Gerffron was, when Gorgina arrived, in the library.
He was in the library in the specific, sprawled quality of a man who had returned home before his wife and had made the informed decision to spend the interval in the most comfortable available configuration, which was the large chair with the ottoman and the side table bearing the snack tray that Wren had produced and which contained, among other things, the spiced nuts that the estate's kitchen had been making since the cook had discovered Gerffron liked them and had added them to the rotation of things that appeared without being requested.
Oswin was on his lap.
He was not supposed to be on his lap.
He had arrived on his lap through the specific, determined crawl of a ten-month-old who had identified a destination and had pursued it with the single-minded commitment that characterized everything he did, and Gerffron had watched him arrive with the expression of a man who had been interrupted in his reading and had decided, upon assessment, that the interruption was worth the distraction.
Oswin was chewing on a corner of the book.
"That," Gerffron said, extracting it, "is a first edition."
Oswin looked at him.
"It belonged to the estate's original library. It is approximately two hundred years old."
Oswin reached for it again.
"No," Gerffron said.
He gave him a wooden block instead.
Oswin looked at the wooden block.
He looked at the book.
He conducted the assessment.
He accepted the wooden block with the specific, philosophical acceptance of someone who has recognised that the better option has been removed from availability and is choosing to work with what's present.
Wren was at the upper shelves.
Sera was in the corner preparing a cup of tea.
The library had the warm, inhabited quality of an evening in a room that had been occupied by people who were comfortable in it.
The door opened.
All three of them felt the change before they saw it — the specific, pressure-shift quality of a room whose atmosphere had been altered by the arrival of someone who was carrying something.
Sera and Wren exchanged one look.
The look communicated everything in the specific, efficient way that people who had been in the same household for years communicated everything.
Wren descended the ladder.
She took Oswin from Gerffron's lap with the smooth efficiency of someone who had been expecting to perform this action and had positioned herself to do so quickly.
Oswin, removed from his source of warmth and entertainment, whimpered pitifully, opened his mouth to register a protest.
"Shh," Wren murmured, already moving toward the door.
Sera had already folded her mending.
They were out in approximately forty-five seconds.
The door closed.
Gerffron looked at Gorgina.
Gorgina looked at Gerffron.
"Sit down," he said.
"I'll stand," she said.
She was still in the Duke's coat — still in the formal attire of the working day, which meant she had not stopped, had come directly from the palace to this room without the usual interval of changing, which was itself information.
"All right," he said.
He sat back in the chair.
He folded his hands in his lap with the specific, settled quality of a man who has been expecting this conversation and has prepared for it and is ready.
"Are you having an affair with him?" Gorgina said.
Gerffron looked at her.
"With whom?" he asked.
"Don't," she said. "Don't perform confusion at me. You know who."
"I genuinely—"
"Styrmir Voss," she said, and the name had the specific, flat quality of a word that had been sharpened by the using of it. "The advisor. The astronomer. The—"
"I don't know him," Gerffron said.
Gorgina stared at him.
"I don't know him," he said again, evenly. "He is a member of the delegation I have been appointed to manage. I have a professional relationship with him that is — given the nature of the role — closer than the other delegation members. That is the entirety of it."
"You are a liar!" she said.
"I am being accurate," he said.
"I saw the way you looked at him in the session today."
"I look at all the delegation members during sessions. That is part of the function of the liaison role."
"Not like that."
He looked at her.
She looked at him.
The library was very quiet.
"I am telling you," Gorgina said, and her voice had dropped into the register that was lower than her usual authority and which carried a different quality — not the Duke's voice, not the formal voice, something more interior, "that you will not speak to him again. Outside of the formal sessions. No private conversations. No carriages. No walks. No anything that is not the official function of the liaison role."
Gerffron was quiet for a moment.
He said: "I can't do that."
"I'm not asking."
"The role requires—"
"I am not asking about the role," she said. "I am telling you that you will not have personal contact with that man."
"On what grounds?"
"On the grounds that you are my husband and I am telling you."
Gerffron looked at her.
He looked at her with the full, direct attention that was his most honest register.
He thought about the east tower.
He thought about the year when he was confined.
He thought about what he had seen in the Crown Prince's room.
He thought: I have been patient. I have been patient for a very long time. I have been patient with considerable provocation.
He said: "Your Grace. I am going to say something to you and I want you to hear it, and I want you to understand that I am saying it out of the specific, minimal courtesy that I consider owed between two people who have shared a household for five years, rather than from any position of subservience or obligation."
She was watching him.
"If I were to open my mouth," he said, quietly, "about the things I know — about the things I have seen and not mentioned and have chosen, repeatedly, to leave unremarked because remarking on them was not in either of our interests — I will make absolutely certain that you will not have a face to show in any social setting in this empire for the foreseeable future."
Silence.
"Is that a threat?" she asked. Her voice was very flat.
"Think whatever you want of it," he said.
He looked at her steadily.
"This is a contractual marriage," he said. "We both know what it is. We both know the terms it was built on. I have kept those terms. I have kept them while you—" he stopped. He chose. "I have kept them. I am asking you to extend the same courtesy to me. I don't ask who you spend your evenings with. I don't comment on where you go when you don't come home. I have given you the space that the arrangement implied. I am asking, in return, for the space to perform a court-appointed role that I did not choose and cannot decline."
Gorgina looked at him.
She looked at him with an expression he had not seen before — not the anger, which was present, not the authority, which was always present, but something underneath both of those that was more raw and more honest and which he did not have time to read before she moved.
Her hand came up.
He moved.
He moved the way of not with the trained efficiency of a fighter but with the instinctive, necessary quickness of a person whose body had decided that certain things were not acceptable and had issued the instruction to avoid them before the mind caught up.
He stepped sideways.
His foot caught the ottoman.
He did not fall — he caught himself, the hand going out to the bookshelf, the weight redistributing — but the ankle, the same ankle that had been quietly getting better for two weeks, spoke.
It spoke loudly and specifically and in the specific direction of pain.
His face did not show it.
He had gotten very good, over the years, at faces that did not show things.
He looked at Gorgina.
She looked at him.
Something moved through her expression.
He said: "Good night, Your Grace."
She held the expression for a moment.
Then she turned.
She left the library with the specific quality of leaving that communicated everything — the robe fluttering in the motion of it, the door not slammed but closed with the sharp, decisive click of a door that had been closed with intention.
The library was very quiet.
Gerffron stood with his hand on the bookshelf and his face arranged in the expression it had been arranged in since she raised her hand.
Then she was gone and the door was closed and there was no one left to perform for.
"—ghk," he said, into the empty library, and sat down on the floor with his back against the bookshelf and his ankle communicating its position with comprehensive thoroughness.
He sat there for a while.
He thought about a lot of things.
He thought about none of them productively.
He thought: I need to find something to mend my leg.