She looked at him. “Entirely.”
“So, armor, huh?”
“Yes.” She nodded.
“You believe that.”
“I have believed it for some time.”
He turned his wine glass once, slowly.
“And yours,” he said. “Your armor. The careful directions. What are they protecting?”
She looked at him across the table.
“The same things as yours,” she said quietly. “Probably.”
The silence between them had a different quality to it now—not the dinner-table silence, but the kind that meant something had been acknowledged without being named.
“More wine?” he offered.
“Yes,” she murmured.
He poured.
Neither of them moved to leave.
CHAPTER 20
“The rules,” William said, “do not work that way.”
“They work exactly that way,” Letitia countered. “I explained them at the beginning.”
“You explained different rules at the beginning.”
“I explained the foundation. The foundation allows for interpretation.”
“Letitia, you cannot simply?—”
“William, do you want to play, or do you want to be correct?”
“I want to play correctly.”
“Then you need to decide which of those two things matters more to you.” She arranged her cards with great serenity. “Cecily, it is your turn.”
“I know it is my turn,” Cecily said. “I am waiting for the rules to stabilize before I commit to a move.”
“The rules are perfectly stable.”
“The rules have changed four times since we sat down.”
“They have evolved,” Letitia quipped. “Keep up.”
James looked at the card in his hand. Then he looked at Isadora. Isadora kept her expression entirely neutral, which was a skill she had been developing and which was being tested by the combination of Letitia’s rules and the card she was currently holding.
“What is the current value of a seven?” James asked the table.
“Seven,” William answered.
