Though her eyes remained warm, a faint tension worried her brow and thinned her lips. He read her expression easily, recalling it from his youth.

“Nonsense,” he answered. “Those young women and their unborn babes need you more than we do. And I insist, you must take the sledge.”

“Oh, sir.” She bent her head in servile deference. “How kind of you to think of them, but my primary duty and loyalty lies here with you and with the memory of your dear mother. Their families will come for me if needed—”

“Dearest, don’t argue with his Grace,” said Mr. Kettle quietly from his place at the window.

For a moment, the housekeeper appeared to take offense at her husband’s rebuke, but then she broke into a wide smile.

“What was I thinking? You and her ladyship are still newlyweds and by nature crave your privacy. That is why you came to Camellia House, is it not? To be alone.”

Vane suffered a heated flash of regret that things were not so between him and Sophia. Sophia, for her part, bit her lip and focused renewed interest on the bounty of the table.

“Before I forget.” From under her apron, the housekeeper produced a small ring, selecting a narrow brass key from the others. “This one for the linens, and the one beside it”—her smile held a flash of wickedness—“is for the cellar, if you’d care for another bottle of claret, or perhaps, Madeira. The attic, and so on.” Though Claxton extended his hand, she gave the keys to Sophia.

And just like that, Vane found himself alone again with his estranged wife.

For the longest while, they ate in silence, each cutting their food into ridiculously small bites, chewing without the slightest sound and displaying the utmost in culinary manners, as if they sat in the presence of His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent himself.

“This stew is delicious,” she murmured.

“Indeed.”

“And the silence between us completely ridiculous,” Sophia said, cutting two portions from a small plum cake.

Vane paused, midchew. “Pardon?”

She deposited the larger of the two slices on his plate. “Even if we plan to separate, we ought to be able to talk with each other.”

Separate. The word became no less offensive with repeated use. He flinched as if she’d struck him with the flat of her knife.

“What sort of talk? Inconsequential and meaningless talk?” The question came out sounding surlier than he intended.

He examined her face, always so expressive. She had never hidden anything from him. Never stretched the truth or told him only what he wished to hear. When they’d lost their child, he had shunned that honesty, not wanting to face what she must think of him, for certainly her sentiments could be no worse than his own. But in recent months, he’d come to crave that honesty. He wanted it now—an authentic conversation between them.

She tilted her head and then nodded. The firelight reflected off her dark hair and the softly rounded curve of her cheek. “There is value in polite conversation.”

“Not to me.”

She drew back defensively and sniffed. “Very well. If you don’t want to talk—”

His first instinct at having offended her was to grab her hand and pull her closer for another kiss as the last had been cut so appallingly short. But he had no right, not after what they’d decided last night.

“I did not say that,” he said. He shifted toward her and rested his arm along the upper frame of the chair. “I only said I don’t want to talk nonsense.”

“Well,” she began hopefully. “I like horses and know you do as well. Why don’t we talk about horses?”

“No.”

Sophia scowled and her green eyes flared. “No need to be peevish. You choose the topic.”

Amazing how a delicious meal and a glass of good wine could bring focus to one’s perspective. He’d been so certain until now that he’d somehow fail as a gentleman or fail Sophia by not following through on her demand for a separation. There had to be another way. An arrangement that could serve both their needs and purposes. He did not want to lose her, and certainly his proper little wife did not want scandal. What sort of negotiator simply walked away, relinquishing territory he so passionately desired to keep?

“Let us talk about our marriage.”

Dark lashes lowered against her cheeks, shuttering her eyes. He loved when she did that. She couldn’t know how seductive that small movement was. She poked her fork at the center of her cake. “I don’t know what else there is to say.”

His heart clenched on the finality of her words. There was so much more to say. He had only to compel himself to say it.

Tomorrow morning could very well bring a break in the frost, and they would be back where they started this morning, barreling toward separation. Though he might be a fool, he wasn’t stupid. If he wanted to diffuse the present situation and preserve Sophia as his wife, it was he who must make the sacrifice. The cavalry did not win the day by refusing to take the field.

