Chapter 14 #3
“It proves nothing we can fairly use against you.”
“And if there is a child, I will not become an occasional visitor to a nursery governed entirely from Rothbury.” Her voice had gone formal, not because she was distant but because the condition reached somewhere old and guarded.
“Then we choose the nursery, the household, and the persons admitted to it together,” he said. “Your work does not end because motherhood begins, and mine does not become optional because the child bears my name.”
Margaret looked at him then. “You may discover that infants do not respect military schedules.”
“I have dined with Joseph. I am accustomed to resistance.”
She wrote beneath the heading. Children welcomed if they come; no child required to complete the marriage. Decisions revised together according to health, work, and the child concerned.
The words were practical enough to survive daylight. They also moved through Henry with more force than any grand declaration he had once imagined making to a woman who looked at him as Margaret did now.
She laid the page upon the sofa between them. “Permanence does not require us to make every choice once.”
“No,” he said. “It requires us not to make the important ones alone.”
The answer cost no silver, no public sacrifice, and no heroic injury. It was therefore more difficult than most vows he had kept.
Henry reached into his coat and drew out a narrow morocco case. Margaret’s brows rose, though she did not touch it until he placed it beside the memorandum.
Inside lay a small chased silver leaf upon a fine chain.
Henry had asked a silversmith to lift it from the chased border of the salver he had refused to sell, leaving the inscription untouched.
The salver remained at Waterloo House, still bearing the words that honored the man who had noticed the blankets.
He had taken nothing from its meaning. He had only divided the silver so that part of it might remain with the House and part might belong to the woman who had taught him what such noticing required.
“I kept this back,” he said. “At the time I told myself it was because the value was negligible, which was true but not complete.”
Margaret lifted the leaf by its chain. The old silver had been polished without erasing the tiny scratches along its edge.
“What was the complete reason?” she asked. Henry considered inventing a dignified one and found he no longer needed it.
“I wanted one object from my family that was neither evidence nor property large enough to use as a weapon.” He touched the open case. “I asked a silversmith to make it wearable, but it is yours only if you want it.”
Margaret held the leaf against her throat, where it rested below the hollow at the base of her neck. “I want it.”
“May I fasten it?” he asked. She turned upon the sofa and lifted the heavy coils of her dark-auburn hair.
Henry moved behind her without haste. His right shoulder protested when he raised both hands, so he lowered one and used the other while Margaret steadied the chain at her throat.
“You may tell me if this is awkward,” she said. He fitted the clasp and let his knuckles brush the warm skin beneath her hair.
“It is awkward.”
“Do you wish me to do it?”
“No. I wish to take longer.” He secured the clasp at last and pressed his mouth to the freckled curve below her ear.
Margaret turned before he could retreat. Her kiss contained none of the ballroom’s deliberate public claim; it was softer, private, and amused by the fact that his hand remained caught beneath her hair.
They left the memorandum in the locked drawer of her writing desk, with a note that each would receive a copy in the morning. The necklace stayed at her throat as they crossed the quieter passages to the suite newly arranged on Waterloo House’s second floor.
The rooms had not been made grand. Two modest bedchambers opened into a shared sitting room, while the larger bed stood in Margaret’s room because its mattress supported Henry’s knee better and its fireplace drew without argument.
His clothes occupied one press, hers another, and neither had been forced to surrender the chair preferred for reading. A folded blanket waited near the foot of the bed for his leg, while her account basket had been banished to the sitting room after nine o’clock by a rule she had drafted herself.
Margaret unpinned her hair before the mirror. The silver leaf shone among the dark strands when she lifted them away from her neck.
“You are staring,” she said. Henry loosened his neckcloth with his left hand.
“I was told that observation may precede action if action has not been authorized.”
“Your education has become burdensome.”
She came to him and finished the knot he had made worse. Henry kissed her fingers, then the inside of her wrist, where the pulse moved beneath his mouth.
Their familiarity had changed desire without dulling it. He knew which fastening would catch in her hair, she knew when his shoulder needed help rather than comment, and neither mistook knowledge for permission that could not be withdrawn.
Margaret pushed his coat from his left shoulder and waited. Henry freed his right arm carefully, then bent to kiss her while she opened his waistcoat.
When his knee tightened, he said so without apology. She answered by arranging the pillows and drawing him down upon his uninjured side, facing her.
“This way tonight,” she said. “Your leg between mine, and the blanket beneath your knee.”
Henry settled as directed. “You issue fewer orders than you once did, but they have become remarkably specific.”
“You have become more obedient.”