She curtsied. “Mr. Chambers,” she said. “I trust you had a pleasant journey?”

He inclined his head to her as he handed a footman his hat and greatcoat and gloves. She had never called him by his given name, though he had invited her to do so when he had called upon her to go through the farce of proposing marriage to her. He had deliberately called her by hers after their nuptials, though she had never invited him to do so. Her greeting chilled and irritated him. The married couples from his world did not address each another with such impersonal formality.

“Yes, thank you, Elizabeth,” he said. “You are well? You have recovered your health?”

“Yes, thank you,” she said.

“And my son?”

The tightening of her lips was almost imperceptible, but it suggested unexpressed annoyance. He wished he could recall his words and speak them again to refer to Jeremy as their son. But he was accustomed to boasting to his friends about his golden-haired boy-my son-whom he had last seen when the child was ten days old.

“He is well, thank you,” she said.

If, he thought ruefully, he had married a woman from his own world, she would perhaps have greeted him each evening of the past year on his return home from work with a smile and a kiss and warm, open arms and an eagerness to share her day with him and to hear about his. He would naturally have thought of their child as ours. He would have seen their son every day of the child’s life.

But he had only himself to blame that things were not so. His father had not forced him into this marriage. Indeed, he would have been horrified if he had realized that Edwin did not really want it.

“Would you like to go to your room to freshen up?” she asked, her eyes moving over him and making him intensely aware of the less than pristine state of the clothes in which he had been riding for the better part of the day. “I have guests in the drawing room.”