“He has grown,” Edwin said.

“Of course. You have not seen him for almost three months.”

Was it an accusation?

“He has lost much of his hair,” he said.

“That is natural,” she told him. “It will grow back.”

“Do you still… nurse him?” He could remember his surprise when her mother and the doctor had been united in their protest against her decision not to hire a wet nurse. It was one issue on which she had held out against her mother’s will.

“Yes.”

She made no move to pick up the child, who admittedly seemed happy enough where he was. Edwin longed to do so himself, but he was afraid even to touch him.

“He looks healthy enough,” he said.

Why was it that with Elizabeth words never came naturally to him, and that the ones he chose to speak were stiff and banal? They had never had a conversation. They had been bedfellows for two weeks he would prefer to forget-she had been a cold, unresponsive, sacrificial lamb beneath him on the bed each night-but they had remained awkward, near-silent strangers.

“You will wish to go to your room,” she informed him. “Will you join us for tea later?”

“I believe I will forgo the pleasure of meeting our guests until dinnertime,” he told her.

She nodded. Even through the cold impassivity of her face he thought he could detect her relief. He gestured to the door so that she would precede him. He did not offer his arm.

It had been a mistake to come-and that was a colossal understatement. He should have stayed in London, where he had had numerous invitations to spend the holiday with friends whose company he found congenial and in whose presence he could relax and be himself. But he had remembered his father and imagined how sad he would be if he could see his son apart from his wife and child at Christmas, just one year after the wedding that had brought all the elderly man’s dreams to happy fulfillment.