His countenance matched his behavior and his voice; he looked tired beyond the help of any amount of sleep, and Emilia saddened to see him so. She folded her arms slowly about his waist and laid her head on his shoulder lightly, by way of silent greeting. She kissed him at his jawline, between neck and chin, and then slipped past him to enter the room, pulling the door quietly closed behind her as she did so.
She was not sure if she should engage him in conversation, for he did not seem very much up to the task. Faith, just a moment before he had bid her leave him be… Emilia self-consciously avoided looking directly at him, lest he think her deliberately intrusive and take offense. She mentally floundered for a second or two, trying to find some unassuming function to undertake, before spying the hand mirror on the far table and deciding to stow it away within one of the drawers. She could not quite explain this compulsion, but she felt almost as though the hiding of it removed some bad omen left over from the previous night…
That done, she busied herself next with unpinning her hair. Just barely perching herself on the edge of the bed to do so, she looked as if she was encroaching upon a territory that was not her own, knowing that she was not entirely welcome. She focused her gaze upon the ground as she let the dark curls ripple down her back, and allowed her hair to curtain her face from him.
The silence between them was oppressive. She felt that something needed to be said, perhaps something that might ease the tension. She thought back over the day, trying to think of something she could comment on that bring some light into his visage, but there was not much, seeing as she had barely seen him all day. She did not dare speak about anything that had happened that morning; blessed as the events were, they did not seem appropriate to bring up now. They had only met one other time besides, just a little before noon and right before Emilia had been summoned by the general, but certainly that encounter was too strange to talk about.
She could thank him for the flowers. She couldn't recall if she had thanked him earlier. But that, too, seemed inappropriate, seeing as she had not kept them. Even before supper they had completely wilted, and the petals had fallen from the stems in abject deterioration. She had scattered the remains of those sorry blooms under a rosebush in the courtyard.
There was little to say, to be sure. So Emilia gathered her hair to one side and simply looked at her husband with full, sentimental eyes that, upon seeing his heartache, reflected some of it in their vibrance.