Harrison nodded at each suggestion, taking great care not to laugh or look remotely irritated. “Don’t forget the Bassets down in Penzance. They are actors.”

Could his wife have breathed fire, he’d have been thoroughly cooked. “That is not funny!”

“No, but they are hilarious,” he assured her, sitting back more comfortably against the cushion. “Excellent company.”

Wordless shrieks had never sounded more musical, and he watched as she warred within herself, her mouth moving without forming any specific words whatsoever. Whatever battle she was engaged in, he was clearly not required to participate any further.

So naturally, he did. “Perhaps I should write to the king and ask for an improvement to the title. Would that help matters?”

A leather glove flew at his face then, thankfully without a hand in it, and the coach resumed its previously shared silence.

Just as he liked it.

As a man with some control over his emotions, and restraint within those emotions, Harrison had never experienced the roaring fury his wife seemed so close to at any given time. Truly, it must have been an exhausting enterprise. But did such extremes there also lend themselves to other emotions? Was she delirious when she was pleased? Distraught with every moment of sadness? Incoherent when feeling amused? At death’s door whenever she was unwell?

It would be an interesting study to make, the more he got to know her and the more familiar her ways and nature he became. Although at this rate, he might never see her in any other emotion but anger.

The image of spending thirty years with a constantly angry wife who never adjusted to such a thing sprang into his mind, and it was a harrowing one.

He’d send her back to London after five years, if that was the case. Living apart might raise some eyebrows, but if it saved his sanity and health…

She’d likely despise Cornwall as it was. Hearing her speak of it, one might think Harrison was taking her to the ends of the earth rather than an ancient, well established, rich county in England. He’d no wish to see her truly miserable, no matter how he might provoke her, so if the time came that no happiness or pleasure could be found in her surroundings, he’d not argue her desire to live apart if it was suggested. If there were children by that time, there would, naturally, be complications, as he would not wish to be parted from them, but parents who were united in the care and comfort of their children ought to be able to meet on safe grounds for them, no matter how their own natures clashed.

Five years. He could endure that.

The only question was whether his wife could.

Or would.

And if he would be alive by the end of them.

“Heavens… is that the coast?”