That was the thing he had not accounted for. Not the difficulty of the marriage. The other thing.
He looked at his pocket watch.
Ah.
If he was not quick, he would be late for the tea party they were attending that afternoon at the Petersons’. Their friend’s estate was not so far away that lateness was a guarantee. Still, he would not embarrass Genevieve by being unfashionably late.
A shortcut.
He should take a shortcut if he was to keep his horse from exhausting.
He turned onto the woodland trail that cut through the eastern edge of the property. The trees were in full summer weight, the air cooler beneath the canopy, and it gave him time to settle before he arrived back at the house. He needed, more than he would have admitted to anyone, the settling.
Marriage was not what he had expected. He had entered into it with good intentions and a clear enough understanding of what was required of him, and he believed he was fulfilling those requirements adequately. Genevieve was… she was very good. She was kind and composed and managed the household with a quiet competence, even if that competence was occasionally overshadowed by a dropped teacup or spilled wine.
He liked Genevieve.
He respected her.
He was aware, in some not entirely comfortable corner of his mind, that she deserved a husband who felt more than liking and respect. He loved her, and he thought himself affectionate, but he was accustomed to a love that felt different. Passionate, fast, unpredictable.
Like Clarissa.
And yet, he was beginning to feel that passion was perhaps not what he was designed for. Steadiness and calm had done him wonders in recent weeks. He was not constantly bracing for anything with Genevieve. Well, that was not strictly true.
But bracing to catch your wife when she is known to trip over the cat, the rug, or simply open air, has a different feeling to bracing for your lover to rediscover her temper. He was still thinking about this when he heard the carriage.
It came around the curve in the trail and slowed, and then stopped, and Thomas brought his horse to a halt and looked at the Penrose crest on the door panel and felt the bottom drop very quietly out of the afternoon.
The door opened.
Clarissa looked out at him.
He had imagined this moment. Not in a form of preparedness, but as fantasy. His heart had still wanted the moment that his lady love would return to him. He had thought that this would stay as fantasy. That enough time had passed. That he was a married man now and his life had taken its shape, and he had made his peace with the version of it he had been given.
He had been lying to himself, and he understood that now with a clarity that was not entirely welcome.
She looked extraordinary. That was the first thought, arriving before he could stop it. The simple, unmediated fact of her face, which he had spent the better part of a year trying to think about less. She was smiling at him with the full warmth of that smile, the one he had once thought was his, and the sight of it did something to the careful structure he had been quietly assembling inside himself since the morning he had understood she was not coming back.
He removed his hat.
"Miss Penrose." Then, because formality seemed almost absurd: "Clarissa."
"Thomas." She said his name the way she always had. As though it were a small pleasure to say it. He had forgotten that, or had told himself he had forgotten it. "I could not believe it when I saw you. I had hoped… I had thought I might have a chance to speak with you, but I did not know how to—" She shook her head, still smiling, and he watched her groom move to assist her and understood that she was getting out of the carriage.
He dismounted.
She crossed the track toward him, and he was struck, not for the first time and not comfortably, by how natural it felt to watch her move. She had always carried herself as though she were entirely certain of her welcome, and he had always given it to her, and here they were again on a quiet woodland path with nothing resolved and everything changed.
He kept his face even. He was very good at keeping his face even. It was perhaps one of the more useful things he had ever learned.
"I am glad I ran into you," she said, stopping a few feet away. Her eyes were moving over his face with an attention that he felt acutely. "I have been thinking, there is so much I wanted to say, and I did not know where to begin, and now here you are."
"There is truly no need," he said. He felt his voice gentle in the way it only ever seemed to for Clarissa.
"There is," she said. Firmly, but gently. "For my sake, if not yours."
A pause. He glanced back at his horse, who was entirely unbothered, and wished briefly that he possessed a similar temperament.