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Her mother touched her arm and went into the adjoining room, leaving the door open a few inches. Lydia came in and sat in the chair by the cold hearth. Tristan stayed where he was until her eyes went to the chair opposite. Then he sat, because she had invited it.

“You came,” she said.

“You told me to.”

“I told you that you would have to.” She took in the dust on his coat. “You rode.”

“The carriage would have been too slow.”

Something moved in her face and was gone. She folded her hands in her lap. “Well?”

He had rehearsed this for sixty miles. All of it left his head.

“I said I should never have married you,” he said. “That was a lie. It was the worst thing I have ever said to anyone, and I said it to you. I wanted to hurt you because you had seen the thing I feared most, and I wanted you to stop looking at it. I am more sorry than I know how to say.”

She did not answer. Her fingers curled into the fabric of her skirt.

“I will not ask you to come home because you are my wife,” he said, “or because society expects it, or because the house is lonely. It is lonely. I came for another reason.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “I came because I love you. And because I finally understand what you were asking me. I should have understood it in the parlor. I should have understood it on the floor of your bedroom. I did not, and I am sorry.”

“What has changed?” she said quietly. “Since you left the house. What has changed?”

“I went to the lodge. I opened the boxes.”

Her head came up. “Eleanor’s things?”

“All of them.” He studied his hands. “I had not opened them in five years. I had let myself remember nothing about her except that last day. I had put her behind a closed door and all she became was a white face on a pillow. And there were her gloves, mended with the wrong thread because she could never find the right silk. And a drawing she made of a toy I bought, laughing at me for buying it too soon.” He stopped. “She wanted that child, Lydia. She wanted it before I ever said the word heir. I did not put that wish in her. It was hers. And when she was afraid, she wanted me to share her fear. She never asked me to take the choice away. I would not share her fear, and I told her she was foolish.”

Lydia held still.

“I have spent five years calling it guilt,” he said. “Telling myself that if I had said something different, she would have lived. I think I needed it to be my fault. If the fault were mine, chance had no part in it, and the world made sense, and I could keep myself safe in it by never wanting anything again.” He raised his eyes to hers. “And then I did the same thing to you. I decided what you might want and what you might risk, and I never once asked you. I insisted on a white marriage in that carriage without considering what it would cost you. I shut you out of rooms you did not know existed and then shouted at you for walking into them. I blamed you for wanting the very thing you told me you wanted on the first day we met. You asked me plainly, the first time we lay together, whether I understood that a child might come of it. I said yes. And then I spoke to you as though you had broken an agreement by wanting what I had already chosen. You were honest with me from the beginning. I was the one that lied.”

Tears brightened her eyes, but she kept looking at him.

“I am still afraid,” he said. “I will not pretend otherwise. If you asked me to promise I will never think of that corridor again, I would be lying again. I will think of it. Some nights I will lie awake and think of nothing else. But I will not let fear decide our marriage anymore. I do not want it deciding anything.”

He bent and unbuckled the saddlebag at his feet. Her eyes followed his hands. He drew out the shawl, unwrapped it and held out what lay inside.

The wooden horse. Dapple gray, with its stiff legs and red saddle and mane of real horsehair, the rubbed place on its nose, and one wheel glued back on, a little crooked.

Lydia stared at it.

“I bought this for my son,” Tristan said. His voice shook. “Before he was born. Eleanor laughed at me for it. I put it away when he died and have not been able to look at it since. I found it at the lodge. I mended the wheel.” He held it out. “I want to give it to you. For our child, if we have one. If we do not, it is still yours, to do with as you decide. I want you to have it so that you know I can imagine it. You asked me in the parlor whether I could imagine a future with you that did not end in that corridor. I can. I sat in that room at the lodge and imagined it. A child on our conservatory floor pushing this along the tiles and eating the plants. I imagined it, and it terrified me, and I wanted it so much I could not breathe.”

She took the horse in both hands. One tear marked the gray paint. For a long moment, she turned it carefully by its stiff legs and said nothing.

“I never asked you not to be afraid,” she said at last, without looking up. “I would be afraid too. I am afraid. The trouble is that you use your fear to shut me out. Every time. You go into your study. You go into the woods. You shout at me and walk out of the door.” She turned the little horse over in her hands. “How do I know you mean this? How do I know you are not saying it only because you fear I will not come back?”

“You do not know. I cannot prove it to you today.” He made himself hold her eyes. “I cannot promise I will stop being frightened. I cannot promise I know what our family will look like, or when, or whether. But I want the possibility. I want to find out with you. I want to talk about children at breakfast without thinking it means I am going to lose you. I want our home, and our friends, and the conservatory, and ordinary mornings, and you telling me I am blocking the light. I want arguments. I want Christmases. I want a life that goes on, instead of one that stopped five years ago in a corridor.” He paused. “And when I am frightened, I will tell you. I will not go into the study. I will come and find you and tell you, and let you be frightened with me. That is the only promise I can make.”

“Do you want me to come home because you are lonely?”

“I was lonely for five years and did not mind it.” He leaned closer. “It is you I cannot do without. I want you home because I love you, and I want the life we had begun.”

Lydia sat very still. Then she set the horse on the little table, rose, and crossed the space between them.

He rose. Lydia stopped just in front of him, still deciding how near she wished to be. He offered his hand. She closed hers around it and kept the distance she had chosen.

“I will come home,” she said. “But only if we face it together. Whatever comes. Not you in one room and me in another. Together, or not at all.”