Isadora had been in the breakfast room since seven, which was earlier than she usually came down, but sleep had been an unreliable companion for the past several days, and the bed had at some point ceased to feel like a solution and begun to feel like the problem.
“Pheasant is fine. Reserve them,” she instructed. “If His Grace’s plans change, we can always decide otherwise, but the sauce is Mrs. Farrow’s decision entirely.”
“Very good, Your Grace.” Mrs. Holt made a small note.
Isadora reached for Letitia’s letter, which she had read twice already and had left on the table for the company of it, and smiled at the part about the last ball she had attended.
“Oh, Letitia.”
“Is there anything else, Your Grace?”
“Not that I—” She stopped.
She thought about James in his study the morning he had left. His coat, the papers, the focused absence. His mind had already been in London before the carriage had been brought around.
She had been managing not to think about this with reasonable success.
She had noticed, with resigned honesty, how much larger the table felt without him present. How the morning arrangements—the coffee, the correspondence, even the way the light came through the east windows at this hour—remained the same and yet registered differently.
She missed him.
She had been missing him for four days with increasing intensity—not the abstract awareness of an absent household member, but the inconvenient ache for a person whose voice she kept expecting to hear in the corridor and whose chair she kept glancing at for reasons she had stopped justifying to herself.
“Oh dear, this is dreadful.” She shook her head at herself, though she was unable to stop the smile from spreading.
“Your Grace?”
“Nothing,” she said. “No, nothing else. Thank you, Mrs. Holt.”
Mrs. Holt turned to leave, then paused. “Will you want a fresh pot? That one has been sitting for a while.”
Isadora looked at her cup. “Yes,” she said. “Please.”
Mrs. Holt went to arrange it, and the breakfast room settled back into its morning quiet.
Isadora sorted through the remaining correspondence. Two estate matters. A note from Lady Eversleigh about a county meeting she was invited to attend. The morning papers, which Briggs delivered daily regardless of whether anyone read them.
She unfolded the paper and read the agricultural report because it reminded her of James and the steward and their ongoing disagreement about the north field drainage. She allowed herself this small, private indulgence without commentary.
She turned the page.
She almost turned past it.
The column was on the third page, which was where the gossip lived—the devastating observations that London society produced and consumed with the cheerful appetite of people who found other people’s business the most nourishing diet.
Miss Caroline Pembley was observed entering the townhouse of a recently titled duke on Grosvenor Square during the late evening hours of Tuesday last, unchaperoned. The visit, which lasted approximately one hour, has naturally sparked considerable interest among those acquainted with all parties. The duke in question, whose recent marriage was itself a matter of surprise to society, was understood to be in London on private business. Whether the business was of a professional nature remains, one understands, a matter of some debate.
Isadora read it twice. Then she reached for her coffee. She missed the cup entirely and put her hand in the liquid.
“Oh!” She pushed back from the table as the coffee sloshed, catching the cup before it toppled over, and sat there with her hand wet and the paper in her other hand and the words still legible.
Miss Caroline Pembley was observed entering the townhouse of a recently titled duke on Grosvenor Square during the late evening hours of Tuesday last, unchaperoned.
“Your Grace?” Mrs. Holt had reappeared in the doorway with the fresh pot and was looking at the small disaster at the breakfast table with contained alarm.
“I put my hand in the coffee,” Isadora explained.
“I see that, Your Grace.” Mrs. Holt set down the pot, produced a cloth from her pocket, and came forward. “Did you burn your hand?”
