Chapter 13
Nine o’clock found Maria outside Stephen’s study with a small lacquered box tucked under her arm. The corridor clock had just chimed; she waited for the last note to fade, then knocked.
“Come,” Stephen called.
She stepped in and held up the box.
“I’ve brought peace offerings.”
He glanced at the fire, then at her hands. “If the peace offerings are shrubs, I rescind the hour.”
“Cards,” she said, setting the box on the table. “We can talk while we play. Or not talk. The cards will keep us from pretending to be busy.”
“Dangerous,” he said, amused. “You mean to take my money on the second night.”
“You’ve given me permission to spend it,” she said, opening the box and lifting out a well-used deck. “I thought I’d start modestly.”
He smiled despite himself and drew the curtains against the draft.
“What shall it be then?” he asked. “The game of choice? I would like to see what you want to play.”
“Vingt-et-un,” she said. “Or piquet. Or we can simply take turns winning and call it polite marriage.”
“Vingt-et-un,” he decided, pulling out chairs. “The rules are simple enough to allow for conversation and humiliation.”
“You are very confident,” she said, shuffling neatly. “Cut.”
He cut and she dealt. They played the first hand in comfortable silence. He stood at nineteen; she took one more card and went over, three too many. She grimaced; he raised a brow.
“Unlucky,” he said.
“Over-optimistic,” she corrected, scooping the cards and dealing again. “Your fault. You looked like a man who would stand.”
“I did stand,” he said. “At nineteen. Not for the first time.”
“Don’t be boring at cards,” she warned. “It makes the deck sulk.”
He gave her a look that would have intimidated Parliament. It had very little effect on her. She hit at sixteen, drew a five, and sighed loudly enough to make the fire agree with her.
“House gains,” he said blandly.
“You aren’t the house,” she muttered, pushing a single penny across the board anyway. “You’re a man who thinks he can stare down fate and win.”
“It works more often than it should,” he said.
“Not tonight.” She dealt again. “Tell me something unimportant.”
He considered. “The new ostler cannot count past seven unless the numbers belong to horses.”
“That’s important,” she said.
“To him,” he said. “To me, it is an amusing rhythm.”
“You’re fond of him,” she said.
“I am fond of people who try,” he returned. “And he tries very hard to keep track of eight with a personal system that involves freckles.”
She laughed. He watched the sound leave her mouth and try the air like a comfortable bird.
“Something from you,” he said. “Unimportant.”
“I dislike apricots,” she said. “Everyone expects a lady to like apricots.”
“I prefer pears,” he said. “Too much honesty in apricots.”
“You’re a menace,” she said, drawing to seventeen and wisely stopping. “Show.”
“Nineteen,” he said, lying down. “You’re going to accuse me of cheating if this continues.”
“I’m going to accuse you of being tall,” she said, flicking him another coin. “And insufferable.”
They played two more hands. He won one; she scraped a victory in the next with a smug twenty-one and a small flourish that made him grin in spite of himself.
“Ah,” he said. “There she is.”
“Who?”
“The woman who likes winning more than breathing,” he said. “I missed her.”
She looked at him over the edges of her cards. “You only met her recently.”
“Frequently enough,” he said. “Deal.”
She dealt. He drew a card, frowned at it, and then set his hand down. “Hold.”
“Coward,” she said.
“Strategist,” he corrected. “Tell me: did Mrs. Walsh bully the fishmonger?”
“She did,” Maria said. “She sent him a lemon. One lemon. With a note that said, ‘Try harder.’”
He coughed a laugh. “I have never been prouder of a woman I do not dare dismiss.”
“She likes you,” Maria said.
“On alternate Tuesdays,” he replied. “You told me.”
“She told me,” Maria said. “I’m beginning to think it is true.”
They paused to debate whether Mr. Pike would ever learn to announce his opinions without sounding like a funeral. Stephen was putting two pennies on never when she said, too casually, “You were different this afternoon.”
“In what way?”
“You didn’t pretend to be annoyed about the shrubs,” she said. “You simply were annoyed about my hands.”
He flicked a glance at her fingers where they rested on the table. “How are they?”
“Alive,” she said. “And insufferable. It would have been useful if you were angry about the spending. I had a speech ready.”
“Save it for the butcher,” he said. “He sent me a bill for twelve nonexistent chickens.”
She smiled, soft and quick. “You are learning to let me win.”
“I learned nothing of the sort,” he said. “Twenty.”
She cursed in a whisper and turned over eighteen. “You’re tedious.”
“Only at cards,” he said, and dealt again.
They played a while longer without keeping careful score. Somewhere in the shuffle, banter found its own footing.
On the sixth or seventh hand, she said, “Ask me what my favorite card is.”
