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She left him alone in his study with a cooling pot of tea and a tenant’s letter still open on his desk. She needed to give him more time.

Two days later, she intercepted her husband again.

“We have been invited to a ball.”

Phillipa said it from the doorway of his study. Two days had passed since their last conversation but neither of them had found much to say to each other since.

Gregory looked up from his correspondence. “Whose?”

“Lord and Lady Bellingham. Ronan and Augusta will be there, and I expect half of London besides.” She turned the card over once in her hands. “I will understand if you would rather not attend.”

“Why would I rather not attend?”

“Because things between us are not exactly comfortable at present, in case you had not noticed,” she said, with a quiet steadiness that cut rather deeper than anger would have done. “I did not think you would care to stand beside me for an entire evening under those circumstances, pretending otherwise for a room full of strangers.”

Something crossed his face, there and gone too quickly for her to name it. “I would be glad to, if you are going.”

“I am going.”

“Then so am I.”

She nodded, and turned to leave, and told herself she had not expected anything more than that from him, which was almost true.

When it came time for the event., the ballroom was full of Londoners’.

Phillipa felt the weight of the evening settle on her the moment they stepped through the doors. She had known there would be talk.

A duke who had married in haste, a wife no one in society had heard of a season ago, a baby that had appeared in the household from nowhere at all. She had simply not understood, until she heard it with her own ears, how much talk there would be.

“...said he will not so much as hold the child,” murmured one lady to another, behind a fan that did very little to muffle the words, “which one must think rather strange, given the trouble he went to arranging the marriage in the first place...”

“...wonders if there is something amiss with the boy, for the Duke to keep so clear of him...”

Phillipa kept her chin up and her smile fixed and did not look at Gregory, because she did not want to know what his face was doing. But his hand found the small of her back as they moved further into the room, steady and certain, and he did not once let the distance between them widen, not even when Lady Carrow descended upon them both with a battery of questions about the baby’s age and temperament that Phillipa had to answer alone. Gregory, infuriatingly, said almost nothing at all.

“You did not have to stay so close,” she said quietly, when they had a moment that was private. “I expected you to drift off to the card room within the hour and leave me to manage this on my own.”

His jaw was tight. “I am aware of what they are saying about us, which is precisely why I have no intention of drifting anywhere.”

“That is not comfort, Gregory. You’re being strategic with me.”

“I am by your side.”

She almost smiled at that, despite herself. For a moment something easier passed between them than had passed in days.

Then the orchestra struck up a waltz, and he held out his hand.

“I cannot say no,” she said. “Otherwise people will talk.”

But in earnest, she wanted to dance with him, too.

“You do not have to pretend, out here on the floor,” she said, once they were turning together, his hand warm at her waist. “No one can hear us over the music. You may go back to not speaking to me if you prefer it.”

“I would rather not, as it happens.”

“You have said very little to me since the study. I had begun to think you regretted telling me any of it.”

“I meant what I told you. I just haven’t done anything differently since I said it, which rather defeats the point of saying it. And what you said back, I haven’t been able to shake it.”