Vane exhaled. Cleared his throat, which had tightened with nervousness. “I feel as if I owe you some explanation of myself. Not excuses, mind you. I don’t believe in making excuses for imprudent decisions or behavior. But I feel as if last night our conversation ended prematurely and that you as my wife deserve something more.”

“I would not disagree.” Her shoulders remained rigid and her gaze guarded.

“Mind you.” He smiled thinly. “Explanations are not something I’m in the habit of offering. They do not come easily. You see, I have had several years to become quite obnoxiously full of myself.”

Sophia let out a laugh, a quiet little sound, and appeared surprised by his humor. Yet her gaze met his only fleetingly.

Her smiles. How he’d missed them. Like sunshine, they’d once fed his soul. When she’d stopped smiling, his soul had withered. He wanted nothing more than to be the reason she smiled again. He wasn’t an idiot. If he wanted to return to her good graces, he would have to regain her trust.

“As an officer in the army,” he said, “one’s orders are carried out, not questioned.”

She lowered her fork to the plate. “Yes.”

“And then of course, once I became duke, every sycophant in London came calling, endeavoring to be my new closest friend.”

“I know they must have.”

He surveyed the room about them. Every familiar panel and beam. “It seems so long ago that Haden and I lived here—”

“You never told me much about your mother or your father,” she responded, rather tentatively, it seemed. “You didn’t seem to want to.”

He nodded. Touching crystal to his lips, he drained the glass of negus and sat silent for a long moment, allowing the resultant languidity to suffuse through his limbs until he felt numbed enough to continue.

“My mother, Elizabeth, had a gentle and loving spirit.” Just speaking his mother’s name reopened a wound that had only scarred over, but never fully healed. “Her illness came upon her suddenly. In a matter of days, she was gone. The Kettles were a great comfort to my brother and me, and very naïvely, I expected that life would go on with them acting as our surrogate family.” He grinned, seeking to assign a lightness that did not exist to the memory. He turned the empty glass in his hand so that the cut crystal caught the firelight and reflected like an illuminated diamond against her skin. “They had always been here, you see, every day, and had no children of their own.”

“It’s obvious that they hold you very dear.” Speaking of the Kettles, her demeanor softened.

He rubbed a hand over his upper lip, bristly from a day’s growth. “I ought to have come back before now. It was wrong for me to have waited so long.”

“Go on,” she urged quietly.

“On the morning of my mother’s funeral a conveyance came up the drive. There were footmen and outriders and, of course, a driver, all in full, glorious livery. They were the most magnificent things I’d ever seen. I remember Haden shouting that the king himself had come to pay his respects to our dear mother.” Vane glanced at the portrait over the mantel. He breathed through his nose, subduing a low tremor of rage. “But, of course, it wasn’t the king.”

Beside him, Sophia straightened in her seat, her hands curling into fists upon her lap.

“It was your father,” she whispered.

Claxton was silent for several moments before he continued. “What I wouldn’t discern until later was that Camellia House, the home I considered a happy paradise, had been intended as my mother’s prison. He’d exiled her here years before as punishment for some perceived betrayal. He was like that, you see, his behavior marked by constant paranoia, always accusing those closest to him of offenses and treachery where there were none. Forgiveness was a word of which he had no comprehension. As my mother had no family or protector to prevent this, she remained here at his discretion, virtually imprisoned in near poverty for the remainder of her life.”

Sophia whispered, “What could she have done to deserve that?”

“He told Haden and me before the carriage ever left the property that she was a whore.”

Sophia’s face flushed with sudden fury. “No child should have to hear such an ugly accusation about his mother, especially when the mother is no longer there to defend herself.”

“You must understand that she was not a—” he said, his voice suddenly thick.

“Of course she wasn’t,” Sophia assured.

“She was kind and loving and devoted to Haden and me. The rumor about her running away with a lover and dying in Italy all started with my father. I heard him repeat the same contrived story, over and over, to anyone who would listen. When I contradicted him—well, I did not contradict him again.”