Strangely, this room was just as impersonal as the rest, though there were even signs here that items had been removed. There were spaces on the walls where paintings should have rested but had been taken down. Where there were shelves for books, merely books labeled ‘Accounts’ and the ‘Estate’ sat.
Even the way that Theodore had laid his tailcoat over the back of a chair was excessively neat and organized. Not a thing was out of place, and it had been made cold and impersonal by his treatment of it.
In fact, the only messy thing in the room at all was her, and the presence of the breakfast crockery which had been placed haphazardly on neatly stacked sheaves of paper.
“Do we have an agreement?” Margaret asked after a minute or so of silence where she was aware of Theodore just staring at her.
“Why ask me this?” His voice was hard like flint again.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, would you give your act of sharpness a rest?”
“An act!?” he spluttered, sitting forward in alarm.
“In case you had not noticed, I will not be sent running by your sharp tone. I will not be quelled like a mouse. Neither will I be ignored.” She met his gaze. “So try a manner other than ignorance or sharpness. I do not wish to live with either of them for the rest of my life.”
Theodore slumped back in his chair. She seized on his change of manner in an instant.
“Ah, have you realized like me that forever is a long time to spend hating one another?”
“I didn’t say I hated you.” His voice wasn’t as sharp as it had been before, but it was neither soft nor kind. It was just… impassive.
“Then act like it.” She motioned toward him. “Partake in one meal a day with me, and you will have your freedom. I will have my own, too, and yet neither will I have to be completely alone. Do I have your agreement?”
He tilted his head to the side once more, apparently dwelling deeply on her question.
Seeing she was not going to get an answer any time soon, she reached for a discarded teacup of his own and topped up his drink as she did her own. She sat there sipping her tea and eating her fish as she waited for him to response.
“With this silence, I might as well be back in that dining room.” She huffed, rather loudly.
“Fine.” His tone was still sharper than she would have liked it to be.
“Was that your agreement?” she asked, leaning forward.
“It was.” He reached for the smoked fish trencher and added some of the haddock to his own plate, no longer looking her in the eye. “If it will give me the rest of the day to myself, then you have your wish. One meal a day we shall share.”
She smiled broadly. Satisfied with one victory, she hid that smile behind her teacup.
“You’re perhaps not quite as meek as I thought you were,” he mumbled, more to himself than to her, yet she responded anyway.
“I would have thought the night we met you would have seen I was no mouse, Theodore.”
He halted and looked up at her. For a second, she could have sworn she saw a trace of a smile on his lips, but then it was gone.
“Breakfast. That is my choice. Tomorrow, we shall share breakfast again,” he said with finality.
CHAPTER NINE
“One week. One week, Gabriel, she has been in that house, and you will not believe the changes she has enacted.” Theodore practically threw himself off the horse.
Drenched to the bone, for the rain had surprised them on their horse ride back to his house, Theodore shook the water off his hair and flapped his frock coat to get rid of the excess droplets.
A deep chuckle sounded far behind him, and he turned around to see Gabriel stepping down from his own horse in a much more controlled manner.
“You said yourself you had given her permission to change the house.”
“I had to,” Theodore grumbled. “What kind of jailer would I have been to take a bride, sentence her to isolation in the house, then tell her she couldn’t change a single cushion cover? I’m not such a monster.”
One of Gabriel’s hooked eyebrows raised higher, in silent question.
