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His voice was quiet. Lydia had never heard it so quiet.

“To the carriage, Your Grace,” the first footman said. “Her Grace asked…”

“I did,” Lydia said. “Amelia admired it for the nursery. It stood in the empty parlor. I thought…”

“It was Eleanor’s.”

The hall went silent. Sebastian had come to the foot of the stairs with his hat in his hand and stopped. Amelia had gone white. Lydia understood her error before she could answer it. Without knowing it, she had pressed upon a wound that had never healed.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I did not know. Tristan, I did not know.”

He kept his eyes on the chest. His hand spread on the lid as if someone might pull it from under him.

“There is no question of taking it,” Amelia said softly. “Please forgive me. I ought never to have encouraged the idea.”

“You admired it,” Lydia said. “I offered it. That is all.” She turned to the footmen. “Please take it back to the parlor. Carefully. Thank you.”

The men lifted it and carried it back. Tristan let his hand fall from the lid as it went and stood staring after it. He did not follow.

Sebastian crossed the hall and took his wife’s arm. He studied Tristan a long moment, and then Lydia, and said quietly, “We shall see to the carriage.” He drew Amelia toward the front door. Lydia heard their steps on the gravel, and then nothing.

Tristan walked into the parlor. Lydia followed and closed the door, because servants were still moving luggage through the hall and she would not have this confrontation in front of them.

He stood by the window with his back to her. The chest sat where it always had, the light across its painted lid. Lydia felt sick.

“I am sorry,” she said again. “If I had known…”

“You gave away something that was not yours.”

She let it settle. For a moment she thought only of apologizing again, of assuring him the chest was safe. It was safe. They both stood beside it. But accepting blame for everything he implied would not undo her mistake.

“You told Mrs. Bell to take her instructions from me,” she said. “You told me in the carriage that I could arrange the rooms as I liked.”

“That gave you no leave to dispose of everything in them.”

“I ought to have asked about something so old. I see that now. But how was I to know it was hers? Nobody told me. You never told me. It was moved into this room weeks ago without a word.”

“Must I give you a history of every object in the house before you lay a finger on it?”

“If it matters this much, yes.” She steadied her voice. “Why did you never tell me? About the chest, or any of it? I do not even know what else in this house belonged to her. I cannot know what matters to you if you refuse to tell me.”

“I should not have to explain my wife’s belongings to my wife.”

The words hung in the room. She saw him hear them. Something flickered in his face. It did not stop him.

“You walk through this house,” he said, and his voice was rising now, “as if it were empty. As if nothing happened here before you came. You open rooms. You move things. You pull trees out of the ground. And I let you. God help me, I let you, because I wanted you happy here, and I thought, I thought…” He turned from the window. His face was white and his eyes were terrible. “And then I come in from the terrace and find her chest halfway out the door to someone else’s nursery.”

“I did not know.”

“I know you did not know! That is the whole of it!” He struck the window frame with the flat of his hand so hard the glass shook. Lydia flinched. “You did not know. You cannot know what it was to stand in that corridor, and you sit across a dinner table from me and talk about nurseries.”

“I have never once…”

“You did not need to! I saw your face yesterday. I saw you watching me with that child.” He was breathing hard. “I told you the truth on the floor of that room upstairs. I told you everything. And you held me and told me it was not my fault, and I let myself believe you, and then you went on wanting the same thing as if I had never said a word.”

Lydia’s hands had gone cold. She clasped them in front of her to stop them shaking.

“I am not trying to erase her,” she said. “I would never. When you told me about her, I was glad you trusted me. I am not trying to put her out of the house. I love you.”