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Eliza nodded.

"Oh, don't you worry, Doctor. That was my first and last time on a horse. I have already expressly been forbidden."

She looked directly at Arthur with a twinkle of amusement in her eye. Of course the men would stick together and discourage her from riding. Still, as her gaze met her husband's, his brow creased and his stare grew cold.

"Leave us. I need a moment with the Duchess," he commanded.

The amusement left her almost instantly. At his words, the room emptied without so much as a glance. Servants slipped through the doors so quietly that, had she not seen them with her own eyes, she would have believed them to be ghosts slipping in and out of walls. The physician bowed his head before following them out, and the door clicked softly behind him.

He still had not called her by her Christian name or his wife. She had asked him to, yet he continued to call her Duchess. It was deliberate, defiant, almost.

Arthur seemed like the sort of man who chose every word with precision before it left his lips. If he insisted on formalities, it was because he wished to keep a distance between them, but it could not last forever.

She refused to believe it would.

Silence settled over the room. The bedroom suddenly felt much larger.

She looked straight ahead.

Arthur remained at the foot of the bed, broad enough that he seemed to occupy the entire space between her and the door.

She had no idea what he was about to say, but it was clear the left and right sides of his face were fighting over the words to use. His brow tightened, then eased. His jaw shifted once, then again. Even the scars that crossed the left side of his face seemed to deepen and soften with the battle taking place behind his expression. Her eyes wandered over the scars only briefly before moving elsewhere.

"Today was your first day on a horse?"

His quiet question interrupted her study of her husband's face.

"...Yes?" she answered, almost unsure of her own words, but she knew them to be true. Arthur said nothing, his expression unreadable.

If he remained this selective with words, which she expected he would, she would need to start cataloguing his frowns and scowls to gain some indication of what he was thinking. In the meantime, she filled the silence as she always did.

"I believe I will be doing lots of things for the first time.” She bit her lip, blissfully unaware that Arthur's eyes had followed the movement.

"So I thought I might as well get started with all the hobbies and skills I am expected to accomplish. There is so much to learn, and I don’t know what else I am to do with my time. Unless you have any suggestions?"

She gave the smallest of shrugs; this time it was slight enough to avoid the sharp pain that had greeted her when she last shrugged. Eliza had always spoken with her whole body. Hands, shoulders, smiles, frowns, every thought she had ever possessed seemed determined to escape her physically.

She searched his face once more for a response of some kind, but there was nothing, not even an indication that he intended to acknowledge what she had said. So, naturally, she kept talking.

"I did not mean to frighten you, Arthur."

Something changed in him.

His features did not soften; if anything, they hardened. This was an expression she had yet to see or catalogue from her new husband. Arthur stepped forward, closing much of the distance between them. He placed both hands on the mattress; it dipped beneath his weight as he leaned forward, head now level with hers. She now found herself staring directly into his eyes.

"It's important we clarify a few things," he said. His voice was quieter than ever before, but what it lacked in volume, it made up for in resolve.

He held her gaze with unwavering conviction.

Blame it on the fall, but she found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the words he shared as she gazed so closely at his face; the rich brown of his eyes had faint flecks of amber, and though his stare was dark, it was also mesmerising.

"First, I was not frightened. I do not frighten easily, so dismiss this notion from your mind. You have an uncanny ability to mistake my duties as your husband for compassion, which I have allowed thus far as we have only been married a day."

She blinked.

Was he embarrassed? She could have sworn she sensed concern from him as he approached her in the woods. Perhaps men like Arthur simply did not care to admit such things. Perhaps, somewhere in the strange rules that governed dukes and soldiers alike, fear was mistaken for weakness.

She refused to believe the hands that hurried along her body to check for injury had belonged to a man who had felt nothing at all.