Gerffron was in the corridor.
He had not gone far — had walked approximately twelve feet from the parlour door and then stopped, because the ankle had been communicating its situation with increasing urgency for the past three hours and had apparently decided that twelve feet was the appropriate distance at which to make its case definitively.
He was leaning against the wall.
He was trying to look like a man who had chosen to lean against this particular wall at this particular moment for personal reasons unrelated to structural necessity.
He was not succeeding.
The parlour door opened.
Gorgina came out. She looked at him.
He looked back at her with the expression of a man who is aware that his current relationship with the wall is not a flattering look and who has decided there is nothing to be done about it.
"You're limping." she said.
"It's fine." he said.
"You've been saying it's fine for—" she checked the corridor clock "—three hours."
"The situation required—"
"Walk toward me." she said.
He looked at her.
"Walk toward me." she said again, in the voice she used when she had already decided something and was going through the motions of allowing the other person to participate in the process.
He pushed off from the wall.
He took three steps.
He was a good actor under most circumstances. He was not a good enough actor to disguise what the ankle was doing over the course of three steps with Gorgina watching.
"Right." she said.
"It is genuinely—"
"Stop talking." she said.
She crossed the distance between them.
He had approximately one second of warning — the specific, instinctive oh no second that the body provides when it registers that something surprising is about to happen — before Gorgina Wadee, the Duke of Zenos, twenty-seven years old and possessed of a build that was lean but clearly not as deceptive about its practical strength as he had assumed, picked him up.
Not by the arm. Not a supporting hold. Fully, completely, one arm behind his knees and one behind his back, in the specific and unambiguous carry that he had read about in the books of this world's literature and which was called, in those books, by a term that he was currently too flustered to retrieve.
He made a sound.
It was not a dignified sound.
"I—" he said.
"I told you to stop talking." she said, already moving down the corridor with the expression of a woman completing a logistical task.
"Gorgina—I mean Your Grace!"
"You weigh nothing." she said, with a flatness that was worse than if she had been dramatic about it. "You weigh nothing and you have been walking on a sprained ankle for three hours because you didn't want to explain where it came from. This is the efficient solution."
"The efficient solution." he repeated.
"Yes."
"Would you like to define efficient?"
"Getting you to your room without you doing additional damage to the ankle on the way." she said.
"There are other methods—"
"They would require your cooperation," she said. "This one doesn't."
He opened his mouth.
He closed it.
He looked at the ceiling, because looking at the ceiling was the only direction available that did not involve looking at either the extremely close face of the woman carrying him or the corridor over which that carrying was occurring.
The corridor over which the carrying was occurring was, unfortunately, the main corridor.
The main corridor was not empty.
Selfi saw them first.
She had been coming from the east wing with the specific focused energy of a woman who has spent the past three hours in a state of escalating self-reproach and is looking for something useful to do with her hands. She had rounded the corner from the east passage into the main corridor and had come to a complete stop.
Her mouth opened.
It did not close for several seconds.
In the main corridor: the Duke, carrying the consort in her arms, walking at a measured pace toward the stairs with the expression of someone performing an entirely ordinary task. The former consort, being carried, looking at the ceiling with the expression of a man who has made peace with his situation because the alternative requires a level of physical intervention that his current ankle cannot support.
Selfi stood.
She stood for long enough that the kitchen girl coming behind her walked into her back and said "oi, what are you—" and then also stopped.
"Is that—" the kitchen girl said.
"Yes." Selfi said.
"Is she—"
"Yes." Selfi said.
They watched Gorgina carry Gerffron to the stairs.
At the stairs, Gorgina did not put him down.
She carried him up the stairs.
"This is," Gerffron said, from his position in her arms, at the third stair, "completely unnecessary."
"Probably." she agreed.
"People are watching."
"I know. Let them watch. Nothing beats a good show."
"Does that not—"
"They'll recover." she said.
He was quiet for three stairs.
Then, very quietly, so that only she could hear: "My face is a colour I don't think a face should be."
"Red," she said. "Yes. You've been red since the corridor."
"I can feel it."
"It's—" she stopped.
He looked at her, which he had been avoiding doing but the staircase geometry made unavoidable.
Her expression had changed from the logistical flatness of the corridor into something else — something that was trying not to be what it was but was not entirely succeeding. The corner of her mouth was doing something.
"Are you laughing?" he said.
"No." she said.
"Your Grace."
"Absolutely not."
"The corner of your—"
"I am carrying a grown man up a staircase," she said, with the dignity of someone insisting on a position they are losing rapidly, "and it is a solemn and practical exercise and I am not laughing."
He looked at her.
She looked at the stairs.
"You're laughing." he said.
"I am not," she said, and the corner of her mouth betrayed her completely.
He looked at the ceiling again.
