The muscle at the corner of Dominic’s jaw moved again, tighter now. Annabelle put her fork down.
“James,” she said, “did anyone show you the garden before it got dark?”
He turned to her. “No.”
“It runs along the full south side of the house. There is a gate in the wall between this garden and the one at Fairmont House.” She folded her hands on the table. “Perhaps we can find Newton on the other side of that gate.”
James appeared satisfied that there was at least one explanation for the behavior. “Then, can Newton go through the gate tomorrow?”
“I’ll ask Mrs. Howell about the key in the morning.”
“Mrs. Howell has lots of keys,” James said.
“Then she’ll have this one too.”
Dominic had returned to his dinner. He kept his eyes on his plate, and he did not raise the subject of pianos again, and neither did James, and the rest of the dinner was quiet and, on the whole, rather better than Annabelle had anticipated.
Mrs. Howell appeared for James at eight o’clock on the mark, and James slid from his chair and folded his napkin with theattention of a person who had been told many times how it ought to be done.
He came around the table to Annabelle and stopped directly in front of her.
“Goodnight,” he said.
“Goodnight, James.”
He stood with his hands at his sides, looking at her face in a direct and unhurried manner, as though he were taking proper inventory.
“I’m glad you live here now,” he said. He said without preamble.
Her heart warmed, and she knew she had no clever response to that, so she didn’t try for one. “I am too,” she said.
He nodded once and went to the door. His footsteps moved up the stairs in the steady, reliable rhythm she had grown to know over the past months, and Mrs. Howell’s heavier tread followed.
She looked at the table. Dominic was already on his feet at the sideboard, his back turned.
“I have correspondence to attend to this evening,” he said. “I’ll be in my study.”
“Of course,” she said.
He left without looking at her.
After Annabelle went to her room, Ruth helped her out of the wedding gown, put her hair down, and withdrew at half past nine. Annabelle sat in the chair by the window in her nightgown and robe and looked at the dark street below.
Lucien’s window, which had been lit earlier, was dark now.
She told herself, quite firmly, that she had no reasonable expectations. She had been telling herself this with some regularity since that damned evening, with varying degrees of success: that this was not a conventional marriage. Dominic had not come to her house at midnight because he had decided he was in love with her, but because Lady Rosenhall had stood in a garden and told him what would happen if he did not.
She had no grounds for expecting him to come to her room tonight. Or any night, until they had arrived at some understanding of what they were to each other.
She should have asked. She hadn’t asked.
She got up and paced.
The room was large enough to make pacing possible: window to fireplace, fireplace to dressing room door, dressing room door back to window. She did this circuit twice, stopped at thewindow, looked at the street, and found it unhelpful, and then went and sat on the edge of the bed.
The ring was still warm on her finger. He had kept it against his chest all morning, and she had felt the warmth of it when he’d slid it on, and she did not know what to do with that information except to keep having it.
The clock on the mantelpiece marked eleven. Footsteps came down the corridor, and she lifted her head, and her hand tightened on the counterpane.
