She got up and went back to sit on the chair that had been made ready for her on the other side of the room; when she had mastered her voice she raised her face and looked at him.
“You have to promise not to do that again,” he said.
“I can’t make that promise.”
There was a small silence between them. Sophie waited, and then she said, “Did you think I would have no conditions of my own?”
He rested his cheek on the wing of the chair, his gaze unwavering. “Tell me,” he said finally. “What measures you are willing to take to protect your health.”
Sophie took a sheet of paper from her reticule and, walking across the room once again, put it on the table where he could reach it, turned, and went back to her chair.
Cap took the paper and read, his brow creased and disapproving. There was a familiar tick at the corner of his mouth; she was trying his patience, which was exactly her intention.
“I can’t agree to this first point. We cannot eat at the same table,” he said.
“We can,” Sophie corrected him. “But not from the same serving dishes or plates.”
“Then you will wear a mask or I will.”
“That will make eating quite a challenge.”
He glared at her and turned back to her list. As he read, the corner of his mouth jerked in something that went beyond irritation, all the way, Sophie was beginning to hope, to a resigned amusement.
“I will concede points one through eight,” he said. “But we cannot sleep in the same room. It’s just too dangerous.”
Sophie turned away for a moment, her eyes moving over the familiar four walls of this room he had had for all his life. Nothing changed here: books and paintings, the fossils and seashells and minerals brought back from his travels, carvings and small sculptures. She touched the chunk of raw amazonite brought back from a trip to the west, he said, because it was exactly the same blue-green color of her eyes.
She was making him wait for an answer, and found that it suited her to take her time. She stopped in front of a portrait of his mother at age nineteen, in 1854. Newly married against her father’s express wishes, already carrying Cap. In this photograph Clarinda Belmont always struck Sophie as somber or even mournful, as if she knew that the time left to her was short; she would lose her husband before their son was born, and then succumb to influenza in the first year of the war. It had occurred to Sophie that Cap was following her example in marrying against his family’s wishes. She wondered if the comparison would irritate or please him.
“I will take all precautions,” Sophie said finally, going back to her chair. “But I am talking only about sharing a room, not a bed. Think very carefully before you respond, because I am prepared, I will go away.” She folded her hands in her lap and watched him thinking.
I will go away, she repeated to herself. She couldn’t pretend to be a lawyer, but she was proud of this flexible turn of phrase.
He said, “There’s a box on the table beside you.”
“So I see.”
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
“You haven’t finished reading my list.”
There was something in the way he turned his head, something off.
“You’re taking laudanum.”
A spark of irritation moved across his face and then was banished. “I didn’t want to cough during this—interview.”
“Paregoric or tincture?”
He gave her a crooked grin. “I thought you might ask. It tastes of saffron and cloves. From Mr. Cunningham. A reputable apothecary, you told me once.”
This was the Cap she knew, good natured even when he had been found out in a scheme. He wouldn’t lie; he considered it beneath his dignity. As a boy of twelve he had once explained himself to Mrs. Lee. A good lawyer, he said, can achieve his end without resorting to a lie. Mrs. Lee had laughed, but Aunt Quinlan had frowned and later took Cap aside to discuss the ways that manipulation made a mockery of honesty.
“From now on I will oversee the compounding of whatever medication you need. Without interference. So where do we stand?”
“I will concede on the medication—”
“As if I’d allow anything else.”
He raised a brow. “And I will concede on sharing a bedroom. But the arrangement of the room and the beds is mine.”
“The rest of it?”
He glanced at her list. “I agree to the other points.”
“Without reservation?”
“Of course I have reservations,” he said. “But I am willing to compromise.”
“You will concede to my decisions in medical matters.”
“Yes, I said I would.”
She allowed herself a smile. “You have the same scowl now you do when you’re losing at cards.”
Cap’s glare was both affronted and amused. He said, “Another condition occurs to me. We must see each other every day until we leave for Europe.”
It would be difficult to manage, but Sophie nodded.