“Her situation meaning her marriage,” Joseph said.
“Yes.”
Joseph was quiet again. They came out of the narrower path into a wider stretch and the horses moved into a more comfortable stride, and the park opened up around them with the particular spaciousness of early morning before anyone else arrived.
“I don’t think she wants to get married,” Joseph said.
“She has said as much,” Harper agreed.
“But you are making her anyway.”
Harper glanced at his son. “I am not making her do anything. I am ensuring she has opportunities that she would not otherwise have, and the choice is hers.”
Joseph looked at him with the expression of a boy who had listened to adults say things his whole life and had developed a reasonable ability to identify the gap between what was said and what was meant. He did not push it further, which was either discretion or the decision to save it for later, and Harper was not certain which.
“If we go back to Sedgewick,” Joseph said, “I won’t see her anymore.”
“You will see her when she is married and settled,” Harper said. “We will visit.”
“It won’t be the same,” Joseph said.
“It will be something that you will have to get used to.”
Joseph absorbed this with the quiet steadiness he had, the way he took difficult things and held them without making a production of it, and Harper felt the familiar complicated weight of watching his son be braver than a ten-year-old should have to be.
“You should not get too attached,” Harper said, and said it carefully, meaning it as a kindness and aware as he said it thatit was also a thing he was saying to himself and that the himself portion was probably the more necessary audience.
Joseph looked at him. “I am already attached,” he said. “That is rather the point, and I suspect that you have as well.”
Harper looked at him, but ignored it.
“To both of them,” Joseph pressed on. “I have watched you at dinner. You argue with her differently from how you argue with other people. With her, you actually listen to what she says, and you are different with Lady Wilmington now too. You were very stiff with her in the beginning and now you are not. I saw you having a conversation with her in the garden last week that went on for twenty minutes.”
“We were discussing the planting on the east side,” Harper said.
“You were laughing,” Joseph said. “I saw it from the window. I don’t think the planting was that funny.”
Harper looked at the path. He was aware that this conversation had gone considerably further than he had intended when they set out this morning and that the responsible course of action was to redirect it, and he was also aware that Joseph was ten years old and sharper than most adults and that a redirect would be identified and filed away for future use.
“We will be going back to Sedgewick,” Harper said, in the tone that meant the subject was being placed somewhere firm. “Thatis what is happening. I want you to understand that clearly so that you are not disappointed when the time comes.”
Joseph was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again his voice had changed slightly, gone a little more careful.
“Can I ask you something?” he said. “Did you love my mother?”
“Where has that question come from?”
“Please answer it for me,” he pressed.
The path continued ahead of them, wide and empty, the wet grass on either side catching the morning light. A long way off, someone was walking a dog that was moving in wide enthusiastic circles around its owner. The horses moved steadily on. Harper took his time with the answer.
“We cared for each other at the beginning and respected each other, I think. But it was not a love match. We married because it was the right arrangement for both families and because we thought it would be enough.” He paused. “It wasn’t enough. That is a thing I would do differently if I could.”
Joseph nodded slowly, looking at his horse’s mane.
“She was not well,” Joseph recalled. “For a long time. I remember she used to sit in the window in her room. The big window in the east wing. She would sit there for a very long timeand just look out. I used to watch her from the doorway because I didn’t know if I was allowed to go in. Was I allowed to go in?”
Harper looked at his son and something tightened in his chest that he kept out of his voice.
