“If I hadn’t been before, I certainly am now. Do you know, Harry, I have you to thank for showing me that I even possessed a temper?”

“Happy to oblige, that’s me. When will you sign over the house to me?”

They waited on a corner while a stately four-in-hand negotiated the intersection. Charles’s replacement waited as well, because the delay was caused by a horse unwilling to heed nature’s call at any pace faster than a plod.

“I will sign the house over to you when all the seas gang dry, and rocks melt with the sun.”

“Burns,” Harry said. “’My love is like a red, red rose.’ Sentimental drivel, but he was apparently right popular with the ladies. I need that house, Tilly.”

“The lament does not improve for repetition, Harry. If you worked half as hard at legitimate employment as you work at avoiding it, you would be a wealthy man.”

Matilda knew better than to pick up the pace, because Harry, being half a foot taller than she, would keep up easily. She called on old skills, skills learned early in her marriage, to separate her mind from the rage in her heart, while she examined whether the encounter could be put to any use.

“I can make trouble, Tilly,” Harry said, ever so pleasantly. “I don’t like to make trouble—I like to turn a coin or two and be on my way—but I can make very bad trouble.”

“Why, Harry, I do believe you are threatening your own lawfully wedded wife. This follows inevitably upon denial of your purportedly reasonable requests, which are, in truth, the demands of a whiny boy. Next will come blustering, then a silence that is also intended to be threatening, but is, in fact, tedious. When I do not relent, you will do a bunk, to use the vernacular, and I am supposed to worry about my errant husband. What your schemes lack in originality, they make up for in predictability.”

Harry offered his arm as Matilda stepped off the walkway. She ignored a courtesy that was entirely for show.

“Tilly, you wound me.” Something in Harry’s tone suggested he’d just parted with one of his rare, judiciously dispensed truths.

“You filleted me like a mackerel, sir, financially and emotionally, and I have yet to hear an apology.”

They passed the tea shop where Matilda had spent some pleasant hours. She would miss that, too, as would Tommie, no doubt.

“Would you believe me if I said I was sorry?” The odd, honest note remained, not remorse, but perhaps bewilderment.

“You are always sorry. I have wondered, if anybody has ever been proud of you, or of their association with you.”

Matilda was tempted to continue spewing bile, but she’d made her point. She kept her peace, wondering if Harry had followed her to the bank. He would—he was that determined and that canny.