He thought; This is the most absurd thing that has happened to me in two lifetimes. He thought: I am being princess-carried up a staircase by my estranged wife and she is trying not to laugh and my face is the colour of the household's best tomatoes and somehow this is the least terrible I have felt in weeks.
He did not say any of this.
He looked at the ceiling and let her carry him to the top of the stairs.
She set him on the bed with more care than the corridor had suggested she was capable of.
Not gently — she was not a gentle person, in the sense of the word that implies something soft. But carefully, in the specific way of someone who is paying attention to what they are handling.
She looked at the ankle.
"Physician." she said, turning toward the door.
"It's probably just—"
"I am going to get the physician," she said, "and while I am doing that you are going to stay on this bed and not put weight on that ankle and if when I return you are standing at the window looking at the garden I will carry you back to the bed and that will be the second time today which will be — I will not be responsible for what the household makes of that."
He looked at her.
"That is," he said, "a surprisingly compelling argument."
"I thought so." She went to the door. "Don't move."
"I'm not moving."
She left.
He looked at the ceiling.
He thought about the corridor. About the staff who had seen. About Selfi, who he was fairly certain had been one of the people in the main corridor and whose expression, from his somewhat limited sightline, had been — interesting.
He thought about Gorgina not-laughing on the stairs.
He thought about Wren on the terrace railing, and about what it had felt like to pull someone back from the edge of the worst decision, and about the specific, clarifying simplicity of a moment when the only thing that matters is the next thirty seconds and you act in them without calculation.
The physician arrived twenty minutes later.
He was a compact, efficient man named Dressar who had been the Wadee estate's household physician for six years and who approached the examination of the ankle with the thorough, slightly aggressive competence of someone who prefers his patients to have followed his advice before requiring him.
Gorgina stood at the foot of the bed.
"How did it happen?" Dresser asked.
"Stairs." Gerffron said.
"Which stairs?"
"South wing."
Dressar pressed two fingers to the ankle in a specific location and looked at Gerffron with the expression of a man waiting for a reaction.
"Ow!" Gerffron said, with feeling.
"Sprain," Dresser said. "Not a break. The ligament on the outer side. You've been walking on it."
"I was aware."
"For approximately—" Dresser looked at the ankle's current state with the diagnostic eye of a man reading damage "—three hours?"
"Thereabouts."
"Right." Dressar began the process of binding it with the efficient, slightly disapproving manner of someone who has been in his profession long enough to have lost patience with patients who make preventable situations worse. "Rest. Elevation. Cold compress for the first twenty-four hours, warm compress after. No stairs for three days minimum. No garden for a week."
"The garden—"
"No garden for a week," Dressar repeated, with the specific tone of a man who is not going to negotiate this.
Gerffron looked at Gorgina. The physician didn't know that Gerffron has not at all ventured into the garden at all for almost three years.
Gorgina looked at him with the expression of someone who is not going to intervene in a physician's instructions.
"Fine." he said.
"Appropriate diet is required." Dresser said, straightening and turning to Gorgina with the manner of someone who has assessed that the person he is now addressing is the one who will actually ensure the instructions are followed. "He is underweight. A man of his age should healthy. You are too thin and lean. I reviewed my notes from the recovery — he has improved but not sufficiently. He needs a higher caloric intake consistently, not occasionally. Protein specifically. If the household kitchen is currently providing the servants' standard—"
"It's not." Gorgina said.
"Good. Increase the protein regardless. And the iron — he looks—" Dresser examined Gerffron's face with the professional assessment of someone reading a medical text "—tired in the specific way of iron deficiency. Liver, twice a week. Dark greens daily."
"I hate liver." Gerffron said.
"Hating good stuff is normal." Dresser said, with perfect indifference. "Twice a week."
He left.
The room settled into the specific quiet of a space after a purposeful person has departed.
Gorgina did not leave immediately.
She stood at the foot of the bed with her arms crossed, looking at him with the expression she wore when she was conducting an assessment she had not finished.
"You should have told someone about the ankle immediately." she said.
"I was managing the situation."
"You were ignoring the ankle."
"That is a type of management."
She looked at him.
He looked back at her.
The window light was the low, warm light of late afternoon. It came in at the angle that turned the cedar-smelling room into something that looked, in this specific light, like the rooms in paintings where important things happen — the light that makes everything look as if it is about to mean something.
"You went to her." Gorgina said. Not a question.
"Yes."
"You saw her from the library window?"
"Yes."
"And you ran."
"Yes."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Why?" she said, and the question was the same question Wren had asked on the terrace — the fragment of a larger question, the one that wanted to know something that the specific fact of the running did not, on its own, explain.
He thought about what he had told Wren.
He thought about the answer that was true and the answer that was manageable and decided, in the specific tiredness of a man who has had a considerable afternoon, that they were the same answer today.
"Because someone should have run for me," he said. "A long time ago."
Gorgina looked at him for a long moment.
