Dinner had progressed well into its second course when René became aware that Ms. Wick had been telling Miss Doyle a story.

“And my father left me twelve thousand sheep and three men were convinced I could not count them. I still have the sheep.”

Ms. Wick paused. Miss Doyle nodded, apparently uncertain whether the story had ended.

“I do not still have the men.”

“Ms. Wick!” her mother interrupted. “Do not put such notions into my daughter’s head. She has been courted by Miss King lately, and I would say it is rather promising.”

“Oh, dear. I have ruffled your feathers indeed.” Ms. Wick chuckled. “I have never objected to husbands or wives in principle,” she continued to Miss Doyle, interrupting her mother again. “I merely never encountered someone who improved upon the arrangement I already possessed. So you shall not do that either, my child.” She winked at her.

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Doyle protested immediately. “She shall marry. Everyone married can tell you, Ms. Wick, that marriage is fulfilling and pleasurable.”

“Would you agree, Mr. Meren?” Ms. Wick looked somewhere in Leon’s direction.

“Oh…” Leon smiled shyly. “I do have to agree—”

“Not you.” Ms. Wick dismissed Leon with a flick of her wrist. “Mr. Meren to your side.”

René had not expected to be consulted.

Several faces turned toward him, though with considerably more discretion than they had shown upon his arrival.

“I should think marriage depends rather greatly upon whom one happens to marry,” he said.

“There!” Ms. Wick exclaimed. “A sensible answer.”

“But you have been married twice, Mr. Meren,” Mrs. Doyle said. “Surely you must have formed a stronger opinion than the rest of us.”

René smiled politely. “I am afraid experience does not always produce wisdom.”

Leon glanced at him, though René kept his attention upon Mrs. Doyle.

“Still,” she continued, “you must find married life agreeable now.”

“I find the Langrer home very agreeable.”

Ms. Wick laughed. “You see? The house has received a better recommendation than the husband.”

A few of the others laughed with her. René did as well, though he glanced towards Leon to see how he had received the remark.

His husband was laughing, his eyes already upon René. He shook his head slightly, but the warmth of his smile made René suspect that he had pleased him rather more than a proper compliment would have done.

René lowered his eyes to his plate, still smiling.

Mrs. Doyle appeared prepared to say something more, but her daughter spoke first.

“There were such dreadful things being said at the time,” the young Miss Doyle said. “I always thought it monstrous that anyone should have suspected you. And the gossip about the extramarital relations was the ugliest insult of them all.” She turned to René with an honest, apologetic smile.

For a moment, René did not answer. Around the table, several heads nodded in quiet agreement. One gentleman murmured something beneath his breath.

René had prepared himself for quite the opposite. Apparently, whatever doubts society had once entertained had been sufficiently put to rest.

“And indeed, society produced a great deal of nonsense at the time. I apologize for speaking so plainly,” her mother added. “It was obvious from the start that the servant boy acted on his vile tendencies…”

René’s fingers had begun worrying at the edge of his plate. He stopped himself and drew his hand back, his eyes settling instead upon his wrist and the length of his arm beneath his sleeve.

There was nothing there now. There had often been something there then.

꧁༺ 𓆩✧𓆪 ─── ⚜ ─── 𓆩✧𓆪 ༻꧂

The servants had become rather skilled at concealing the bruises Mr. Corré left behind. They buttoned his sleeves, straightened his collars and tended to whatever could not be covered, seldom allowing their eyes to linger long enough for either René or themselves to suffer the embarrassment of acknowledgement.

Dante had looked.

He had entered Mr. Corré’s service not long after René lost the child. The miscarriage had changed his husband considerably, or perhaps merely deprived him of what little patience he had once possessed. René was allowed out less often after that. There were dinners he no longer attended, letters of invitations he was discouraged from returning, and eventually whole weeks in which the greater part of his world consisted of the same few rooms.

It was there that he first began to notice Dante. He was younger than Mr. Corré, and had been taken on to assist wherever the household required him. René saw him carrying coal, tending the fires and occasionally helping the other servants with work that had nothing to do with him. At first, there had been nothing remarkable in it.

Then René caught him looking. Dante lowered his eyes immediately. René had thought about that look considerably longer than was appropriate for a married man.

Afterward, Dante’s arrival in a room became difficult not to notice. René learned the sound of his steps in the corridor and found himself looking toward the door before it opened. Dante remained exceedingly proper whenever others were present. He addressed René correctly, kept the expected distance and rarely allowed his eyes to remain upon him for more than a moment.

Those moments became rather frequent. René was not entirely innocent in encouraging them.

Once, knowing Dante would come to tend the fire, René did not call for his servant before he arrived. His hair remained loose, his collar open and the sleeves of his shirt unfastened at the wrists.

Dante entered carrying wood and stopped. Only for a moment.

“Good morning,” René said.

“Mr. Corré.”

Dante went immediately to the fire. René watched him kneel before it.

“Is something wrong?” René asked, lifting one leg to rest his book against it.

Dante looked his way to answer, but his lips parted before he could speak. René wore only his shirt, and with the movement, the blanket had slipped from his bare thigh.

