It did sound bad. Alex wound an arm around his twin’s shoulder. “We should be moving the household to London sometime in the next few weeks, but you can visit Downes anytime, you know.”

Patrick gave him a wry smile. “Thank you.”

“I have to fetch Charlotte,” Alex said. “She wants to do some shopping before we return to the country. She will be visiting her parents tonight—will you join me for a game of billiards?” At Patrick’s nod, Alex walked toward the door, then paused.

“Marriages aren’t always successful, Patrick.” Between them stood the knowledge that Alex’s first marriage had been an unmitigated disaster from which he had barely escaped. “One cannot blame oneself.”

As the door closed behind his brother, Patrick threw himself into an armchair. Consciously he relaxed his jaw. Alex was both right and wrong. The idea of discussing bedroom matters with Sophie was inconceivable. But he could simply walk into her chamber. Ay, that he could do. Tonight he was bound to have dinner with Petersham and then billiards with Alex—but tomorrow night he would enter that room. It was that or go slowly mad, Patrick realized. Whatever his cool little wife thought of the business, her bedlamite husband was burning to topple her beneath him on a bed—any bed.

Unknown to Patrick, up on the first floor that same cool little wife was shedding hot, inconvenient, and passionately angry tears.

Henri bounced through the door of Sophie’s sitting room only to stop in dismay. “Lady Sophie! What is your concern?” Henri still spoke a queer, broken English, but Sophie insisted they avoid French so that Henri would be fluent enough to enter school in a few weeks.

Sophie brushed away the tears on her cheeks. “It’s nothing, Henri. I’m turning into a watering pot, that’s all.”

“A watering pot?” Henri frowned.

“Someone who cries frequently,” Sophie explained.

Henri hesitated. Even he knew that such a subject was delicate. “Do you weep because you are—you are … séparée from Monsieur Foakes?”

She might have known that the whole household would be discussing Patrick’s desertion of her bed. Of course, the servants would know with whom Patrick was spending his nights—they always knew that kind of detail.

“Do they say, downstairs, who Patrick’s friend is?” she asked baldly.

“What?” Henri was perplexed.

“Whom … Patrick spends his evenings with?”

Henri’s face took on a knowing sympathy that was far older than his age. He shook his head negatively, not trying to hide the fact that the household believed in the existence of Patrick’s mistress. But he did keep silent about the household’s opinion of Sophie’s frequent drives with the Earl of Slaslow.

Sophie’s eyes prickled. She took a deep breath. This was a most improper conversation to have with Henri. For a moment she fought to keep her composure.