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“I did,” Mariah repeated, more forcefully this time.

“And if he returns?” Harrison finally turned to look at her, his remaining eye the same pale blue of his brother’s.

Mariah turned her back to the painting, and answered as honestly as she could.

“I don’t know.”

7

St. George House was perfectly fine.

It was not drafty, despite the chill in the early December air. It was well-run, despite his lack of organization compared to Mariah or Johnstone, the steward she had hired the previous year. Indeed, it was exactly as he had preferred it these last five or so years.

Furthermore, although the coal fires within St. George House burned steadily, the residence was utterly bereft of warmth. It lacked that singular, heat that had enveloped him upon waking at Bailey Hall, following the conclusion of that dream—or perhaps it was a vision.

James had yet to fully reconcile the nature of what happened to him after he left the assembly hall that November evening. While he possessed an appreciation for a touch of mystery, he remained a man of reason, and the unknown typically sat ill with him. At times, he sought to dismiss the entire encounter as a trick of the senses, wondering if the older man had perhaps introduced some tincture of laudanum into his cup while his attention was elsewhere.

Although the entire episode remained a source of lingering disquiet, the long and short of it did not signify. Whether that man was an angel or the devil himself could matter less to James, because for him, it was the result of the dream that mattered. He had finally acknowledged to himself how very much Mariah mattered.

To him. To the town. To Harrison and Bailey Hall. That was what was important, not the method through which he learned this truth. He would rather concentrate his energies on doing something for Mariah rather than trying to decide if his experience was of heaven or of earth.

It was this drive that found him awake far earlier than ton hours dictated, sitting at the breakfast room in St. George House. With no one to dine with.

“Morning post, my lord.” Tipton, the butler at St. George house, entered with several letters on a silver salver.

“Isn’t there anything from the north?” James attempted to be off-handed in his question by immediately gulping down tea, which had the unfortunate consequence of scalding his throat. Not wishing to appear a complete imbecile in front of the butler, who was not so much older than him, unlike Ellis, James gripped his knife until the burning dissipated.

"No, my lord. Though typically, Pickett asks me to separate the provincial correspondence from your club invitations before he brings the salver up to you. He mentioned years ago that you preferred not to be troubled by the northern post."

“I…what?” James’s fingers began to turn white as he gripped the utensil in his hand, the stinging words of Mariah and Harrison swirling through his consciousness like a gathering storm.

“You made yourself clear when you ignored my correspondence.”

“I know what she wrote to you at the beginning of your marriage. How much of herself she shared. She received your message in return quite plainly.”

“My lord?” The butler stared at him expectantly. Of course the man had done nothing wrong. If Pickett had told him to withhold post from the north…

Then Pickett’s voice drowned out Harrison and Mariah inside James’s mind.

She’s Irish.

Pickett’s words had been delivered with a chilling nonchalance, as if he were saying both the sky is blue and that Mariah was worth no more than the dirt beneath his boot.

Without volition, James rose from the table, the knife clattering on the polished mahogany surface.

“If I needed a new valet, how soon could you find one?”

Something shifted in the butler’s face but otherwise he did not blink. “For one of quality, likely several days, my lord. If needed, the underbutler, Griggs, could take on the role.”

“Is Griggs a prejudiced snob?”

“My lord?”

James willed his blood to cool. Mariah would not appreciate him going off half-cocked on a valet, even if the man did slight her and hurt her behind her back.

“Is Griggs a good man?”

At that question, the butler paused for a moment before responding. “Indeed, I would say he is, my lord. I believe he was a batman in the Crimea before he returned to service.”