She didn't knock. She merely slipped in the half-open door, silent on kitten feet, feeling like a child, and a naughty one at that, hoping still to somehow escape a much-deserved rebuke. Her effrontery might displease him, she knew; complicated courtesy dictated that she knock, even to enter neutral territory, even to enter the presence of her husband…
But she knew that the sound of his voice would disarm her; the smooth confident syllables of even so slight a phrase as "Come in" would shatter all the flimsy walls she had been half the morning building. So she merely took a deep breath and entered, standing behind him with her fists hidden close in her skirts, and with a performance like none other accosted him in a tone of gay coquetry.
"Good day, Sir Percy."
He stirred in his chair, faintly, but made no sound. He sat in one of the library's great high-backed chairs, his back to her, invisible save for one slender hand that held a book half-open on his knee. The towering windows faced east, and the day was young; waterfalls of sunlight drenched him in radiance, outlining the rigid form so at odds with the recumbent splendor of that one visible satin arm, splashes of daylight flowing gracefully down to puddle on the polished floor. It all made her head hurt, and she was suddenly no longer glad of his silence, for she could not see his face. She had half to squint against the unrelenting brilliance that sheltered him and stripped her bare.
"'Tis a fine day."
Hot pride leaped to greet the warm sun on her face, and a sickening consciousness of weakness revealed gripped her as she heard her voice, so young and small in her own ears, with its plaintive implied request. The last few syllables straggled upward to clutch at his coatsleeves like beggar children. She would not grovel; 'twas a simple suggestion, nothing more.
"I thought..since the weather is si..so lovely.."
Her English was deserting her as it sometimes did, hired mercenaries fleeing at the first real danger. Stand up, Marguerite! He's not yawned or cut you off yet; you've still a chance.
"I thought you might take a walk, if you pleased…I, and you, that is…I've naught to do with the afternoon, and I thought…"
Silence, still. His attention seemed absorbed entirely in the sunbleached volume before him. Again she swallowed hard, forcing down the pride and the bile, threatening both to rise.
"I've seen so little of the grounds, and 'tis so rare you're home…I know you've...that is, there is the ball this evening...but perhaps.."
She thought, or fancied she thought, that there was a slight change in the angle of the half-hidden shoulder; she imagined a tilt to the invisible head that said "Go on; I'm listening." Caught by that hope and caught off guard by the silence, she spoke faster, truant words she had never intended to release tumbling like stones into the sun-puddles.
"I know you have things to do, of course, Percy, but I…just this once…I'm often left so..Only a walk. You can show me the grounds better than a servant, for you know…and merely.."
Still not a sound, still no faint noise of encouragement or assent, no comfortable little signs to show his attention was hers. Helplessly she felt the pride rising again, wreaking havoc on all her half-dreamed hopes and fine fantasies.
"You could spare me at least an hour, Percy…"
Nothing.
"You might at least grant me an hour, when you're home, when you never are. Of course I understand; all your vital, your indispensable hunting and gaming and riding and fishing….I am dispensable, I am avoidable, but a reeled Scottish fish gasping slowly in a boat, this you cannot afford to miss…"
Her words skittered harmlessly at his feet, not leaving even a ripple in the sunlight. The walls were falling, whether she would or not.
"I am not to be left forever alone, Sir Percy; unacknowledged, save as a dress on your arm at the proper functions…never looked at, even spoken to…the shyest, the youngest footman asks me more than you, knows me better than you. Perhaps that is what marriage, what you meant by marriage, but not I, Sir Percy, not I…"
Her rage boiled over, dribbles slipping into her words.
"There is none I might talk to, none who might visit me or whom I might…everyone is so….so far."
Faces of France flooded her consciousness, and the crushing reality of her state surged and nearly overpowered her, and the struggle to conquer it left her voice little more than a whisper when she spoke again.
"I am so very lonely, Percy…perhaps…a walk.."
She waited; waited longer than she should have, letting the seconds stack damningly together while she fancied again and again that now he had moved, now he had drawn breath, now he would speak, his doom and hers, in the light-draped room where she waited. Only when the silence threatened to form itself into something tangible that could destroy them forever did she move, and with firm, measured steps, she strode to his chair.
The book lay open where it had clearly fallen, a slack hand resting on it from no conscious choice. His head lay against the back of the chair, the other hand rested across his face, shielding his eyes. Even as she watched his lips parted and he snored, faintly.
A spasm of shame, of fury, and of an aching, barely-acknowledged hunger contorted her face as he looked at him; she was close enough to brush his sleeve with her fingertips, but she did not. She only sighed, a biting puff of air filled with contempt for him and for her, and then she fled.
She was gone, her footfalls soft on the carpet but then titupping loud in the hall. He heard her let the door swing shut, heard her faltering quickly up the polished stairs; he imagined he heard her reaching her room, crawling into bed as into the embrace of a lover, creating chaos from the newly-adjusted blankets.
She had scarcely gone when the hand on his book curled into a fist, so tight the pearly, razor-sharp knuckle ridges seemed almost to break the skin. When her foot found the first step he made a quick, convulsive gesture as if he would almost have gone after her, almost have called her back; he knocked his book and it sprawled to the floor, and a yellow, oft-inked map fluttered from beneath the pages and pulled his eyes back to the pitiless task of the hour.
He gathered up the tattered scrap of map gingerly, his fingers tracing again the routes but from habit, not from thought. . While his wife lay still above him, too tight-stretched even to weep at first, he took up again the work so precipitously interrupted; but salt drops blurred the paper, and the sunlight caught both his tears and hers and made them into iridescent jewels, pearls of great renown. But his fingers continued to trace the map and she lay alone in her room, and the sunlight could not string them together.