"I reserve the right to revisit."
"Noted."
"At a time of my choosing."
"Also noted. Caroline."
"Yes, fine." She picked up her teacup again and took a composed sip and visibly, deliberately reset. Then she set it back down and leaned forward and fixed Genevieve with the look that had, over the course of their long friendship, preceded most of the more interesting conversations they had ever had. "Tell me about him."
And there it was. Genevieve had known it was coming, had known it was coming since she had read Caroline's reply to her letter, which had contained three pages of barely controlled alarm, several underlined passages, and one very clear sentence at the end: I must know everything about this man, at once and without omission. She had prepared herself for the conversation. She had decided, with some care, exactly what she was and was not going to say.
And yet she felt the warmth rise in her face anyway, which was inconvenient, and she addressed it by reaching for her teacup.
"He is very kind," she said.
"Kind," Caroline repeated.
"Yes."
"That is what you are giving me."
"It is early days, Caroline. We have barely—"
"You have been living in the same house as this man for three days. You must have formed more of an impression than kind."
"He is also," Genevieve said, with the deliberate care of someone releasing information in measured quantities, "very easy to talk to. When we talk. He listens properly, not in the way that people listen when they are waiting for their turn to speak, but actually properly, and he is thoughtful, and he is," she paused, and then said it because it was simply true and there was no use in being coy about what was plainly observable, "he is very good company. W
hen we find ourselves in company together. Which is not often, we are still finding the shape of things, really.We take most of our meals together and we have had a number of conversations that I have not found difficult. Though I had rather expected to."
She was aware that she had said considerably more than she had intended to. She also became aware, a beat later, of Caroline's expression, which had shifted from interrogative to something much more knowing and was beginning to arrange itself into the small, satisfied smile that Genevieve found, in this particular moment, rather a lot to contend with.
"Do not…" Genevieve said.
"I have not said a word."
"You are thinking very loudly. I can hear it from here."
"I am thinking," Caroline said, with great serenity, "that you went into this marriage three days ago and have come out of the first week of it with warm cheeks and considerably more to say about your husband than you are currently choosing to say. That is all I am thinking."
Genevieve set down her teacup.
"It is very early days."
"So you have said."
"We barely know each other."
"Also noted."
"Caroline, I am quite serious. I am not, it is not, there is nothing to report. It is simply that he has been kinder than I had any particular reason to expect, and I am grateful for it, and I am glad that it is him and not someone else. That is the honest truth of it."
Caroline looked at her steadily.
"He makes you feel safe," she said.
Genevieve opened her mouth, and closed it, and felt the accuracy of it land somewhere in her chest.
"Yes," she said, after a moment. "I think that is… yes. He does."