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Good grief. Had she married another man, would he have tolerated such effortless familiarity?

"When I say collect," she said, lowering herself carefully onto the edge of his bed, smoothing her nightgown beneath her as she did so, "I mean collect an answer or two."

She tilted her head towards where she believed he was standing.

"I thought we might play tit for tat for a little while, if your senses still allow for it at this hour?"

"You came into my bedchamber..." he repeated slowly, unable to keep the disbelief from his voice. "To play?"

For a long moment he simply stared in her direction.

The words emerged somewhere between disbelief and exhaustion. It was becoming increasingly apparent that his wife had been placed upon this earth solely to test the limits of his patience—a divine punishment.

Every instinct he possessed urged him to keep her at arm's length, to remind her of propriety, to send her back to her own chambers with a lecture on respectable behaviour. Yet somehow, despite all his intentions, she had wandered into his room in the middle of the night, used his bare chest as a landmark to navigate the darkness, and was now proposing games as though the hour were barely after luncheon.

God help him.

Shaking his head, he walked around to the opposite side of the great four-poster bed. The mattress dipped beneath his weight as he lowered himself onto it, stretching his long legs out before him until his shoulders settled comfortably against the mountain of pillows. The familiar surroundings usually brought him an immediate sense of calm. Yet, tonight his own bed felt strangely unfamiliar, occupied by the soft rustle of another person shifting amongst the covers.

He could see her clearly, years of darkness taught him how.

Only the pale silhouette of her nightdress caught the moonlight spilling through the open windows, the breeze stirring its hem ever so slightly whenever it wandered into the room.

He was almost certain she was blushing.

"Yes..." she answered after a moment. "I have questions, and you promised me answers." She tried to sound terribly resolute. The hesitation in her voice entirely undid the effort.

Arthur closed his eyes for a brief moment, rubbing a hand slowly over his face.

Impossible woman. Still, if entertaining this peculiar midnight interrogation hastened her departure from his chambers, then so be it.

"Duchess?" he called.

"Yes?" she answered.

"I believe this is the part where you ask your questions."

"Oh."

The mattress creaked softly as she rearranged herself. Through the darkness, he watched her lean back against the bedpost at the opposite end of the bed, facing him across the length of the mattress. She stretched her legs out between them until her ankles rested little more than an arm's length from him.

"Well..." she began, smoothing the folds of her nightdress over her knees with nervous hands. "I've been thinking about our encounter before you left for Belgium."

"In my office?" he asked. He, too, had been thinking of it. Often.

"Yes."

Her voice fell almost to a whisper, though there was no earthly reason for secrecy. They were alone in an isolated wing of the house, the servants asleep several corridors away. It was not as though they were trying not to wake an infant.

"You mentioned..." she paused, biting her lip before continuing carefully, "mistresses and professionals."

"And I... well... I suppose I wondered..." The words deserted her.

Arthur watched her fidget with the sleeve of her nightdress, twisting the fine linen around one finger before releasing it again. Under ordinary circumstances, such uncertainty would have tested what little patience he possessed. He valued precision in speech almost as much as he valued precision with a firearm. If a person had something to say, he expected them to say it plainly. He expected people to know their own minds before they addressed him.

Yet with Eliza he had begun to discover that her thoughts rarely travelled in straight lines. They meandered.

Circled.