Breakfast
Chapter fifteen
Henry
He was there at half past seven in his riding gear.
He dismissed the footman and the kitchen maid who had brought the things up, and when Mrs Greer came to ask if anything further was needed, he told her nothing was needed, that the door was to remain closed, and that no one except the housekeeper herself was to enter the parlour.
Mrs Greer absorbed this with the expression she had been wearing since he was nine years old when doing something she did not understand but was not prepared to question.
“Very good, Your Grace.”
The door closed. He was alone with the fire and the table and the tea service and the knowledge that the last time he had been in a room with his wife, he had taken her on a workbench, and he had left her without a kind word. His body stirred with remorse and desire.
She came in at ten past eight with her shawl over her morning dress.
He stood and remained standing. Her hair was pinned but loosely, and there was a crease on her cheek from the pillow that she had not seen or had not cared to remedy.
She did not quite look at him. She looked at the table, at the fire, at the window, everywhere but at him.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning. Sit down.”
She sat. He sat. Neither reached for anything. The tea cooled between them.
“Mrs Greer suggested,” he began and found the sentence more difficult than anticipated, “that we take breakfast together.” He paused.
“To familiarise ourselves with each other. If you do not have any objections, of course. If you do, we could return to the way things were. I have no wish to impose.”
He sounded, even to his own ears, like a boy reading aloud from a letter. He had commanded a cavalry charge with less difficulty. He poured tea for his duchess then himself.
“My liking of this arrangement wholly depends on you, Your Grace.”
“Me? How so?” he asked as he picked up his teacup.
“It depends on how much of an ass you intend to be.”
Henry choked on his tea and coughed. When his throat settled, he managed in a hoarse voice, “I shall endeavour not to behave like that particular animal.”
“Good. Then we shall try having breakfast regularly.”
“We shall.”
He watched Violet add two cubes of sugar to her tea.
She picked up her cup and brought it to her lips and stopped.
With the cup beneath her nose, she breathed in slowly, her eyes half-closed.
The steam moved against her face. She then tilted the cup slightly, looking for something he could not see.
After a moment she drank. She set it down.
“What was that?” he asked.
She hesitated, shifting her weight to buy time.
“There has been an unusual flavour in my tea since my arrival here,” she said.
Henry stiffened.
“Bitter under sweet, with a coldness at the back of the throat after. It has been getting stronger. I have not been able to identify what it is.”
He set his cup down. “Have you been drinking that tea all this time?”
“No. I have been pouring it outside the window or the window box when I can.”
“Good. Could you identify it were it to be added to, say, wine?”
“I believe so. The flavour is distinctive enough.”
He nodded, his posture relaxing slightly. “Why did you not mention this earlier?”
“I did not wish to raise alarm. It is possible the leaves are simply inferior or blended oddly.”
Henry looked at his cup and felt fear creep up his skin the way it had when Margaret had fallen ill.
He reached for the serving spoon and put eggs on his plate. “Allow me to taste it first.” He chewed slowly. No unusual flavour. He swallowed and nodded. He served his wife.
They were quiet for a time. It was not the heavy silence of the nights. It was a different kind that was careful but shared.
“Tell me about your Mr Harris,” he said after a while.
She looked up.
“Have you ever seen him bow to anyone?” he asked.
“No.”
“Has he an injury to his spine? Some condition of the back that prevents it?”
Her mouth twitched. “His spine is in perfect order, Your Grace.”
“Then it is a matter of principle.”
“It is a matter of Kit.”
“What are his credentials?” he asked.
“That is his story to tell, Your Grace. I assure you, he is trustworthy. He has been with my family for seven years, and not once has he failed us.”
“Has he ever smiled?”
“Only once. Accidentally.”
That did not surprise him. He reached for the eggs and served his wife first then himself. He took the first bite, chewing slowly to decipher any unusual flavour. None. “Tastes as usual,” he said.
He ate.
“Tell me about your time in the army,” Violet said after a moment. “How long did you serve?”
He set down his fork. “Three years. Most of it in the peninsula, Spain and Portugal. I was a second son with no prospects and no taste for the church. My father purchased a commission.”
“Did you see battle?”
“Enough of it. I was not a distinguished officer. I was competent, which in the army counts for more than distinction. I kept my men alive and did not lose any engagement I could have won, and I came back with all my fingers and a temper that had not improved.”
She smiled, showing her teeth. His heart lurched at the vision of it.
“How did you feel after coming home? I have heard about soldiers returning as different men.”
He considered this. “It made everything here seem very slow, and very loud, and very concerned with things that did not matter. I missed the clarity. A soldier knows what is expected of him. A duke is expected to know without being told, and I have never been good at that.”
She smiled, the quieter kind. “No. You are not.”
“Careful, Wife.” He felt the corners of his lips lift. And he found himself not minding it.
“You invited me to breakfast. You must accept the consequences.” She turned her cup. “Tell me something that has nothing to do with grief.”
Henry sat back in his seat with his teacup. “There was a horse.”
“A horse.”
“In Salamanca. I had been riding the same bad-tempered mare for six months. She threw me into a ditch outside the city, and while I was lying in the mud, a bay gelding walked over and looked down at me with an expression of profound personal disappointment.”
Her eyes crinkled in the corners. “What did you do?”
“I got out of the ditch. Took him back to camp. Fed him until his ribs stopped showing. He carried me the rest of the war. He despised every other officer on sight.”
“What was his name?”
“Abbot. He retired to Iredell Park and lived to eight and twenty. He is buried under an elm near the south lodge with a stone that says his name and nothing else. He would not have wanted a fuss.”
She was laughing. Not the bright, public laugh she had given Edmund. This was quieter, into her cup, belonging to only two of them. He wanted to keep that sound and hear it again tomorrow and the morning after that.
“Your sisters,” he said. “What are they like?”
“Impossible. Poppy talked from the moment she could form words and has not drawn breath since. Primrose was silent until she discovered books, and then she became the loud one about books specifically. The twins were born holding hands, according to my mother, and have not willingly separated since.”
“And you?”
“I was the responsible one. Which is to say I was the one who was not permitted to be anything else.”
Henry looked at her across the table and saw her clearly. Not the duchess or the negotiator or the herbalist, but the eldest daughter who had been carrying a household since she was old enough to lift a kettle. She had been old before she was young.
“You are loud with me,” he said.
“You require it.”
That made him laugh and she laughed with him. After they finished and Mrs Greer knocked on the door to clear the service, Henry watched his duchess leave the room. He sat alone for a while and thought that he enjoyed his wife’s company more than he expected.