“There you are,” Albion said cheerfully. Too cheerful for the hour of day. “I was about to leave, thinking you’d changed your mind.”
Matilda was grateful for her greatcoat, feeling the chill in the air. “I said I would be here. I do not break my promises once they are made.”
“Is that why…” he trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck. “Never mind.”
She knew what he had been about to say. “Yes, I suppose thatiswhy we are married.”
“I wasn’t going to say that,” he protested.
“You were.” She flashed a smile. “Do not start breaking my rules, Albion.”
He blinked as if she had struck him. “Very well, thatiswhat I was going to say but in jest then I realized it probably isn’t so funny.”
“Oh, I do not know—I think it is becoming more amusing,” she replied, hands on her hips. “Now, are we riding to the beach or are we walking? I should warn you, horses do not like me very much. They fear the sphere of my clumsiness. They can smell it, I swear.”
A throaty chuckle rumbled in the back of his throat. A warm sound that took the edge off the chill in the air.
“We’ll walk,” he said, offering his arm.
She did not take it though she offered a smile and a rushed explanation: “I might see something I wish to observe more closely. I do not want to be weaving and unweaving my arm through yours.”
“I’m not offended,” he said and promptly set off.
“I did not suggest you would be,” she argued, running after him. “But as we are in the habit of misunderstanding one another, and I have already mortally offended your mother for reasons unknown, I thought it best to clarify.”
He shrugged. “I don’t require an explanation.”
“No, but—” she floundered, already exasperated.
“But?”
She huffed out a breath. “It is too early for this. My brain is still waking up.”
He laughed that quiet, warm, rumbling laugh. “Shall I fetch the cockerel and hold it very close to your skull?”
“I am as fond of poultry as I am of spiders,” she replied, grimacing. “I was pecked most viciously as a child and have never quite forgiven the species. Every time I eat roasted chicken, I feel a little more vindicated.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a rather unusual sense of humor?”
“Often.” She nodded.
They walked on in a more companionable silence for a while, reaching the woodland she had ventured through alone the previous day, clutching her husband’s abandoned garments. She could still smell his rich, enticing scent.
Of course, you can,she scolded herself.He is standing right beside you and has likely doused himself with more.
Being a wife, it seemed, was beginning to soften the ordinarily sharp perimeters of her intelligence. She had always suspected that marriage had that effect and had gatheredsomeempirical evidence by watching her dearest friends become giddy and silly with love, making foolish mistakes, but now, she had personal evidence to add to the pile.
“You never did tell me what caused the argument,” he said as they wandered the forest path, the trees muffling any sound, the night creatures retiring to their nests and warrens while the day creatures were just stirring.
Matilda groaned, and he laughed as she had secretly hoped he would.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” he insisted, the offer of his hand seeming rather more tempting as her terrible eyesight struggled with the low light of the woodland.
Boldly, she weaved her arm through his. “I cannot see properly,” she mumbled. “That is all.”
“I don’t need an explanation,” he repeated, stiffening his arm to give her something sturdier to brace against. “However, I have a feeling you’re trying to deflect the conversation.”
“I am trying to remain standing so that you do not have to catch me again and put us both in a most… um…” she scoured her mind for the right word, but only one kept jumping onto the tip of her tongue, “… um… compromising situation. Aclosesituation, I mean.”
