He said it on a Wednesday evening, three days after the Cassian communication had been sent and two days before the response arrived.
We had been working in the study in the late afternoon, the Maeris documentation spread between us in the careful sequence of a presentation being prepared for a room that had not yet been arranged but that we were building toward with the methodical patience that had characterized everything we had built in this household. The lamp was turned up. The fire was burning. The estate was quiet around us in its Wednesday evening way.
We had been working for two hours when Darius set down his pen.
I did not look up immediately. I was in the middle of a notation in the margin of the linguistic analysis and I finished it before I lifted my eyes, because some habits were too deeply formed to interrupt for anything that was not immediately urgent.
When I looked up, he was watching me.
