Page 74

“I should like to tell you when I think of something,” she said. “Without wondering whether it will undo everything else.”

“Then tell me.”

“I think a great many things.”

“That has not escaped my notice.”

“Some of them are foolish.”

“An excellent match for my own.”

She smiled, though she had not finished being serious. He waited while she studied the book resting against his knee.

“When you said you wanted an heir with Eleanor, I wondered whether that was all you meant. Or whether it was simply easier to say than that you wanted a son to sit beside you.”

He did not answer at once. He had learned the language of succession long before any gentler one. His mother knew how to ask about heirs. Collins knew how to refer to the continuity of the estate. A man could discuss those things without admitting how often he had imagined a child sleeping in the cradle upstairs.

“I had imagined showing him the orchard,” he said. “Teaching him to ride. I bought a wooden horse absurdly early. Eleanor said he would not arrive in boots.”

Lydia’s smile returned, gently. “Was she right?”

“About a number of things. I paid less heed than I should have.”

“You tell me when you think I am wrong.”

“With considerable frequency.”

“I shall do the same. It seems a useful arrangement.”

He rested his cheek against her hair. He could feel how easily the conversation might turn into a promise he did not yet understand. She did not push it there. After a while she asked him to find the place in the book, because they had left the unfortunate traveler stranded long enough. He found it, misnamed the country again, and endured her correction with reasonable grace.

They went down to dinner late. Whitmore accepted their apology as if meals at Ashcombe had always waited upon voyages. At the table Lydia asked whether they might invite the Hale children once the conservatory was ready. Tristan told her to speak to their mother and settle with Samuel what he could manage. He did not need to repeat the instruction to the household.

“There will be mud,” she warned him.

“There is already mud. We have merely given it a new destination.”

“And questions.”

“You are describing my marriage.”

She looked at him across the candles. He liked the expression so much that he forgot what he meant to say about the gardener’s hours, so she supplied it herself, and they settled on one afternoon to begin.

Upstairs he found the list from the wedding carriage on her drawing table, under a clean sheet where she had been copying a plant’s name. He could see the bottom line in its different ink: No one is to say it was a mistake. He had begun to understand how much courage it had taken to bring that paper into the carriage and read it aloud.

Lydia came in carrying the book. She saw where his eyes had gone and put the book down without turning the paper over.

“I have not been adding punishments,” she said.

“I would have expected an entirely separate volume.”

“The bindings would cost too much.” She stood beside him. “I have been wondering which rules I still need.”

“Keep the ones that make it easier to tell me when I am a fool.”

“That is most of them.”

He laughed. She folded the list, smoothing the old creases with a thumb, and returned it to her reticule. She made no ceremony of it and tore nothing up to prove she trusted him more. She could trust him and still keep a place for the things she needed, and he was learning that later than he ought to have.