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Nathaniel had not meant to linger.

He had been on his way to the library with papers in hand and a dull report on tenant affairs tucked beneath one arm when he had paused just outside the scullery.

He was drawn by the unmistakable sounds of splashing, a woman’s voice in quiet command, and the low, recognizable wheeze of Percival at his most obstinate.

He did not mean to look. And yet—

For a moment, just one instant, he had seen them.

Eleanor was with sleeves rolled and her hair slipping loose, kneeling beside the basin with all the determined grace of a woman who had decided that if she were to do something, she would do it well, no matter how undignified the task.

And Percival, his own ridiculous, opinionated pug, was sitting like a wayward duchess in her lap, allowing himself to be towelled and babied with something dangerously close to affection.

It was absurd. Charming. And he felt immediately like a trespasser.

Nathaniel withdrew, quickly and without sound, flattening himself to the wall just out of view. His hand tightened around the edge of the report.

What in God’s name had compelled him to pause?

He should have passed by, offered a brief nod if caught, and returned to his work. That was what men did when they entered marriages of arrangement. They proceeded with detachment and structure, with a healthy understanding of boundaries.

And yet there he had been, watching his wife laugh.

His wife.

The word still felt foreign on his tongue, like a title borrowed rather than earned.

It had seemed, somehow, a moment not meant for him. A private, easy space she had carved out for herself and, inexplicably, for Percival. And for all the pug’s obstinate habits and impossible snobbery, the traitorous beast had taken to Eleanor as if she had always belonged.

How quaint, Nathaniel thought, attempting to smother the mild sting of jealousy that bloomed behind his ribs.

Percival barely tolerated most humans. He regarded footmen with utter disdain, barked at his mother’s parasol for three seasons running, and had once refused to allow the Bishop of Arundel to sit upon a particular armchair without protest. He accepted bribes only in the form of roasted beef, and affection never.

But Eleanor had touched his ears on her second day at Loxley, and he had leaned into her hand like a spoiled child. Unbelievable. Nathaniel smirked despite himself.

Then, with a small shake of his head, more at himself than anything else, he turned down the corridor and resumed his course to the study. The door clicked shut behind him, and he placed the report on the desk with unnecessary precision.

The window was open, letting in the faintest sound of birdsong and a breeze that carried the scent of soap from some far corner of the house.

He sat, opened his ledger, and stared at the page without truly seeing it. He wondered if his wife was content. And if she were, would that be enough? He didn’t know.

He dipped his pen in ink, determined to bury the thought in facts and figures and the safety of distance. Whatever this was, it would remain temporary. Practical. Well-defined. And above all, uncomplicated. He would see to it.

But the scratching of his pen had only just begun to find its rhythm when a firm knock sounded on the study door. It was not a servant’s knock. It was too swift, purposeful even. And far too imperious.

He didn’t look up as he called out, “Come in.”

The door opened with the delicate drama of someone quite certain they had every right to interrupt.

His mother swept into the room like a reprimand in human form.

Her gown was a dove grey, her gloves pearl, and her expression suggested she had once again been personally affronted by the very nature of someone’s existence.

Nathaniel lifted his gaze to meet hers. His mouth was already forming a greeting that would, hopefully, be bland enough to deflect conversation. But it was all in vain because his mother spoke first.

“Do you have any idea what your wife has done?” she enquired in a manner of a priest enquiring about someone’s sins.

“I am certain that you will tell me, Mother,” he responded. He believed that his mother was shocked by the scene he had witnessed a short while prior, with Eleanor and his pug, but she surprised him with something else, something utterly banal.

“Your wife,” she continued, accentuating the title, “has suggested green silk for the drawing room drapes.”

He blinked. “Have I been so fortunate?”

She stared at him, unamused. “It is not a jest, Nathaniel.”

He sighed and leaned back in his seat, realizing that this debate would not end quickly. “I never jest about drapery.”

“She means to replace the damask.”

