“I learned nothing of the sort,” he said. “Twenty.”
She cursed in a whisper and turned over eighteen. “You’re tedious.”
“Only at cards,” he said, and dealt again.
They played a while longer without keeping careful score. Somewhere in the shuffle, banter found its own footing.
On the sixth or seventh hand, she said, “Ask me what my favorite card is.”
“I already know,” he said. “The queen of hearts.”
She looked appropriately scandalized. “Don’t be obvious.”
“Then the two,” he said. “You like beating men who assume three is the smallest number that can matter.”
She blinked. “That is… not wrong.”
“I’m learning your rules,” he said.
“Dangerous,” she murmured, and misdealt. He pretended not to see.
When the deck had been abused into good temper, he set his cards aside and leaned back, studying her in the steady firelight the way one studies a map before admitting how far the road demands.
“You tried to win me with invoices,” he said. “Tonight, you brought cards.”
“Better than a sermon,” she said. “And less likely to be misheard.”
He drummed fingers once on the tabletop, then stilled them. “You asked me yesterday why I married you,” he said. “I told you one answer.”
“Mr. Rondell,” she said, face sober.
“Yes,” he said. “That is not the only reason.”
Her pulse kicked. She tried to imagine an answer that would not be too large for the room. “Another reason, then.”
“I keep my word,” he said. “I told your brother I would if I could not find another man who deserved you. I failed to find him in time. That failure is mine. The vow is also mine. That is the additional reason.”
“Practical.”
“Predictable,” he said.
“Comforting,” she said, and dealt him two cards because the moment needed something to do with its hands.
They picked up the game again, lighter now that several truths had been placed on the table like counters no one was allowed to pocket. On a harmless pause, he cut the deck and said, as ifdiscussing the weather, “My father was adept at making order feel like punishment.”
She set her card down slowly. “You’ve never spoken of him.”
“I try not to,” he said. He looked at the fire, not at her. “He disliked noise he did not make. He disliked children. He disliked failure and defined it as anything less than his expectation, which changed hourly. He enjoyed rules that moved.”
She did not move. “For you.”
“For all of us,” he said, and there was a grim, small thread in the words that told her how often boys learn to use plural when singular is too much like being alone. “He was kinder to strangers.”
She wanted—foolishly—to reach for his hand. She did not. “Is he…?”
“Gone,” Stephen said. “The house was very quiet for a week. Then we discovered some silences are habits that outlive the man who made them.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, because there is nothing else that meets such a sentence gently.