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She had said nothing all evening. Not at dinner, not over cards, not on the stairs. He had waited for it with a tightness in his chest that grew by the hour, and she had talked to Amelia about pressed flowers and to Sebastian about horses and smiled at him across the room, and said nothing.

She put the brush down and met his eyes in the glass.

“I liked seeing you with him,” she said. “That is all. I wanted you to know.”

He waited for the rest. The question. The hope. She turned on the stool to face him, and her expression was gentle, without a trace of expectation.

“That is all?” he said.

“That is all.” She lay down beside him on the bed and put her head on his shoulder. “You were happy. I have not often seen you happy. I liked it.”

He put his arm around her and lay watching the canopy. He thought about the small fist in his cravat and the vast wet smile and the sound the child made when he laughed. He thought about the nursery along the passage with its door shut and its yellow walls, and Lydia in that room, rocking a cradle. He thought about Lydia in another room, on a bed, with a physician at the door and himself outside it, and his heart stopped and started again.

Both pictures stayed in his head at once. He could not have one without the other. For five years he had believed only in the second possibility, dismissing the first as a comforting illusion. He lay in the dark with his wife asleep against his shoulder and could not be certain of anything.

Perhaps he had never stopped wanting a family. Perhaps he wanted one so badly that losing it again was more than he could survive.

He did not sleep for a long time.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Ravensmeres meant to leave after luncheon. By ten their luggage filled the hall again, the hamper and the trunks and the cradle and the basket of clean cloths, and Amelia had gone in search of a shawl she felt sure she had left in the south parlor. Lydia went with her. Mrs. Bell had cleared the parlor for the workmen weeks ago, and without its faded curtains it was unexpectedly pleasant, full of morning light from the long window.

The shawl lay on the window seat. Beside the window, stood a small painted chest, which Mrs. Bell’s men had moved out of the passage..

Amelia stopped in front of it. “How lovely. Did someone paint that by hand?”

“I believe so.” Lydia came nearer. She had noticed it in passing without stopping. It was a little thing, no more than two feet long, of pale wood gone honey-colored with age. Brass protected its corners and small flowers covered the lid: forget-me-nots and violets and sprigs of something she could not name, the paint worn thin at the front edge where hands had opened and closed it many times.

“The men brought it from one of the south rooms when the workmen came through. I do not think anyone has opened it in years.”

“I have hunted for something like this for the nursery.” Amelia touched one of the worn flowers. “Everything the shops offer me would suit a regiment’s equipment. This is far prettier. He could keep his treasures in it, once he is old enough to have any.”

Lydia thought of Amelia’s son on the conservatory tiles, frowning at a lemon tree. She thought of Tristan holding him, and the look on his face. She liked the idea of something neglected becoming useful again, in a nursery, with a child’s things in it. The conservatory had begun that way too.

“Then you must have it,” she said.

Amelia turned. “Oh, no. I was not asking.”

“I know. I am offering.” Lydia smiled. “There are a dozen chests in the storerooms. Mrs. Bell told me so last week. Nobody has opened this one since before I came. I should like to think of someone using it.”

“You are certain the duke does not need it?”

“It has stood in an empty room for years. I do not think he remembers it.” She put her hand on the lid. “Please. It would give me pleasure.”

Amelia hesitated a moment longer, then laughed and kissed her cheek. “Then I shall thank you both. Though I cannot promise my son will not improve the paint with his fists.”

Lydia rang. Two footmen came, and she asked them to carry the chest to the hall so the coachman could decide how to secure it. It weighed more than it seemed, and they paused at the parlor door to shift their hold, and Lydia walked behind them with Amelia, still talking about the flowers on the lid.

They were halfway across the hall when Tristan came in from the terrace.

He stopped. His eyes went to the chest, to the painted lid and the brass corners and the worn place at the front, and his expression altered. Lydia had seen him distressed before, in the corridor, in the carriage, in the greenhouse, but never like this. All the color drained from his face, as if someone had struck him.

“Put it down,” he said.

The nearer footman lowered his end too abruptly. His companion caught the weight and eased his own end down before the corner struck the floor. Both stood rigid beside it. Tristan crossed the hall in four strides and laid his hand flat on the lid and kept it there.

“Where are you taking it?”