The servants laughed at that to her relief.
“You can all return to your duties,” Albion said. “I thank you for your swift response. Have a few bottles from my cellar with your dinner as a gesture of my gratitude.”
A cheerful wind swept through the servants, their smiles wide, their expressions content as they all made their way back into the house or to the stables, respectively. It was clearly a captain’s method of keeping his soldiers happy, but it appeared to work rather well among ordinary folks too.
“You are giving our good wine to thestaffnow?” the Dowager screeched. “Is this what we have come to, offering gifts to the servants for doing what they are paid to do?”
Albion flashed her a dark look. “You may return to the Dowager House, and the next time you hear a carriage pass by, ensure itisa carriage and not just your boredom before you disturb me.”
His mother stared at him in indignation. “Are you not going to scold her, too?”
“When we are alone,” Albion replied calmly. “It’s not a conversation you need to overhear. Please, be on your way, or I’ll throw you over my shoulder and carry you there myself.”
The Dowager rankled but turned and stormed off, muttering under her breath, “Isaac would never have spoken to me like that.Heknew his place.”
Matilda leaned into her husband as he watched his mother stalk away toward the Dowager House: a building tucked away down a secondary road that branched away from the drive, just past the entrance to the estate. Matilda had not yet seen it and doubted she would have any reason to as long as the Dowager remained there.
“She has quite a walk ahead of her,” Matilda said awkwardly, not knowing if a jest was appropriate at that moment.
Albion sighed and turned to her, his hands falling to her neck, cradling it. “You’re supposed to tell me when you leave the estate,” he said gruffly, his tone not matching his actions. “And don’t protest and say that, technically, you were still on the estate because I know that, but the beach is on the very periphery. You can’t do that, Matilda. I have to know where you are.”
“Why?” She bristled.
“Because I do. Because it’s a courtesy,” he replied, huffing out a breath. “If I must include the beach in the rule, I will.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You know I do not like being told what I can and cannot do.”
“I’m aware, but I still have to insist on knowing where you are if you leave the manor.”
Had the past few weeks not happened? Had they truly circled back to where they had begun? His touch against her neck, warm and rough, said no. His stern tone and the shadows in his eyes said yes.
A sensation like suffocation began to cloy in her throat. “Even to the summer house?”
“Preferably.”
In her mind, she heard a cage door close.
“When my mother came here and told me about the carriage, and I went to the summer house and you weren’t there, and no one had seen you, I was worried,” he continued. “I can’t be distracted with worry like that.”
Matilda sniffed. “Did you think I had abandoned you though I have had ample opportunity and have not?”
“I don’t know what I thought,” he replied. “Just respect these wishes, Matilda. Please.”
In that second, there was something in his voice that popped the bubble of angry defiance that had been swelling within her. A softness, a sadness, that she had not heard from him before. She had seen the glimmer of veiled emotions, regimentally squashed down inside him, at a time when she had not dared to investigate further, but his voice had never wavered like that. His mask had never cracked like that where she could see it.
“Why?”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Because I’m asking.”
She held his gaze, trying hopelessly to plumb the depths of those dark blue pools. All her life, she had made it her objective to find answers to the questions that came into her head, but if he would not open up to her, she knew she would never receive an answer for why her heart was aching.
What sorrow plagued him? What horrors had he seen that tormented him? What sort of man had he been before the battlefields changed him? What pains had he suffered that made his eyes flicker like that, like thrashing waves trying to conceal a shipwreck in the ocean?
I still do not know him well enough to pry…It was an infuriating conclusion but a fair one.
“Very well,” she said quietly. “Right now, I am going to my chambers, I am going to change my attire, and then I am going to come downstairs to dine with you. After that, I might ask you to walk with me in the gardens, so I can describe—in great length and detail until you are stifling yawns—what I intend to do with my corner of it. Then, perhaps, we might read together in the drawing room after which time I will retire for the night. Does that suffice?”
He smiled, but it was the hollow kind. “You don’t have to give me an itinerary of your every move, Matilda.”
