"Yes."
"Someone should tell her."
"Yes." Samuel looked at him steadily. "I was thinking of calling on her, actually."
Thomas looked up.
"At her parents'." Samuel's tone had returned to its customary mildness, the quality of a man saying something entirely reasonable. "To tell her about the gossip. She ought to know what's being said, and someone should tell her, and since you have apparently decided that the appropriate response to loving your wife is to sit in the dark until she sends for you—"
"You are not going to visit my wife."
"She would appreciate a friendly face, I think." Samuel was looking at the fire with an expression of tranquil consideration. "She has always found it easy to talk to me. We have a correspondence. I have let it lapse, which I do not think was particularly kind of me, but I could combine the visit with writing in person, which is more—"
"Samuel."
"…considerate than a letter, I have always thought. More personal. And she has been having a difficult time, which—"
"I swear to you…"
"I am sure she would appreciate being acknowledged by someone who cares about her well-being." He looked up from the fire and met Thomas's eyes, and his expression was entirely, infuriatingly composed. "I think she would find it a comfort, under the circumstances. A visit from a friend who is not…" a fractional pause, the most deliberate fractional pause Thomas had ever witnessed, "complicated."
Something happened in Thomas's chest that was not comfortable.
"I could go tomorrow morning," Samuel continued, with the air of someone working through a practical problem. "It's not a long journey. I could be there by noon if I left early, which would give us the afternoon, and she has always been good company for an afternoon, very—"
"Samuel." Thomas's voice had taken on a quality he recognized as dangerous. Samuel also recognized it and showed no signs of being deterred by it whatsoever.
"She writes quite good letters," Samuel said, almost to himself. "I have always thought so. There is a quality to her observations that is—"
Thomas stood up.
He was on his feet before he had fully decided to be on his feet, the decision having apparently been made by some part of him that was tired of waiting for the rest to catch up. He stood in the firelight and looked at Samuel and understood, with a clarity that five hours of whiskey had not managed to obscure, exactly what his friend had been doing for the past ten minutes. He had never had his own jealousy weaponized against him before.
"You complete—"
"There is a horse saddled," Samuel said. "Your grandmother saw to it before I came in. She is an extraordinarily organized woman."
Thomas stared at him.
"It's not a long ride," Samuel said. "An hour, perhaps. Less if you go at a reasonable pace, less than that if you go at the pace you are currently suggesting by your expression." He reached for the decanter and refilled his own glass with the composure of a man settling in for the portion of the evening that did not require him to go anywhere. "I will wait here."
"She asked me to give her time."
"She asked you to give her time. It has been five days." Samuel looked up at him over the rim of the glass. "Five days is not time, Thomas. Five days is you being frightened, which I understand, but frightened and patient are not the same thing. Hiding in here serving them to yourself as though they were doing either of you any good." His voice was still mild. It was somehow worse when it was mild. "She told you she was in love with you. She told you this while she was leaving. She has had five days to sit with the fact that she said that and received, in return, a letter."
He set the glass down. "Go and tell her what she is worth. Tonight, not when it's convenient, not when you have decided you are ready, not when you have composed yourself sufficiently. Tonight, as you are, because that is what she deserves. Not the managed version. The real one."
A silence. The fire settled. Outside, the spring night pressed against the windows with its cold indifferent clarity.
Thomas picked up his coat.
"If you touch that decanter again before I am back," he said, "I will know."
"I would not dream of it," Samuel said, and reached for the decanter.
Thomas went out. In the hallway, his grandmother was coming from the direction of the kitchen. Her expression was one of someone who had certainly not been eavesdropping. Not at all. Whatever she said as he passed was quiet enough that he could not be entirely certain of the word, though it sounded very much like finally, and when he turned to look back her expression was perfectly neutral and she was studying the ceiling with great interest.
He went to find his horse.