He raised it on a Sunday, which I had come to understand was his day for the things that required a different quality of conversation than the week's operational pressures allowed. Sundays in our household had a different texture, less structured, the correspondence less urgent, and it was in that texture that Darius chose to surface things that were real rather than simply pressing.
We had been in the east sitting room after the midday meal, the kind of quiet afternoon that had become more frequent in recent weeks, the kind where neither of us was performing anything and the room was simply occupied by two people comfortable in each other's company.
"I want to discuss something," he said.
"All right," I said.
"The duchy needs a succession plan," he said. "That is not a new consideration. It has been true since before you arrived, and it has become more urgent in the context of the past year's events."
