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“It made the point independently,” Tristan replied.

Samuel surveyed the floor and shook his head. He would finish here, he said. They might help most by keeping the dirt where it belonged instead of carrying it into every corner of the house.

They went in by the servants’ entrance. Mrs. Bell met them in the stone passage, her face shifting slowly from concern to the effort of not laughing. Tristan explained the failure of the bin. The housekeeper sent for hot water.

“And while I have you, Your Grace,” she said, as they turned toward the back stairs. “The workmen will use the south passage for the timber all next week. There is a chest in the small south room that will be in their way. Shall I have it moved through into the parlor?”

“Yes, yes. Wherever it suits.” Tristan’s eyes were on a smear of earth on the side of Lydia’s throat.

“Very good, Your Grace. And which room shall I have the bath taken to?”

“Ours,” he said, and then glanced at Lydia, as if the word had escaped before he could examine it.

“Ours,” she agreed.

Upstairs Mary inspected Lydia’s gown with the professional indignation she reserved for mud. James carried Tristan’s waistcoat away between two fingers. The bath arrived in stages, the copper tub dragged before the fire and the water carried up in cans, while husband and wife waited behind the screen in their dressing gowns. Their glances grew less amused as the room warmed and filled with steam.

Lydia had never imagined intimacy beginning with impatience over buckets. She had expected candlelight, some graceful certainty about what to say. Instead, she stood beside a towel, aware of a trace of earth still on Tristan’s cheekbone and of how badly she wanted to be alone with him.

He dismissed the servants when the water was ready. At the door, Mary asked whether Lydia needed anything more. She answered no and waited until the latch settled. Tristan stood by the bath, testing the water with his hand. There was room for two, provided neither insisted on keeping a respectable distance.

“You are examining that tub as if Collins might produce an estimate for it,” she said.

“I am wondering whether you will accuse me of taking more than my share.”

“Almost certainly.”

She let the dressing gown fall. She had never stood naked before anyone in daylight, and she felt the air of the room on every inch of her skin, and the heat of the fire, and his eyes. He did not move. He looked at her as he had across the ballroom at Wexcombe, his face gone still, and she saw his throat move.

She held out her hand. He took it and helped her over the edge, and she sank into the hot water with a gasp. Then he shed his own dressing gown, and she looked at him as he had looked at her, without hiding it, and he stepped in behind her and drew her back against his chest.

For a little while the awkwardness made them laugh: the narrow tub, his knees, the towel that slid off the stool onto the floor, his solemn warning that neither of them should attempt any further improvements to the house that afternoon. She found the soap and washed the earth from his arms where they lay around her. He washed her hair, working the soap through it slowly with his fingers, and poured water over it from a jug with such tenderness that her heart ached, and when the last of the dirt had gone he gathered her wet hair over one shoulder and kissed the nape of her neck.

The laughter stopped.

She shifted in the water until she faced him, settling her knees on either side of his hips and her hands on his shoulders. His hands came up to her waist and held her there. She leaned forward and gently washed the last of the earth from his face with the cloth. He went entirely still beneath her touch.

“Lydia,” he said, and she knew what the changed voice meant.

“I want to be your wife,” she said.

“You are.”

“You know what I mean.” She kept her hand against his face. “I have not forgotten what you told me. I know what you would risk. I will not ask you to pretend it does not frighten you.” Her voice shook, and she let it. “But I want all of you, even the parts you think are not safe to give me.”

He held her gaze a long time. She watched him hesitate at the edge of a decision, and she watched what it cost him. This time he gave the answer anyway.

“I want that too,” he said. “God help me, I want it more than I have ever wanted anything.”

He bent to kiss her. She put her fingers against his mouth and held him there.

“A child could come of this,” she said. She had almost left the words unspoken. The water was warm and his hands were on her, and she wanted nothing less than another conversation that ended with his back going out of a door. But she would not let them go further without the certainty that he understood the cost. “I cannot promise we shall have one. Nor that we shall not.”

He looked down at her hand against his mouth. Beyond the door a servant crossed the passage and went on toward the stairs. Lydia waited until the footsteps faded.

“I know,” he said.

“Say it to me plainly. I need to hear you say it.”