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Joan scowled at him, but there was no real heat in it, and she let him keep the bread.

They talked about nothing much after that, but Joan’s mood seemed to improve.

“I heard about the nursery,” she said eventually, to her plate.

“Your mother told me,” Gregory said. “I should have come and found you myself, rather than let you sit with it alone half the evening. That was my mistake.”

“It’s only a room,” said Joan.

“It’s only a room,” he agreed. “But I want to say something, since she’s already said most of it and I’d like my own share of it said too. Loving one of you doesn’t use up what’s left for the others.”

Joan pushed a piece of bread around her plate and didn’t answer right away.

“I should like that to be true,” she said finally, quiet.

“It’s true whether you like it or not,” said Phillipa. “That’s rather the nature of true things.”

Gregory reached over and tugged her plait, the same small gesture Phillipa had used upstairs.

Joan swatted his hand away, scowling, and the scowl didn’t reach her eyes at all.

Phillipa had the sense that she was fine now.

It was the next day when Phillipa’s father finally decided to make his visit.

“I had forgotten how loud a house with children in it could be.”

“You came,” Phillipa said. “I was not entirely certain the roads would allow it, this time of year.”

“I should have walked the whole way before I missed seeing you like this.” Her father held her back at arm’s length, studying her with the particular frank appraisal only a father ever quite dares. “You look well, my girl. Happy. I confess I did not always know, those first months, whether this marriage would bring you that.”

“Neither did I, if I am honest with you.” She glanced across the hall to where Gregory stood, laughing at something Joan had said, Edmund balanced on one hip and entirely unbothered by the indignity of it. “It took us both rather longer than it ought to have, to find our way to it properly.”

“The best things generally do, I find. Your mother and I took the better part of three years ourselves. It was good after that.”

“You would not have. We were careful not to let it show in front of you.” He watched Gregory a moment, then looked back at her. “We argued a great deal, your mother and I, the first year. About nothing in particular. I believe there was a fight about a dog that lasted the better part of a month.”

“What happened to the dog?”

“We kept the dog and I lost that argument entirely.” He smiled. “My point is only that it is rarely simple at the start, whatever people like to say about it afterward, once they have forgotten the difficult parts.”

“I did not think you argued at all. You always seemed so settled.”

“That is what thirty years does. At the time it did not feel settled in the least.” He was quiet a moment, watching her face. “Was it very hard, the beginning, with him?”

“It was not what I expected, certainly. We married under difficult circumstances, and I did not think there would be anything else to it other than convenience.”

“And was there?”

“Not at first.” She thought about how to say it plainly, without dressing it up. “He would not let me near him, those first months. I had to really give him some time to open up to me properly.”

“That sounds miserable.”

“It was, rather. I did not tell you half of it at the time.”

“I gathered as much from what you did not say. You were always careful about what you left out of your letters.” He said it without any accusation in it. “I did wonder, once or twice, whether I ought to come and see for myself how you were getting on.”

“I am glad you did not, I think I needed to work it out myself.”