“Thank you, sir,” she said politely, finally. “I do hope you are enjoying your evening.”
Worrisomely, he seemed to actually be contemplating whether he was.
“Mr. Perriman went on at great length to me about pigeons and I fear I may have merely stared at him with my brows drawn together.” He paused, pensively. “I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. I seem to be struggling a bit to regain a knack for light conversation.”
She was amused speechless at the thought of him glowering while Mr. Perriman nattered on about pigeons.
He turned to her, his eyes creased with rueful amusement.
All at once she felt peculiarly light, as if she’d stumbled across something unexpectedly magical. A gemstone embedded in a rock.
“If it helps at all, Colonel, Mr. Perriman neverseems to require a response. Just an audience. I’ve found that nodding along and interjecting an occasional ‘ah’ or ‘you don’t say’ usually suffices. And then a polite excuse to retreat when the opportunity arises. If it happens again, touch your ear and I’ll rescue you.”
Eyes glinting, he nodded as somberly as if she were Aristotle imparting wisdom.
He appeared to be looking for someone as he watched the milling gathering.
And then her father saw him, and Brightwall straightened alertly.
“When I was stationed in Spain, a huge striped cat by the name of Oliver lived in our camp,” he said suddenly.
“A cat?” She was startled and enchanted by this non sequitur.
He nodded. “During a lull in action, my subaltern took a notion to sew a wee uniform coat for him and stuff him into it. You’ve never seen a more confused, resigned expression on an animal. We all had a laugh at the poor beast. And that”—he turned to her with a roguish, conspiratorial smile that transformed his face so utterly it made her breath hitch—“is a bit how I feel walking about in civilian clothes at a house party instead of on a battlefield in my uniform.”
And off he’d gone with her father.
But she remembered this conversation now because Magnus was the first person to ever outright tell her she was kind, as though he saw this as a precious and rare quality.
She could not recall the last time she’d extended any charity to herself, or thought of herself as possessing a redeeming virtue. The last five years her life had been strung together by sleep and diversions designed to keep her from dwelling on a thing she had done which could not be undone.
And even though her pride warred with her instinct to soothe him, this was simply how she was made: she could not seem to help caring.
Gently, she said, “If I flinched, Magnus, it was less to do with you than with how... everything during my visit to...” She closed her eyes.Visit?It wasn’t as though she’d left an engraved calling card there. She cleared her throat. “Everything at Newgate made me flinch and I suppose I’ve acquired a sort of flinching reflex. I’m certain it will pass.”
She met his eyes bravely. It was an appalling thing to admit to her war hero husband. But now it, too, was part of her personal history. Which had been spotless for most of her life and then had taken an abrupt turn into the catastrophic, where it seemed to have settled in comfortably.
Would a day come when she could blithely say at a dinner party, “This blancmange is such a nice change from prison food!” and everyone would laugh and laugh over the lark of it all?
Perhaps it would even be the sort of thing considered spirited discourse in the sitting room here at The Grand Palace on the Thames.
Magnus took this in, and his fingers twitched reflexively on the arms of the chair, as if he wasflinching away from all those things, too. Or itched to combat them.
He deliberately flattened his hand and patted it once, thoughtfully, on the arm of the chair.
Finally he rose, somewhat stiffly, and surprised her by pacing slowly to the crumpled dress on the floor and lifting it gently. It looked like so much bright scraps in his big hands. He gazed down at it, his expression bemused and almost weary in a way that sliced right through her.
She wondered if he was thinking:In another life, in other circumstances, I might know this dress, and all my wife’s clothes.
Her throat suddenly felt thick.
“Please do not let it trouble you any further,” she urged softly.
He met her eyes again and held them. His did not precisely soften, but with a short nod he indicated he was apparently satisfied that she was telling the truth.
“I expect you’re exhausted.” His voice was gruff. “And hungry.”
The moment he said it she fully realized she was almost too weary to even agree. As if she could melt into the settee, become one with it, vanish from existence.
