“A horse of excellent taste.” She smoothed George’s hair—dark, like his father’s, thick and unruly despite the nursemaid’s obvious efforts. Her palm curved over the small skull, and the warmth of it, the solid aliveness of a child’s head beneath her hand, sent something jagged through her ribs that she absorbed without flinching.
“You’ve made a friend.” Caroline stood in the doorway, wiping flour from her hands onto an apron she should not have been wearing and would deny owning if asked. She was three years older than Penelope, three inches taller, and possessed of the unshakeable confidence of a woman who had married for love and never once regretted it. “He’s been asking after you sincebreakfast. Kept pointing at the door and sayingPenny come?until William threatened to ride to Mayfair himself.”
“Well, here I am.” Penelope straightened. Smiled. The smile felt like lifting something heavy. “I thought I might call this morning. If you’re not occupied.”
“I am covered in flour and George has hidden the cat somewhere in the linen cupboard. I am spectacularly occupied.” Caroline stepped forward and kissed her cheek, then pulled back and held her at arm’s length with the frank, assessing gaze of an elder sister who had changed Penelope’s nappies and was therefore immune to all forms of pretence. “You look thin.”
“I am perfectly?—”
“Don’t. Sit. I’m sending for tea and something with cream in it.”
Penelope sat, because arguing with Caroline required energy she did not possess. George climbed into her lap uninvited, tucked himself against her chest with the boneless confidence of a child who assumed all adults existed primarily for his comfort, and resumed a whispered conversation with Captain the horse that appeared to involve significant military strategy.
The weight of him pressed against her. Warm. Solid. Smelling of biscuit crumbs and the indefinable sweetness of clean skin and milk. Her arms closed around him before she could think, and for a moment—one treacherous moment—the weight was right. The shape was wrong, too big, too heavy, but theweightwas right, and her body did not know the difference, and her heartcracked open along the fault line she had been holding shut since the morning she had handed Rose to Marianne and stepped back and felt the absence slam into her like a door.
“Penny sad?” George twisted to look up at her, Captain forgotten. His brown eyes—Caroline’s eyes, her mother’s eyes, the same warm hazel that looked back from Penelope’s own mirror—searched her face with the artless directness of a child who had not yet learnt that some things should not be said aloud.
“No, sweetheart.” Her voice held. Barely. “Aunt Penny is just very pleased to see you.”
He considered this. Apparently satisfied, he returned to his campaign against the imaginary dragons, and Penelope pressed her chin to the top of his head and breathed.
Caroline returned with tea and a plate of almond cakes arranged with the sort of aggressive generosity that meant she had noticed more than she was saying. She settled into the chair opposite, poured for both of them, and waited.
The silence lasted until Penelope’s second sip. Caroline had always been better at silences than she was—had learnt early that the fastest way to extract a confession from her youngest sister was simply to sit still and let the quiet do its work.
“How is William?” Penelope asked, because she needed to fill the space before Caroline filled it for her.
“Busy. Something about a land dispute in Surrey. He’s been at his solicitor’s all week.” Caroline picked up her cup, her gaze steady. “He saw Alastair, you know.”
The name dropped through the room like a stone into a pond. Penelope’s hand tightened on her cup.
“At the club,” Caroline continued, her voice carefully, terribly neutral. “Three nights ago. William said he looked—” She paused. Chose her next word with the precision of a woman who understood its weight. “Unwell.”
“I’m sure the Duke is perfectly well.” Penelope lifted her cup. Set it down. Lifted it again. The tea sloshed. She pressed both hands flat on the saucer until they steadied. “His constitution has always been robust.”
“Penelope.”
“I would rather not?—”
“He asked after you.”
The room contracted. George squirmed in her lap, oblivious, galloping Captain across her knee. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked. Outside, a carriage clattered past, and somewhere in the upper storey, the cat yowled from the linen cupboard.
“He asked William how you were,” Caroline said. “Directly. No preamble, no charm, no—” She waved a hand. “None of his usualnonsense. JustHow is she?Like a man who genuinely needed to know the answer and was too proud, or too frightened, to ask you himself.”
Penelope’s jaw ached. She was clenching it hard enough to feel the pressure in her temples.
“What did William say?”
“He said you seemed well. Settled. Adjusting.” Caroline leaned forward. “And then Alastair said nothing for a very long time, ordered a third brandy, and left before dessert. William said he’s never seen him like that. Not once in fifteen years of friendship.”
George had gone still in Penelope’s lap—not sleeping, just quiet, the way children went quiet when they sensed the weather changing in a room. She stroked his hair mechanically, her fingers moving through the dark curls on muscle memory alone.
“It isn’t my concern,” she said. “How the Duke spends his evenings.”
“He is yourhusband.”
“In law. Not in—” The word stuck. She swallowed around it. “The arrangement was always temporary, Caroline. We both understood that.”