The drawing room at Blackwood Manor had grown colder since Edward entered it, though the fire still blazed in the hearth.
"You've returned early from London," Margaret said, not looking up from her embroidery. "I suppose the scandal sheets bored you, or perhaps you've finally exhausted the patience of every hostess in Mayfair."
Edward paused in removing his gloves, one finger at a time with deliberate slowness. "What a tender greeting from my beloved wife. I'm quite overcome." He tossed the gloves onto a side table, where they landed with a soft thud that somehow conveyed contempt. "Though I shouldn't be surprised. Warmth has never been among your many sterling qualities."
"Warmth." Margaret drove her needle through the fabric with more force than necessary. "How peculiar that you would seek such a thing from me when you've spent the better part of our marriage seeking it elsewhere. Lady Ashford sends her regards, I assume?"
A muscle twitched in Edward's jaw. "Lady Ashford is a friend and a woman of actual breeding, which you might understand if your father hadn't purchased your way into this family with his railway fortune." He moved to the decanter and poured himself a generous measure of brandy. "Some things cannot be bought, my dear. Refinement among them."
"And yet here you are." Margaret finally looked at him, her expression perfectly placid save for the glint in her eyes. "Living quite comfortably on my father's railway fortune. Blackwood Manor was three months from the creditors when you proposed, or have you convinced yourself that was a love match?"
Edward's hand tightened around his glass. "I have never pretended affection where none exists. That, at least, is honest."
"How very noble." She returned to her embroidery. "Though honesty seems a convenient virtue to claim when you stumbled home at dawn last Tuesday reeking of cheap perfume. At least have the decency to patronize a better class of establishment. The servants talk, and I won't have my name dragged through the mud by your inability to maintain even the appearance of discretion."
"Your name," Edward said, each word clipped, "was dragged through the mud the moment you were born to a man who made his fortune in iron and steam rather than inheriting it properly. I've given you respectability. That was the arrangement."
"Respectability." Margaret laughed, a sound like breaking glass. "Is that what we're calling your crumbling ancestral pile and your impressive collection of debts? How fortunate I am."
Edward drained his brandy and poured another. "You knew what this was. Don't pretend to be wounded now. Your father wanted a title for his precious daughter, and I needed—"
"Money. Yes, I'm aware. You've reminded me at every opportunity for the past three years." She set down her embroidery with exaggerated care. "What I wasn't aware of was that I would be shackled to a man who considers basic civility beneath him."
"Civility," Edward repeated. "Rich, coming from a woman who once told the Duchess of Pembroke that her hat looked as though a pigeon had expired upon it."
"The Duchess appreciated my honesty. She told me so the following week."
"She cut you at the opera two months later."
Margaret waved a dismissive hand. "She cuts everyone. It's her primary form of entertainment."
They fell into silence, the only sound the crackling of the fire and the tick of the mantel clock. Outside, rain began to patter against the windows.
"I'm hosting a dinner party next week," Margaret said finally. "The Harrington-Whites and Lord Pembrook. You will attend, you will be cordial, and you will not embarrass me."
Edward gave a low, humorless chuckle. "Commands already? How domestic. Tell me, does the railway fortune come with a manual on how to manage one's husband, or are you improvising?"
"If I wanted to manage you, Edward, I would have you on a considerably shorter leash." She picked up her embroidery again. "I simply expect you to perform your role as my husband with the same enthusiasm you bring to performing it for half the widows in London."
"At least they're pleasant company."
"At least I'm not bleeding your estate dry. Oh, wait." She smiled without warmth. "That's rather the opposite of our arrangement, isn't it?"
Edward set down his glass with enough force that Margaret wondered if it might shatter. "You are," he said, his voice dangerously quiet, "the most insufferable woman I have ever had the misfortune to know."
"How perfectly marvelous," Margaret replied, her needle flashing in the firelight. "That makes us even."
The clock struck six, its chimes filling the space between them like a death knell.
"I'll be in my study," Edward said.
"I'll be anywhere you aren't."
He paused at the door. "The dinner party. I'll attend."
"How gracious of you."
"Don't mistake duty for grace, Margaret. I stopped feeling anything resembling grace for you approximately six months into this wretched union."
"Six months?" She looked up with mock surprise. "I managed it in six weeks. Though I suppose I've always been the quicker study."
Edward left without another word, the door closing behind him with a controlled click that was somehow worse than if he'd slammed it.
Margaret sat alone in the drawing room, her embroidery forgotten in her lap, staring into the fire. Outside, the rain grew heavier, and inside Blackwood Manor, the cold deepened.