“Ah.” He sat back in his chair, his soup forgotten. “And what would you beg of me?”
“Oh,” she said, “that you would pass the salt, please.”
They conversed upon inconsequential topics through most of the rest of the meal while Avery wondered what his wife’s new spirit of independence would mean to him, to them, if anything. But the conversation changed course again after their dessert plates had been removed and replaced with fruit and cheese and he had given the signal for the servants to leave.
“Avery,” she said abruptly, “I need to make plans for Westcott House and Hinsford Manor and my fortune.”
“Do you?” He looked lazily at her before continuing to peel his apple.
“Mr. Brumford told me—oh, a long time ago,” she said, “that I did not need to worry my head over any of it, and I took him at his word because my head was so full of other things there was no room for more. But both houses are empty. I thought perhaps Cousin Alexander should live at Westcott House when he is in London. He is, after all, the earl. Do you think he would? And I wish Camille and Abigail and their mother would return to Hinsford. It was their main home. Is there any way I can persuade them, do you suppose? And all my money and investments—I cannot like being the sole possessor of it all. Oh.” She looked suddenly arrested and gazed at him. “Is it all yours now? Do you own me and my fortune because you are my husband?”
“You pain me, my love,” he said. “I own you in exactly the way you own me. We are married to each other—until death do us part, which might sound alarming if we were ever to regret the fact. I made very sure with my solicitor that what was yours before our marriage remains yours—to do with as you wish. Riverdale may be persuaded to lease Westcott House when he is in town, though I am willing to wager he will not accept it as a favor. You are quite at liberty to try to persuade him, of course. My guess is you will not persuade Cousin Viola or your half sisters to return to Hinsford, but again you are free to try. What do you wish to do with your fortune, apart from watch it grow?”
“I want to divide it into four parts,” she said, “as ought to have been done by my father in a new will before he died. Can it be done now? Even without the permission of my brother and sisters?”
“I will place all these questions before Edwin Goddard,” he said, cutting his apple into four and helping himself to a slice of cheese. “He will know some answers and have some sage advice, I do not doubt. And I shall summon my solicitor. He will attend to all legal matters according to your wishes and what is legally possible.”
Her own apple was sitting untouched in the middle of her plate, and he reached over to peel it for her.
“No,” she said. But she was not talking about the apple. “No, that would not be fair to Mr. Goddard. He works hard enough as it is. And it would not be fair to dismiss Mr. Brumford just because he is prosy and a little pompous. I shall entrust any instructions to him. And I will employ my own secretary. I know someone—”
“—from the orphanage,” he said.
“Yes.”
They both watched as he peeled her apple in one strip and then cut it in four and cored it.
“Thank you,” she said.
He sat back in his chair and bit into one piece of his own apple. “Are you angry about something?” he asked her.
“No.” She sighed. “No, Avery. But I have been drifting with the tide, it seems, ever since I opened Mr. Brumford’s letter in the schoolroom and decided to come here. I have let life happen to me. Oh, I have exercised control in small, unimportant ways, like the design of my new clothes, but . . .” She shrugged.
“Did you drift into marrying me?” he asked, and then wished he had not. He did not particularly want to hear her answer.
She had been arranging the four pieces of her apple in a neat row across her plate. She looked up at him then.
“I think I married you,” she said, “because I wanted to.”
Well, that was a huge relief. “I am flattered,” he said. “Honored. Your apple is starting to turn brown.”
His relief was short-lived. Her hands disappeared into her lap and she continued to stare at him. “Avery,” she asked softly, “where did you learn to do that?”
Strangely, he knew exactly what she was talking about, though he hoped he was wrong. “That?”
“Fighting a far larger man the way you did and defeating him without allowing him to lay a hand upon you—apart from the fact that a door ran into you soon after,” she said. “Leaping into the air higher than your own height and still having the power to render him unconscious with the soles of your bare feet.”
He gazed back at her for a few moments, his body absolutely still. That damned Riverdale had told her, he thought for a moment. But no. “Where were you?” he asked.
“Up in a tree,” she said. “Elizabeth was hidden behind it.”
“A few dozen men would have been severely displeased if they had caught you,” he said. “Including Riverdale. And Uxbury. Me.”