Then he realized, with a jolt of disbelief, that the woman was his wife. What was Philippa doing out here, in the mud and the wind, talking to a farmer? She should be in the drawing room, engaged in the pointless, delicate art of needlepoint, or some other suitably feminine occupation. He watched, an unfamiliar curiosity stirring within him.
He was close enough to see the earnest set of her shoulders, the way she nodded as Miller spoke, her attention absolute. She was not playing a role. This was not a performance. After a few more minutes, the farmer's wife, a stout woman named Meg, came out from the cottage.
She wiped her hands on her apron and said something to Philippa, who smiled. It was a small, genuine smile, not the practiced, distant curve of the lips he was used to seeing at his dinner table. Meg Miller then bustled back inside, returning a moment later with something wrapped in a cloth. A peace offering, or a token of gratitude, a warm loaf, perhaps, or a baked apple.
Philippa reached out to take it, and it was then that Alaric saw it. As her hands emerged from the folds of her cloak, he saw that they were trembling. It was not a delicate, ladylike shiver. It was a visible, deep-seated tremor, the kind born of profound fatigue and biting cold.
Her hands were red, chapped from the wind. He remembered the utter stillness of those same hands as she served tea to Adela Montague, the perfect, unshakable composure. The contrast was startling. In the drawing room, under the weight of acute humiliation, she had been perfectly steady.
Here, in a muddy field, engaged in some task he could not comprehend, her body revealed the effort it had cost her. It was not the tremor of a fragile doll. It was the shaking of a laborer at the end of a long day. For the first time since he had married her, Alaric saw his wife not as a symbol, not as a convenience, but as a person.
He understood, with a sudden, disquieting clarity, that he did not know her at all. The image of his wife's trembling hands stayed with Alaric long after he had returned to the warmth and comfort of the house. It was a small, insignificant detail, yet it had lodged in his mind, troubling the smooth surface of his indifference. He had always seen Philippa as a creature of the drawing room, a pale, quiet figure defined by her stillness.
The woman he had seen in the field, intent, engaged, and visibly weary, was someone else entirely. The tremor in her hands was not weakness. It was evidence. Evidence of effort, of time spent in the cold, of a physical and mental exertion he could not account for.
A few days later, his curiosity gnawing at him, he sought out Mr. Fletcher. He found the steward in his office, looking decidedly less harried than he had in months. The chaotic piles of paper had been replaced by neat stacks, and the air of frantic disorganization was gone. "Fletcher," Alaric began, affecting a casual tone he did not feel.
"I was riding by the Miller farm the other day. Things look to be in better repair." A slow smile of genuine satisfaction spread across the steward's face. "Indeed, Your Grace. The Duchess herself authorized the new roofing slates."