No, he didn’t.”