She did not ask what he meant.
He had a feeling she understood more than she was saying, which was consistent with everything he knew about her.
She uncrossed her arms.
"Rest." she said.
"Okay."
"I'll send Sera with—"
"Your Grace."
She stopped.
He looked at her.
"Thank you," he said. "For what you did for Wren. In the parlour."
She held his gaze for a moment.
"The household's staff are under the household head's protection." she said, which was the administrative version of what she meant and which both of them knew was not the full version.
He nodded.
She turned.
At the door, she stopped.
"Gerffron."
"Yes."
"The physician said liver twice a week."
"I heard him."
"I'll tell the kitchen."
"You don't have to—"
"I don't want to hear that I am neglecting my husband the next time you accompany me to any social event." she said.
After she left, he lay on the bed with the bound ankle elevated on the pillow that Dressar had arranged and looked at the ceiling and listened to the household going about its evening and thought: I am not as alone as I was.
He thought about Wren on the terrace, and the corridor, and the stairs, and not-laughing.
He thought about liver twice a week.
He closed his eyes as sleep overtook him.
Selfi received her instructions the following morning.
Gorgina found her in the corridor outside the cedar bedroom at the seventh bell, where she had been performing the task of adjusting a wall sconce that had been slightly crooked for eleven months and which she had suddenly decided required immediate correction.
"Selfi."
She straightened.
"Your Grace."
Gorgina looked at her with the specific, level regard that contained her assessment of a situation without announcing the assessment.
"You will continue assisting Sera with the former consort's daily attendance," she said. "Sera has the primary responsibility. You have the secondary."
"Yes, Your Grace."
"The physician has provided dietary instructions. You and Sera will coordinate with the kitchen to ensure they are followed. Daily."
"Yes, Your Grace."
"He is on ankle rest for three days. He will attempt to go to the library regardless. You will bring the library to him — books, whatever he requests, as many as he wants. He is not to be bored."
"I—" Selfi stopped. "Yes, Your Grace."
"And Selfi?"
"Yes, Your Grace?"
"What you reported yesterday," Gorgina said, and her voice had the quality of something being addressed rather than ignored, which was in some ways more uncomfortable than being ignored, "came from incomplete information. I understand that. But in future, when you are uncertain about what you have heard, you will investigate before you report."
The words were delivered with perfect evenness.
They landed, nonetheless, with full force.
"Yes, Your Grace." Selfi said.
"Good."
Gorgina moved on.
Selfi stood in the corridor with the wall sconce and the crooked feeling of a person who has been corrected by the person they love most and has found the correction both entirely fair and entirely devastating.
She straightened the sconce.
She picked up the tray she had left on the hall table.
She knocked on the cedar bedroom door.
"Come in," said the voice inside.
She went in.
He was on the bed with the ankle elevated and a book already open — he had apparently sent someone to the library at the first bell, because there were four books on the nightstand with the specific arrangement of a person who has prepared themselves for enforced rest with the thoroughness of someone who views enforced rest as a logistical challenge to be solved.
He looked up when she entered.
"Selfi." he said.
"Sir." she said. She set the tray on the bedside table. Breakfast — the good bread, eggs, the dark greens Dresser had specified, and, she noted with a private wince, a small portion of cooked liver that the kitchen had apparently been informed about with unusual promptness.
She turned to go.
"Selfi," he said again.
She stopped.
"I heard what you told Orreth," he said. "I know how it must have looked from the corridor."
She was very still.
"I don't—" he paused. "I'm not angry about it. I want you to know that."
She turned.
He was looking at her with the steady, patient attention that she had been cataloguing for months and which continued, at close range, to be deeply inconvenient in its effect on her ability to maintain the interior narrative she had been building about who he was.
"You should eat your liver." she said.
His expression did something.
"I should." he agreed.
"It's good for iron deficiency."
"Dressar was very clear about this."
"It'll taste better with the bread," she said, with the specific authority of someone who has opinions about this.
He looked at the liver.
He looked at the bread.
He looked at her.
"You've eaten it before." he said.
"No sir. We are just maids. We don't have that kind of affordability." she said.
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he picked up the liver with the expression of a man approaching something necessary but unpleasant, took a bite of bread with it, and ate it.
He chewed.
His face was very controlled.
"It's—" he started.
"Terrible?" she said.
"Yes."
"Twice a week." she said.
"I know." he spoke exasperated.
She almost — not quite, but almost — smiled.
She left before it could become a full smile.
She stood in the corridor for a moment.
She thought about the south terrace. About what Wren had said in the parlour. About the man in the cedar bedroom eating his liver with the expression of someone fulfilling a duty he had not asked for.
She thought; He is not who I decided he was. I owe him something. I do not know what to do with that.
She picked up the empty breakfast trays from the hall table and carried them back to the kitchen.
She thought about it the whole way down.