Page 86

“The smooth newt,” Eloise said, in the tone of someone correcting a misconception, “adapts. That is not the same as being easy to please.”

“You’re right,” Juliet said. “I apologize to the smooth newt.”

Eloise accepted this and turned to the next section, each answer branching into the next with the inexorable logic of a child who had done real research and considered it a gift to share.

“You’re being very quiet,” Eloise said, partway through a point about habitat preference.

“I am listening,” Juliet said. “Go on.”

Eloise held her gaze for two beats. “You’re listening in the wrong way.”

“Is there a wrong way?” Juliet blinked, knowing full well that she had just been caught out by a seven-year-old. Eloise, in particular, had always been a very bright child.

“You’re listening like Miss Green does when she is actually not listening.”

Ah.

“I am absolutely not,” Juliet said, with perhaps slightly more conviction than the charge required. Even her smile felt a tad too wide, but it was too late to tone it down; if she did, her charge would most definitely notice. “I am listening, and I think the great crested newt sounds magnificent, and I would very much like to hear about its breeding habits.”

And Eloise, apparently deciding that the breeding habits were too compelling to leave on the table, took the bait without realizing she’d been successfully distracted. Juliet kept her smile in place and turned the page when Eloise told her to.

Over the next few days, after her confrontation with Adam in his study, Juliet simply went through the motions. She ate at the breakfast and dinner table and conversed merely for Eloise's sake, but she couldn’t ignore the brooding presence of her husband at the head of the table. She did do her best, however, even though it hurt her every time she remembered all the things he’d whispered to her when they’d made love. All of that was obviously water under the bridge to him now.

What an awful man, she found herself thinking many times over the course of these days. How could he so easily change after all the things he’d said to her? Why did he change? But the longer she pondered alone, the angrier she got that she had to think about why in the first place. Why did she have to be the one to lose sleep over this?

By the third evening, sitting very straight with her needlework under the lamp, she had the distant and entirely unfunny thought that she was performing the exact sort of marriage she had ridden a horse through the night to escape. Present, correct, interior locked.

So, the next morning, she sent a note to Valerie and had it dispatched before she came down to breakfast.

Juliet was in the Slaters’ sitting room by early afternoon. Valerie opened the door herself, dismissed the housemaid behind her with a look, and took Juliet’s face in with the specific economy of a woman who knows exactly what she’s looking at.

“Sit down,” she said.

“Good afternoon,” Juliet said, trying to sound chipper, even though she did not feel so, not one bit.

“Sit down.” Valerie’s tone suggested she would not repeat herself.

So, Juliet sat. Valerie poured tea she’d already had brought up; she had anticipated tea, clearly, at some point between Juliet’s note and her arrival, and then she settled herself in the opposite chair with her feet tucked under her in the arrangement her mother would have had strong opinions about had she been in the room. She passed a cup to Juliet and waited.

Juliet took her time sipping, because she knew that as soon as she put the cup down, she had to say something. It was not as though she hadn’t already written some things in the letter she’d sent…but that was the sole reason why Valerie was not hounding her for the details yet.

So, Juliet cleared her throat, glancing once at her friend out of the corner of her eye. “It’s Adam,” she said, and winced. She had not intended to open with it that plainly…but it came out like that anyway.

Valerie narrowed her eyes for a beat, then sighed. “Why am I not surprised any longer? What’s he done?” Her tone was tired, and Juliet dreaded having to explain her husband’s sudden change in behavior because, even now, she herself still hadn’t managed to make any sense of it at all.

“He told me—” She stopped. She looked at her tea. “He said that perhaps we had become too comfortable too quickly. That it would be better if we remembered why we married in the first place.”

Valerie looked at her for a long beat, and Juliet tried not to squirm underneath her friend’s flat-eyed regard.

“He said that?” Valerie finally said, her tone somehow flatter than her eyes.

Juliet nodded. “He said that.”

Even conceding it to her friend days later did nothing to help her understanding.

Juliet’s hands clenched into tight fists. Why were all men so…blasted difficult?

“The Duke of Ravenlocke, who dragged you out of that ball early because Penhurst looked at you sideways,” she gestured expressively, “said those words to your face.”