"You said he laughed more than he had in months. That he was, what was the word you used?"
"Free," Genevieve said, and then wished she had not, because hearing it back was different from having thought it.
"Free," Caroline repeated. "And then the next morning he asked how you slept and whether your tea was correct." She looked at her steadily. "Those are not the mornings of a man who felt nothing the night before."
Genevieve looked at her hands.
"I am not saying it's simple," Caroline said, more gently. "I am saying the distance is not indifference. Those are very different problems." She paused. "One of them does not have a solution. The other one just needs time and the right conditions."
"And how does one produce the right conditions," Genevieve said, "for a man who is doing his absolute best not to need them."
Caroline considered this.
"You do not produce them," she said. "You just make sure you are not in the way of them when they arrive."
Genevieve absorbed that idea. It was, she thought, either very astute or very wishful, and she trusted Caroline's judgment enough to believe it was probably the former.
"So what do I do?" she asked.
"You give him an opening," Caroline said simply. "Not a large one. Not a declaration or a confrontation or anything that requires him to make a decision he is not ready to make. Just a small, natural opening that allows him to choose to be closer to you if he wants to, without any pressure attached to the choice." She paused. "He needs to feel safe enough to move first, Genevieve. Your job is simply to make the direction clear."
"That sounds," Genevieve said, "considerably more subtle than I naturally am."
"I know," Caroline said, with great fondness and no apology. "Try anyway."
She left an hour later, and Genevieve stood at the window and watched the carriage go and felt, if not entirely certain, then at least pointed in a direction, which was more than she had managed on her own. She allowed herself approximately three minutes of standing at the window feeling purposeful, and then she went to find her husband.
***
Thomas's study was the room in the house that most clearly belonged to him, in the way that some rooms absorbed the character of the person who spent the most time in them. It was ordered but not sterile, lined with books that had evidently been read rather than arranged, with papers on the desk that were organized in the particular way of someone who knew exactly where everything was and would not thank anyone for tidying it.
There was a window that looked out over the eastern grounds, and the light that came through it in the afternoon was warm and direct without being oppressive.
He looked up when she knocked at the open door, and his expression did the thing it occasionally did, a brief, unguarded openness, before he set down his quill.
"Genevieve. Come in."
She entered his study, and did not sit down, because she was aiming for the particular quality of lightness that suggested she had simply stopped by in passing, which was Caroline's advice rendered into posture, and she was fairly certain she was managing it.
"I will not keep you," she said. "I only wanted to ask… I have been meaning to explore the grounds more properly, and I noticed from the upstairs window that there is a forest at the eastern edge of the property." She kept her voice easy, conversational, the tone of someone reporting a mild and natural curiosity. "I thought I might take a ride out that way, perhaps tomorrow morning, if the weather holds. I only wanted to make sure you had no objections."
There was a pause. Thomas leaned back in his chair, and she could see him considering it in the attentive way he considered things she said. Not quickly. Not as a formality. He was actually thinking about her request, which was, she had decided, one of his better qualities, even when the thoroughness of his consideration made her want to say it's only a ride, Thomas, I am not proposing to purchase France.
"None at all," he said. "I will speak to the stable hand this afternoon, there is a mare that would suit you well, I think. Very good temperament."
"Thank you," Genevieve said.
She smiled at him, then turned to go.
She ignored the small, particular deflation that had occurred somewhere in her chest, the one that arrived reliably at the end of conversations that had gone exactly as they should and yet somehow not quite far enough, and she was nearly at the door, and she was going to leave, and that was fine. It was entirely fine. It was precisely the kind of small sensible opening that Caroline had described—
"Genevieve."
She turned back.
He had a slight frown on his face. Not displeasure. The other kind, the one she had catalogued as consideration, the expression he wore when he was working through something that had not been fully formed when he opened his mouth. She waited. She had learned to wait for that expression to resolve.
"The forested area," he said. "It's quite secluded in parts." He seemed to be choosing his words with some care, which was not unusual for him, though the care seemed, this morning, to be directed at something she could not quite see yet. "There are a few places where the ground is unreliable, it floods in autumn and the drainage is not what it should be. There is also a stretch along the northern edge where the path is not obvious unless you know it."