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dire than a scrabbling, parole liberty in the town of the Republique’s choosing, but Gilly was without men to translate for her.
    Thank God.
    “I intend to remove to Severn,” he said, “but not until the bankers see that I live, have possession of the relevant faculties, and have returned my duchy to good financial health.”
    They’d likely said that to his face, too, the rotters, and held his own money clutched away from him as they said it.
    “Bother the duchy’s financial health. You are clearly competent to administer your own affairs.” Gilly reined in her temper by fixing him another cup of his nursery tea. She would not have minded a cup herself, insomnia being a widow’s frequent burden. “Your daughter’s health is precarious, and that should take precedence over all.”
    “If she is ill, I will certainly retain physicians to examine her.”
    “I already have.” She passed him his tea and then had nothing to do with her hands.
    “Perhaps you’d peel me another orange?”
    Excellent notion. He’d eaten his already, steadily ingested one section after another, and yet, his hands weren’t sticky.
    Taking a small plate, Gilly peeled the fruit and tore it into sections, wiped her fingers using the finger bowl and a serviette, then passed him his orange. The whole process took several minutes, which allowed Gilly to organize her thoughts.
    “You are capable of silence,” he said, taking the plate of orange sections. “I had wondered.” He might have been mocking her, in that soft, musing voice. Or he might have been trying to communicate something else entirely.
    “One doesn’t usually make a call to sit without speaking like a pair of Quakers at meeting.”
    He saluted with his teacup. “You were telling me about my daughter.”
    “Lucille, yes. She grew quite withdrawn when her brother died, and we feared she might fall ill as he did.”
    “He was ill, then?” A quiet question, the inflection coming across as almost…French?
    “He was colicky, then started running a fever. Not typhoid or lung fever, that we could tell. Influenza, most likely.”
    He rose and went to the window, keeping his back to her, which struck Gilly as rude, until it occurred to her nobody would have discussed his son’s death with him, and Helene’s letters had—if she’d written any, if he’d received any—been no doubt worse than useless.
    Gilly was in the presence not only of a duke—a tall, quiet duke, with silent eyes and clothing that fit him far too loosely—but also a grieving father and husband. She nearly envied him that grief, which suggested her grasp of reason had become tenuous.
    “Evan did not linger, Your Grace. He was ill seven days and nights.”
    “You were with him?”
    Still the duke kept his back to her, and his voice was the same. Soft, aristocratic, no emotion whatsoever, as if somebody gravely ill slept elsewhere in the house.
    “I stayed for the duration, and for a few days afterward. Even Greendale understood my place was with my cousin at such a time.”
    “And this was hard on the sister?”
    The sister? Lucille, his daughter, but Evan’s sister.
    “Very. Helene did not cope well. Greendale would not let me linger at Severn indefinitely.”
    “Coping was not Helene’s greatest strength.”
    Diplomatically put, but what did the man find so fascinating beyond the darkened window?
    “With her mother’s passing, Lucy became even more withdrawn. Losing her mother and brother was difficult, and she hasn’t known what to make of your situation.”
    No small child could have made sense of a father imprisoned, far away, and unlikely to return.
    “I was hard put to make sense of my situation myself.” This observation bore the quality of an admission, not a joke. By no means a joke.
    Gilly let the silence stretch, not knowing what to say. She studied the lines of his evening attire that hung on him like so much damp, oversized laundry. Perhaps his situation still made no sense