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"I had hoped," she admitted, "that you might surprise me."

Then, to her surprise, Arthur asked quietly,

"How long did you live at the orphanage?"

The question caught her entirely off guard. It did not feel like the sort of polite enquiry one gentleman made merely to occupy a journey. It felt personal. As though he wished, for no reason other than to understand the life she had lived before she became his wife.

"Fourteen years," she answered softly, before another thought immediately occurred to her. "Although I do hope you are not imagining that Mr and Mrs Didley treated me poorly.”

"They were wonderfully kind to my siblings and me. Cecily had already been living with them when I arrived, and being six years older than I was, she very quickly decided she ought to behave as though she were my elder sister. James was there too, arriving six months before me, though he remained firmly convinced throughout our childhood that such a tiny difference made him infinitely wiser."

Arthur's lips twitched.

"Then, about a year after I arrived, Richard came to live with us. He was the youngest of us, shy as anything and forever trailing behind, though it did not take him very long to become every bit as troublesome as James."

"And somehow, without ever really discussing it, the four of us became inseparable." She paused for a moment.

She glanced sideways towards Arthur. He looked as though he wished to ask another question, which delighted her a great deal.

"Why do you not regard the younger children as your siblings?" Arthur asked after a thoughtful silence. "The ones who attended our wedding."

The question surprised her.

She had never really stopped to consider it before.

"That is rather an interesting question," she admitted, turning her gaze towards the passing fields beyond the carriage window.

"There were always other children coming through the Didleys' home, of course. Some stayed for only a few months, others for a year or two before finding families of their own or moving elsewhere. They were all loved, every one of them, but, inevitably, they came and went."

She paused, choosing her words with care.

"We remained a constant for each other."

Arthur listened without interruption.

Her smile lingered for another moment before gradually softening.

"Then, one by one, the others left home. Cecily first, then James, then Richard. More children arrived afterwards, and I loved them dearly..." She hesitated, searching for words that did not diminish that love.

"It was simply... a different sort of love.I think it was never a question of loving them less. It was simply circumstance. The four of us grew together; the others, I had the privilege of helping to grow."

Arthur inclined his head thoughtfully, as though turning each of her words over in his mind before quietly accepting them.

"My turn," she announced at last, clearing her throat with exaggerated importance.

Arthur looked at her expectantly.

"What is your favourite meal?"

He considered the question for barely a heartbeat.

"I do not have one," he answered.

"You don't?" Eliza questioned.

"No."

"Food is an essential," he replied matter-of-factly. "Its purpose is to prevent one from starving. I do not have a preferred means of avoiding a brush with that.”