“That is too easy,” she said.
“It is the truth,” he said. “I have more money than is healthy for any man with bad ideas. You have good ones. Spend it.”
She studied him.
“You are not worried, I am doing it to prod you.”
“I was,” he said. “Then I saw your hands.”
She went quiet.
He seemed to read her mind.
“That is my only condition,” he said, softer. “Be careful with your health. The weather is still too cold, and I do not wish for you to get sick. It is not spring yet, and I would rather that you not try to argue with the season with your bones.”
“Are these orders?” she asked, a little bristled.
“They are requests,” he said. “Made in a tone you may mistake for orders because I am bad at sounding gentle when I am worried.”
Maria’s chest did a small, treacherous jump. She covered it with irritation because that had served her well this week. “I will be careful,” she said. “On one condition of my own.”
He lifted a brow. “Name it.”
“You will spend time with me,” she said. “Not by sending a note from the next room but with me.”
He went very still.
“How much time?” he asked cautiously.
She held his gaze.
“An hour.”
“An hour,” he repeated, as if testing the weight.
“Every night,” she said.
“You do not set small terms.”
“I am tired of small,” she said. “I married a duke and got a schedule. I can run a house without seeing the man in it, but I do not want that marriage if a different one is possible.”
“What do you imagine we do for an hour?” he asked, genuinely curious, as if the concept of non-functional time were new.
“Talk,” she said. “Or read in the same room like people who are not strangers. Walk the long gallery. Play chess and let me lose with dignity. Teach me the names of your books and I’ll teach you the names of my shrubs. Anything that happens in the same square of air.”
“And if we quarrel,” he said.
“Then we quarrel,” she said. “In the hour.”
He considered that with seriousness.
“An hour,” he said slowly. “Every night.”
“You may choose the time,” she offered, magnanimously.
He glanced at the clock on the mantel. “Not after eleven,” he said. “I am worse than useless then.”
“Eight?” she suggested.