“Which has hung there since Queen Charlotte was still a German princess. Perhaps it has earned its retirement.”

“She wishes for green, Nathaniel.”

He tilted his head. “A shocking hue. Practically Jacobin.”

“I do not find you amusing.”

“That makes two of us,” he murmured, dipping his pen back into the ink.

His mother now advanced another step into the room, and her lips were pressed so tightly they disappeared altogether.

“This is precisely the problem. You allow her free rein. You indulge her whims. First opening the garden room, now the drawing room, next she will be taking it upon herself to host musicales or God forbid, choose new upholstery.”

“The horror.”

“Nathaniel.”

He looked up again, finally meeting her gaze. His mother’s was sharp, cool, and not without some measure of genuine concern beneath the frost.

“She is your wife,” she said, reminding him of something he didn’t need to be reminded. “Her behaviour reflects on this family. You may not care what the ton thinks, but I do. And if you are not going to manage her, someone must.”

The word manage scraped against his skin.

“I’ll speak with her,” he said, the lie leaving his lips so smoothly it barely registered as one.

She studied him for a long moment, before nodding. “See that you do.” She turned for the door, as her silks rustled after her like dry leaves. Then, she lingered in the doorway. “And for heaven’s sake, not green.”

When the door closed behind her, Nathaniel sat in still silence for a beat. The green would suit Eleanor. It would draw out the strange, luminous shade of her eyes, the colour he had not yet found a name for. And it would banish, at last, the heavy shadow of his mother’s tastes from that room.

He tapped the tip of the quill once against the blotter.

Then he turned the page in the ledger and hoped to think nothing at all.

***

Night fell over Loxley House with a hush that crept slowly through its stone corridors and into its many rooms, as though the walls themselves were settling into repose.

Candles had long been extinguished in the public chambers; the clock in the hall had chimed ten and then eleven, the sound deep and echoing in the hush of a house half-asleep.

Still, Nathaniel remained in his study, though the ledger before him had ceased to hold his attention hours earlier.

Sometimes, when he could not focus on anything else, he would take out the golden locket that he kept in the drawer of his mahogany writing table, but he could not even reach for that.

What lay on his heart was too heavy to be lifted even by the memory of his uncle.

The ink had dried in his pen. The fire had dwindled to a faint glow, orange and ghostly.

And yet he sat, elbow propped on the desk, his fingers absently rubbing the bridge of his nose, as though numbers and names still flickered behind his eyes.

It was not the work that held him there. It was the stillness. Eventually, even that began to feel too loud.

He rose slowly and inhaled deeply. The silence of the house stretched around him, broken only by the occasional creak of old timber or the faint whisper of wind against the glass.

He did not light a candle. There was enough moonlight in the corridor to see by. It was enough not to stumble. He wandered, or so it would seem to anyone watching, but with the sort of unconscious purpose that came only when the mind refused to name its desires.

He passed the long gallery, where ancestral portraits gazed down at him with varying degrees of disapproval. Without even being aware of it, he turned towards the eastern wing, where her chambers were.

He didn’t mean to. Or at least, he told himself he didn’t.

Halfway down the corridor, he slowed. The carpet muffled his footfalls. The sconces here had not been lit, but under the door of Eleanor’s sitting room glowed a thin ribbon of light. She was still awake.

He stood there for a long moment, long enough to hear the faintest rustle of movement from within. A chair perhaps? Then, the soft, low hum of her voice. Was she reading aloud? It was barely audible, but enough to make something shift in his chest.

He could knock.

It would be nothing. A courtesy. A brief, polite enquiry regarding her day. He could ask about the drawing room. Suggest, perhaps with some ironic charm, that she reconsider the green silk.

That was when his hand almost lifted.

Almost.

But instead, he stepped away. Every step was quieter and more deliberate than the previous one. He continued walking back towards his chamber, wondering what on earth had possessed him.

No rules prevented him from knocking on any doors of his own home. She was his wife in his house in his hallway. And yet …

He did not look back.