Eloise felt unwontedly short of breath. Now that she’d seen George naked again, the image of his chest and legs superimposed itself onto his ordinary presence. He stood there, fully clothed, at her shoulder, and she shivered as images from early in their marriage drifted through her mind.

A sudden memory came, unbidden: how George used to kiss the back of her neck again and again. Eloise turned and looked up at her husband. He was gazing out over the garden and apparently hadn’t even noticed her lack of an answer.

“George,” Eloise said. She felt herself flushing.

George looked down at her. His gray eyes sobered. Then he reached out and curled his hand around the nape of her neck, precisely the spot she had just thought of. He hadn’t touched her so intimately in years.

Eloise stood with all the stillness of a terrified rabbit. It was a moment for courage. But the courage to overcome years of estrangement is hard to come by. Her breath burned in her chest. Words clogged in her throat. She bent her neck, helplessly ashamed.

But George merely spread his hand a bit wider and rubbed his thumb in a small circle, dropping his hand only when Carroll opened the drawing room doors to usher Sophie into the room.

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Sophie woke up so early that it was barely light outside, clambering out of her bed to see the first gray streaks of dawn. What does one do on the morning of one’s marriage? Sleep, her mother would say. Sleep so that you look your best. But Sophie couldn’t sleep.

Her heart was pounding with excitement. She leaned on the windowpane where Patrick had come into her room, and told herself for the sixtieth time that she was doing the right thing. If she looked closely, Sophie could see faint white scratches on the windowsill: the marks where Patrick’s ladder had rested.

Two men trundled by, driving a large open wagon. The night-soil men were heading out of London with their loads of fertilizer. The city was waking up; down in Covent Garden the fruit merchants would be arriving, and in Spitalfields the bird sellers would be opening their shops. When she was a girl Sophie used to love to look at the rows of goldfinches and woodlarks, linnets and greenfinches. Today the thought of small birdcages caught at the back of her throat and made her want to cry.

“Stupid, don’t be stupid!” she whispered to herself furiously. Some marriages work; some don’t. What right did she have to dramatize her upcoming nuptials, as if she were Juliet being forced to marry Paris?