“I already know,” he said. “The queen of hearts.”
She looked appropriately scandalized. “Don’t be obvious.”
“Then the two,” he said. “You like beating men who assume three is the smallest number that can matter.”
She blinked. “That is… not wrong.”
“I’m learning your rules,” he said.
“Dangerous,” she murmured, and misdealt. He pretended not to see.
When the deck had been abused into good temper, he set his cards aside and leaned back, studying her in the steady firelight the way one studies a map before admitting how far the road demands.
“You tried to win me with invoices,” he said. “Tonight, you brought cards.”
“Better than a sermon,” she said. “And less likely to be misheard.”
He drummed fingers once on the tabletop, then stilled them. “You asked me yesterday why I married you,” he said. “I told you one answer.”
“Mr. Rondell,” she said, face sober.
“Yes,” he said. “That is not the only reason.”
Her pulse kicked. She tried to imagine an answer that would not be too large for the room. “Another reason, then.”
“I keep my word,” he said. “I told your brother I would if I could not find another man who deserved you. I failed to find him in time. That failure is mine. The vow is also mine. That is the additional reason.”
“Practical.”
“Predictable,” he said.
“Comforting,” she said, and dealt him two cards because the moment needed something to do with its hands.
They picked up the game again, lighter now that several truths had been placed on the table like counters no one was allowed to pocket. On a harmless pause, he cut the deck and said, as if discussing the weather, “My father was adept at making order feel like punishment.”
She set her card down slowly. “You’ve never spoken of him.”
“I try not to,” he said. He looked at the fire, not at her. “He disliked noise he did not make. He disliked children. He disliked failure and defined it as anything less than his expectation, which changed hourly. He enjoyed rules that moved.”
She did not move. “For you.”
“For all of us,” he said, and there was a grim, small thread in the words that told her how often boys learn to use plural when singular is too much like being alone. “He was kinder to strangers.”
She wanted—foolishly—to reach for his hand. She did not. “Is he…?”
“Gone,” Stephen said. “The house was very quiet for a week. Then we discovered some silences are habits that outlive the man who made them.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, because there is nothing else that meets such a sentence gently.
“Don’t be,” he said. “It is a finished subject, mostly.”
“Mostly,” she repeated.
He looked at her then, and the room adjusted. “I had help,” he said. “That is why the subject is not a complete ruin.”
“What kind of help?” she asked, careful.
“The kind that calls you a fool when you are,” he said. “And makes sure you eat. And walks into a room before you so you can borrow a minute of her courage.”
She stilled. “You said her.”
He paused—not a long pause, not dramatic, just a quick check that his mouth and his sense were still allies. “Yes.”
“You have a sister,” she said, not a question now so much as a thought meeting certainty.
He looked down at his cards. “I do.”
She waited—and discovered that, in this, waiting was the precise kindness. “What is her name?” she asked, after a breath that felt like permission rather than pressure.
His jaw tightened. “Not tonight,” he said, voice even.
She did not push. “All right.”
“I cannot talk about it more,” he said, and this time the evenness cost him.
“All right,” she said again.
He put the cards down carefully, squared their edges, placed them in the lacquered box, and closed the lid with more care than such a small sound required. He sat back, hands empty now and therefore more honest.
“You will think me weak,” he said, and there was a half-laugh in it with worse things holding its coat.
“I will think you human,” she said simply. “And polite for telling me where the wall is.”
He tipped his head as if accepting a judgment from a court he respected. “Thank you.”
“You’re allowed to have a locked room,” she said. “I only ask that you don’t leave me at the far end of the hall while you stand guard over it.”
He looked at her for a long, steady count—one, two, three—then nodded once. “I can manage that.”
She exhaled softly, feeling the hour settle around them the way rooms do when people decide to stay.
“Another hand?” she asked, lighter again, offering the deck like a treaty renewed.
He shook his head. “We should both sleep. Mrs. Walsh will conduct raids if she thinks we’re plotting against the morning.”
“She suspects we plot constantly,” Maria said, rising.
“She is correct,” he said, also standing. “She merely misidentifies the target.”
She returned the deck to its box and fitted the lid. He walked her to the door as if there were a rule about it and as if, tonight, he intended to follow at least that rule.
“Thank you for the game,” he said.
“Thank you for losing with dignity,” she said, straight-faced.
“I did not…”
“Good night, Stephen.”
He stopped arguing. “Good night, Maria.”
She slipped into the corridor. He closed the door quietly. She stood a moment, looking at the painted panel as if it could answer the questions he’d left deliberately unanswered.
A sister. The word rolled in her head like a coin too bright to spend. Where was she? Why had no one mentioned her?