Breaking routine was not something Thomas did naturally. Lateness notwithstanding. But a true break, abandoning his routines and duties for anything else? There were very few times he allowed that.
For once, however, he allowed it.
The silence in the house had become suffocating to him.
He was aware he was being foolish. Running away was the action a child took, not a grown man.
Still, he could not shake the image of Genevieve at dinner from his mind. That had not been the face of the woman he married.
He did not know what to do.
So he took his horse and let it guide him away.
That path had taken him to the Rutherford home.
A maid had opened the door, surprised to see him. It was much later than calling hours, after all. She let him in and led him toward the dining room where Samuel was eating dinner. Samuel, however, did not seem surprised to see him.
Samuel set down his cutlery.
"You look terrible."
"Thank you."
"I mean it as an observation, not a criticism." He leaned back in his chair, unhurried, in the manner of a man with no particular agenda who was nonetheless paying close attention. "How long has it been like this?"
“Like what?” Thomas asked.
“Speak plainly, I am deeply aware of the struggles that are happening in your home, and I dare say that Genevieve and your grandmother are suffering because of it. Now then, for how long have you and your wife been out of sorts?”
Thomas paused. Then, he pulled out a chair and sat across from Samuel.
"Some weeks." Thomas looked at the patterns in the table wood grain. "She is… she performs. That's the only word I have for it. She asks the right questions and makes the right remarks and is perfectly agreeable at dinner, and none of it is her. None of it is anything like her."
"And you have spoken to her about it?"
"I have tried," Thomas said. "She tells me she is quite well."
"Ah."
"With great pleasantness."
"Yes." Samuel turned his glass slowly. "I imagine she does."
Thomas looked at him. There was something in Samuel's tone that he did not care for, because it suggested Samuel understood something about the situation that Thomas perhaps ought to have understood himself by now.
"You know her better than I do, apparently."
"I know her differently than you do." Samuel said it without particular emphasis, which somehow made it worse. "What is it you do not understand? About what's happening to her, I mean."
"I understand what's happening to her perfectly well."
"Do you?"
"Yes." He said it with more force than he intended. "I know exactly what's been said, and who's been saying it, and what she has been walking into every time she leaves the house. I am not ignorant of it."
Samuel was quiet for a moment.
"That was not what I asked."