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“Whether or not you were still living.”

Cordelia pressed her lips together. Hehadreturned for the same reasons Irene insisted on visiting. Wherever he had been the past two years, he still heard the rumors and whispers of the Ton. She gave him a smile, though there wasn’t the slightest bit of genuine happiness behind it.

“I pray you haven’t been too disappointed,” she cooed.

The Duke stared down at her. “We will discuss my disappointments at a later time.”

“Oh,” she drawled, “I insist you inform me of them now. I wouldn’t dare want you to be displeased with your dutiful wife.”

“Does it please you to aggravate me?”

Cordelia swallowed. Though she teased, he never once cracked a smile. Not that she outwardly expected him to, but she thought her sarcasm could’ve cleared the air in the slightest. There was a tangible heaviness surrounding them, one that threatened to suffocate Cordelia if she wasn’t careful. To her, he only looked rageful. His brow furrowed deeply, the sharp lines of his displeasure striking around his eyes angrily. A sneer remained permanent across his lips, the corner of his mouth twitching deeper into a frown.

The longer he stared, the more Cordelia felt the need to shrink backwards. If he wished to intimidate her without saying a word, he was nearing success.

“Of course it does not please me,” Cordelia finally replied. “Did it please you to leave your new wife alone in a new home for two years?” She held her hands behind her back and gave him a shrug. “For all I knew, you had perished yourself. I had no way of knowing.”

The Duke looked over her head. “I see the idea didn’t bother you too much.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

He curved around her, nearing the wooden fence that lined the flourishing garden. “I do not recall leaving my gardens in such a state,” he said.

“Does it displease you?”

“I do not care for it.”

Cordelia frowned, her eyes narrowing on the back of his head. When he wasn’t facing her, she felt as though she had all the power in the world. She managed to accomplish plenty of things while he was off sulking elsewhere, not that he took care to notice it.

“Tell me, your Grace,” she continued, “Do you want to see it barren? When I first arrived, the gardens were decaying and empty, barely a blossoming bud in sight. It was an unpleasant display.”

The Duke turned back to her, walking by and circling around. His eyes squinted on the ground, where her canvas laid beside her feet. “You are an artist,” he said. “Is that right?”

Cordelia swallowed, a different sort of feeling creeping into her chest. He stood behind her, then, reaching down to retrieve the canvas. He held it up to the light, investigating the half drawn flowers and geese in the distance. His expression remained sour all the same, his nostrils flaring as though he smelt something off about it. She frowned, twisting her hands nervously behind her back.

“It is a hobby,” she said.

“For when you aren’t drowning my fortune,” he mused, “You paint.”

The insult stung harder than she expected it to. Not that he outrightly called her work unpleasant, but he did not compliment it all the same. She reached, taking the canvas out of his hand with a light tug. Her eyes lingered over his hands, the same white scars she noticed on their wedding still brightly standing out against his skin. She stared for a moment too long and he jerked away, twisting his hands in a way that shielded them from her sight.

“I do not remember being told of any restraints I was supposed to have,” Cordelia said, ignoring the way her heartbeat pattered strongly against her chest. “No, I cannot recall even there being a goodbye.”

The Duke looked over his shoulder at her. “Whatever reasons I had for leaving were my reasons alone. They do not require your input.”

“Of course not,” she snapped. “I am only your wife.”

His eyes clung to her. “Do you suppose a wife is meant to wipe clean the original interior of my home, rearranging it to something more of her standards?” Though his words were heavy with disdain, he never once raised his voice, never once gave off the impression that he was outrightly displeased with the work she had done.

“Tell me, your Grace, do the changes not fit your own standards?”

“I barely recognize it.”

The shortness of his tone said it all. There was no pride in everything she had done, despite it being a momentous amount of changes. A part of her, one that she wished to bury and hide, shrunk at the idea of it all being pointless, despite finding her own pleasure in all the changes.

Cordelia’s hands tightened into fists. Perhaps he had a right to be perturbed by all the changes. If he was a more present figure in the estate, she would have agreed with him. If he lived alongside her, there would never have been a need to go behind his back and do the things she wished to do. But, alas, the Duke never once lived with her. She doubted he even spent a night there. It was very possible that he left the moment he left her chambers that night those years ago.

Cordelia crossed her arms, her stubbornness being her strongest tool in that very moment. “You have my sincerest apologies, your Grace,” she said, though there wasn’t a drop of concern in her voice. “I had no idea that you considered this to be your home.”