“N—no, sir.”

René lowered his eyes to his book again, though the corner of his mouth threatened to betray him. 

It became something of a private cruelty after that. René would catch Dante’s eyes and refuse to be the first to look away. Dante, for all his better judgement, eventually learned to do the same.

There was pleasure in it. A ridiculous amount for something so small. Nothing happened for some time. Not until Mr. Corré left on business. 

On the second evening of his absence, René sent for Dante.

He had prepared an excuse concerning the fire, though by the time Dante stood inside his room with the door closed behind him, René could no longer remember precisely what he had intended to say about it.

Dante did not approach him.

“You called for me, sir?”

René looked at him for a long moment. “Yes…”

It was almost unbearable, that final little distance between being desired and knowing what one intended to do about it. René crossed that line first.

Afterward, René would remember the encounter less for its impropriety than for how quickly Dante had drawn responses from him that René had begun to suspect belonged more to imagination than reality. Dante watched him. Every breath seemed to interest him, every movement encouraged another, until René scarcely knew which of them had become more shameless. 

It should have ended there. Instead, Dante stayed.

They spoke quietly until the hour made his continued absence downstairs dangerous. René learned more about him that night than he had during all the months of glances between them, and when Dante finally stood to leave, René found himself considerably more disappointed by the loss of his conversation than he thought sensible.

He called for him again.

Soon they became remarkably inventive in finding reasons to be alone. Sometimes desire consumed whatever little time they had managed to steal. At other times Dante merely sat with him. They talked in whispers, laughed where nobody could hear them and learned the small, useless things about one another that no affair required them to know.

Dante had looked at his bruises too. When they were alone, he never pretended not to see them. He did not make a ceremony of his concern, nor handle René as though he might break. He simply remembered where Mr. Corré had hurt him.

Even when tenderness gave way to urgency, Dante remembered. Once, his hand had closed firmly around René’s arm in a moment of pleasure. René noticed only afterward that Dante’s fingers had fallen above and below the darkened skin.

By then, whatever they had begun had become rather more troublesome than an affair.

One afternoon, Dante produced a white handkerchief and some thread he had acquired from somewhere in the house.

“What are you doing?”

Dante turned away from him. René leaned closer and saw the crooked beginning of a letter worked near the hem.

“That is dreadful.”

Dante looked offended. “Then you do it.”

When they were finished, a D sat on the left and an R on the right, both worked in white so that anyone who happened upon the handkerchief might overlook them entirely. 

One letter was rather neater than the other.

꧁༺ 𓆩✧𓆪 ─── ⚜ ─── 𓆩✧𓆪 ༻꧂

Ms. Wick sighed as the conversation stretched on around the dinner table.

“Yes, yes, his husband died. Husbands frequently do.”

“Ms. Wick!” someone at the table gasped. “He was… murdered.”

“I am aware.”

Mrs. Doyle lowered her fork. “You must not have known Mr. Corré particularly well. He was the gentlest man, and remarkably accomplished. I was most shocked by what happened.”

Ms. Wick looked up from her potatoes.

“My dear Mrs. Doyle, I knew Corré well enough to know that he was considerably less charming after he drank.”

A brief silence fell over the table. 

“He did exceedingly well for himself, though,” Mr. Doyle offered. “One cannot deny that. I heard his affairs were in excellent order even in the last years of his life.”

“And he was handsome, if I may say so…” Miss Doyle added, her face turning ruby.

“Yes,” Ms. Wick mumbled, “that was generally his strongest argument.”

Beside him, Leon’s fingers tightened around his silverware. He had begun worrying at the skin of his lower lip. His scent had changed as well. The familiar calm, cooling scent grew sharper, carrying something bitter beneath it that gathered heavily between them.

René glanced at him. For a while, Leon occupied himself with swirling the wine in his glass before setting it down, his hand closing into a fist.

“I shall say,” Leon broke into the conversation, his voice rather tense, “that his new husband is not too disagreeable either.”

The conversation faltered. A few murmurs could still be heard from the farther end of the table.

“I hope he would not be too jealous if he heard us,” Ms. Wick said, amused as she looked at Leon.

“I know he would be. And very, at that.”

René looked at him again. Of everything said about Mr. Corré, Leon appeared to have taken the praise most personally. René had not known until then that his husband cared how another man was remembered in comparison to him. 

Ms. Wick chuckled, but Leon did not. Whatever amusement had accompanied the conversation appeared to have escaped him entirely.

“So, Mrs. Doyle,” Leon said softly, “let us not taint our evening with outdated gossip.”

He looked at René with warm eyes, though his tone had grown remarkably cold.

“Yes, yes. You are right,” Mrs. Doyle agreed.

René let out a shaky breath as the murmurs dissolved into the clinking of porcelain and silverware. His eyes found Leon’s immediately.

Leon said nothing. Beneath the table, his knee rested briefly against René’s. He was still looking at René. Leon gave him the smallest smile.

Ms. Wick immediately attacked her food with renewed enthusiasm.

“Come on,” she insisted. “I want to play whist and hear Leon play the pianoforte. You are all too slow.” She smiled around her fork before taking another bite.