She almost laughed. She would have, perhaps, on another morning. But she had spent the carriage ride here arranging and rearranging the words she wished to say to him, and now that he was beside her, walking toward the door with his hand briefly, warmly at her back, she leaned close and kept her voice low.
"I need to speak with you. Properly. Before we are swallowed up by all of this."
He turned his head slightly toward her.
"As it happens," he said, equally quiet, "I need to speak with you as well."
There was something in his tone that she noticed but could not immediately decode. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could the doors swung open.
“Mr. and Mrs. Harrington. Welcome,” Mrs. Peterson said as she opened the door with both hands. It was certainly an enthusiastic welcome, and the moment was sealed away behind them like a letter slipped into an envelope and addressed to later.
“Thank you, Mrs. Peterson,” Genevieve said.
“Of course, of course,” the older woman replied. “Come in. The tea is still warm, and chef will be bringing out other refreshments shortly.”
“You are too kind,” Thomas said as they stepped in. “I apologize that I was not here sooner.”
“I am sure that there was a good reason for your lateness,” Mrs. Peterson said. Genevieve felt Thomas tense next to her. She looked up at his profile. His expression was tense, but only in the ways she knew to look for. The front of his eyebrows were pushed down slightly, his eyes were hard, and his lips were fractionally pressed together.
The gathering was larger than Genevieve had anticipated. The Petersons entertained generously, and the drawing room was bright with afternoon light and the layered sound of two dozen conversations being conducted simultaneously at varying degrees of discretion. Genevieve smiled, accepted compliments, enquired after health and relatives and the outcomes of recent travels, and all the while she was aware, with the particular sensitivity that social discomfort tends to produce, of the currents moving beneath the surface of the room.
People were talking about something specific. She could feel it before she could confirm it. The slight adjustments in posture when she approached a group, the microsecond of calculation before a smile was offered, the conversations that altered their course like water redirecting around a stone. She knew this particular texture of gathering very well. It was the texture of a room that had recently received interesting news.
She suspected she knew what news it was.
Thomas was speaking with Mr. Peterson near the windows. Genevieve kept him in her peripheral vision without appearing to do so, a skill she had honed considerably in recent months, and accepted a cup of tea from a passing housemaid with a murmur of thanks.
Caroline appeared at her elbow with quiet efficiency.
"I need to tell you something," Caroline said, without preamble. Her voice was barely above a breath. "Everyone is saying Clarissa was seen in town. Last night, and again this morning."
Genevieve absorbed this with the smooth composure she had been practicing since girlhood.
"I know," she said simply.
Caroline blinked.
"You know?"
“Mr. Rutherford paid me a visit and informed me. It was very good of him to do so," she said softly. She looked up at Thomas, who appeared to have caught her eye.
She had expected Thomas to say something then. He had been watching them, after all. To confirm it, perhaps, or to add some small detail. He said nothing. But his eyes flickered with anxiety for a moment, his shoulders tensing. That was not surprise. She was certain of it in the way she had become certain of many things about her husband.
If he had not been surprised then…
Had he known?
Her heart dropped as she considered the possibility that her husband had known the woman he loved had returned and he had neglected to inform her of this fact.
Caroline caught her eye and stepped back, giving them the particular gift of nearby distance.
Genevieve moved to stand beside Thomas as Mr. Peterson was claimed by his wife, and she kept her face pleasantly arranged. She was aware of every eye that was not quite looking at them, and asked, with only the faintest tautness in her voice, "Did you know that Clarissa was back?"
He turned to her. His own expression was measured. He was doing the same thing she was doing, she realized, and the shared effort of it was almost enough to make her sad.
"I saw her this morning," he said.
For just a moment, a fraction of a second that she immediately reclaimed, the composure slipped. She felt it in the particular blankness that comes before a stronger feeling arrives. She saw Thomas see it, and she smiled again and looked away toward the windows where the garden lay in tidy, indifferent order beyond the glass.