She laughed, because she couldn’t help it. And because she agreed.
But then she regretted laughing a little, as part of her remained resistant to feeling entertained by her husband.
He sighed with relief and shook himself out of his coat the moment the door closed behind the two of them, and then reached for his cravat.
For such a big man, his movements were always so graceful and purposeful. She was oddly captivated, as if she was witnessing some rare wild animal in the act of shedding its skin.
He paused in the process of practically clawing away his cravat. Suddenly aware that she was watching him with some blend of amusement and bemusement.
She’d caught him in the middle of a reflex, she suspected. The immediate coat and cravat removal. This was something else she would have known about him if their marriage was a more orthodox one.
“You’re shedding all of that as though you feel like a cat stuffed into a coat,” she said.
He laughed shortly. “My apologies. I supposeit’s a bit of a habit. They get to feeling a little confining after a while, cravats and coats.”
“You ought to try wearing stays,” she told him.
His smile evolved into a laugh. “Maybe I will, one day.”
He finished slowly unwinding the cravat. It dangled from his hand.
“You’re not going to fling that at me, are you?” She tried a risky joke.
He pretended to ponder this. “Fair’s fair, Alexandra.”
They regarded each other from across the room. His eyes were glinting.
She wanted to laugh again, so, perversely, she didn’t.
She cleared her throat. “Well, I’ll just say good-night, shall I?”
“Good night. And remember...” he said, as she began to close her door, “slippers arenotfor hurling.”
Damnhim.
Because she laughed at that.
She sighed, and poked the fire to get it to blaze a little more, took off her projectile slippers and left them in the middle of the rug again.
And then she just lay quietly on the bed in her clothes for a time, and reflected.
The odd relief she felt was akin to being fed a meal after surviving on soldiers’ rations. She’d beenstarvedfor companionship, and diverse entertainments, and lonely for people she genuinely liked. Forcamaraderie. It had been lovely tobe surrounded by the determined if somewhat cockeyed warmth, and yes, familial atmosphere of the sitting room. She saw the brilliance in Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand’s mission for The Grand Palace on the Thames.
She considered how strange it was that both she and Magnus could laugh even after the emotional whipsaw of a fiery eruption of thrown objects followed by a quietly devastating, marriage-ending conversation. What did this say about her? About him?
Well, she’d always known she was resilient.
And he, above all, was a survivor.
She supposed they both were.
How odd that it was something he’d seemed to sense about her long ago, too.
And she reflected on the gentle but firm authority with which Magnus had engaged that shy, green Corporal Dawson in the conversation. What a good father he would be for a boy, she thought. He would teach him survival skills, like inRobinson Crusoe. How to make a fire and aim a gun and all that sort of thing.
Eventually, maybe how to become the sort of man who could freeze the gizzards of a Newgate warden with a mere glance, and magically spring his wife from jail.
The thing that made Magnus thrilling in a frightening way, and frightening in a thrilling way, was the ruthlessness that ran right down through the core of him. She’d always known he was much more than that; he was a complicatedman. But it was an unavoidable part of him, the support beam around which his very spirit was constructed. She had come up against it, and it had nearly crushed her. It would behoove her to never forget this.
