“She has reorganized the nursery, which the nurse says has improved considerably, and she has plans for the kitchen garden in spring. She hosted a dinner last week that Lady Eversleigh apparently described to half the county as the best evening Ashbourne has produced in a decade. So, well.”
William continued looking at him with the expression he had been wearing for approximately thirty seconds.
“James.”
“William.”
“How is it, really?”
James looked at the fire. “It is more—The arrangement is working. Everything is as expected.” He said it with conviction.
William did not respond. He simply sat there with the silence that did not press but did not leave, the silence that said,I amnot going anywhere and I have excellent patience, and you know it.
James had hated this silence since he was seventeen.
“There is something that you are not saying,” William remarked.
“I have said everything relevant.”
“You have said everythingtrue. That is different from everything relevant.”
James looked at him.
William met the look without flinching.
“Have you started to feel something? For my sister?” William asked, choosing his words in a way that made each one carry its full weight.
The room was very quiet.
James held his gaze for precisely one beat too long before he said, “No.”
William’s expression did not change.
“Nothing has changed,” James continued. “The arrangement is exactly what it is—practical. She understands it, and so do I, and it is… it is working.”
“You paused,” William noted.
“I was considering the question.”
“You paused,” William repeated in the same tone. “You, who have never needed more than half a second to give an answer to anything in fifteen years of friendship, paused.”
James looked at the fire. “The arrangement,” he said, “is practical.”
“You have said the word ‘practical’ two times in two minutes.” William leaned forward, his forearms on his knees. “James, look at me.”
He did.
“She is my sister, not a solution or a convenient arrangement. My sister, who grew up watching love become something painful and who has spent every year since building walls around herself because of it.” William held his gaze. “If something has changed, if you are feeling things that you are not saying, you need to be honest about them. Not with me, but with her.” A pause. “Because I will not have her living in a house with a man who knows he feels something and says nothing, and I will not have her being the last person to find out.”
The words hung heavily in the air.
James said nothing. He looked at the glass in his hand. At the fire. At the middle distance between them, where the conversation was currently residing, and where he would rather leave it.
“Has she said anything to Cecily?” he asked.
“No.” William shook his head. “She has said almost nothing about the marriage.” A pause. “Which is, if I’m being honest, what worries me most.” He sat back. “Isadora becomes very quiet and very competent when she is unhappy. She manages everything around her perfectly and says nothing about herself.” He looked at James. “You know her well enough to know that I’m right.”
James ran a hand through his hair.
