She had not been called away on a matter of import.

She was escaping him.

Mars detested when she did as such, but he had had some hours to consider his reaction to what she had done earlier. And although he did not think he was wrong in his concerns, he perhaps had not shared them as he should have done.

Thus, he bid his own farewells, and for the second time that day, he wasted none of it going to the chambers he shared with his wife in order to explain he had come to this conclusion in an effort to work through their quarrel.

When he arrived, he saw the lights were dimmed in all but their bedchamber, and thus, he headed there.

Silence was not abed, but hearing him arrive, Piccola scurried out of her dressing room, found a piece of furniture to climb and launched herself at him.

He caught the wee monkey and allowed her to scuttle up his shirt in order to hang onto the side of his neck as he moved to his wife’s dressing room.

He pushed aside the sheers that covered the doorway.

His queen was seated with her back to him, wearing a nightgown he had a feeling he would like very much, for he already did only seeing one side of it, and Tril was at work, brushing her gleaming hair.

Tril gave him wide eyes.

Mars shook his head to her and cast his gaze to the back of his wife’s head.

“The barons have left,” he announced.

“All right,” Silence replied tonelessly, not turning to look at him.

Tril kept brushing, now averting her eyes and biting her lip.

Mars fought back a sigh and shared, “I shall meet you in bed.”

“Yes,” was all Silence said.

He turned, taking Piccola with him to his own dressing room where their pet had to release him so Mars could disrobe and put on his silk sleeping pants.

This he did, and then he entered their bedchamber, fell to his back on their bed, his shoulders and head against the headboard.

He folded his hands behind his head but took one away to stroke Piccola’s back when she curled in a ball on his stomach just above his navel.

She was tired out, their baby, from all the activity and attention of the night.

He thought this, aiming his eyes to Silence’s dressing room.

No murmur of conversation came from there, but it took a frustrating amount of time for his queen to emerge from behind the sheers with Tril following her.

And at one sight of his wife, Mars’s body turned to stone.

This was not because her nightgown wasn’t fetching.

It very much was.

It was because her marital chain was gone.

Tril swiftly made her way about the room, blowing out lamps, though she did not approach the bed to blow out the ones glowing at each side.

And when she started to make her way back to the dressing room, through which was a door to her room, she called Piccola, who did not want to leave her papa. But animals had instincts and the mood in the room was far from lost on their wee one.