On the drive back from the coaching inn, he asked about the archivist.
"The Royal Archive," he said. "You said you knew someone there."
"McMillan. A scholar. He was travelling through the south about ten years ago—I helped him with something, a question about a particular set of documents he was researching. We've corresponded occasionally since then."
"Corresponded," Samuel said.
"He's a careful man. He checks his references." She looked out the window. The countryside was blue-dark, the snow on the fields catching the last pale light. "What I need from him is an independent assessment—he's not being asked to make a claim, only to describe what the record shows about when that document entered the system."
"And he'll do that."
"If I ask him, yes." She paused. "I think so."
"You're not certain."
"I'm rarely entirely certain about people," she said. "I've found it's the most honest position."
He was looking at her with the sideways quality he used when he was thinking about something he wasn't sure whether to say. "Where did you work?" he said. "Before. You said management. You said you saw a great many kinds of people."
"I did." She chose her words carefully—she had gotten quite good at choosing words carefully. "I ran a large establishment. Hotels, broadly—though the specifics were different from what exists here. I was responsible for a considerable number of staff and a considerable amount of money, and I had to learn to read people quickly because the decisions I made affected them."
"That's why you manage Fischer the way you do," he said. "And Margaret. And Lucy."
She looked at him. "What way is that."
"Like they matter," he said, simply. "Not like they're to be managed."
She felt that land. "They do matter," she said.
"I know," he said. "I noticed, in the first week. Before I'd decided what to think about you."
The carriage hit a rut, tilted slightly; she felt herself shift on the seat and corrected automatically. He had, she thought, also shifted—she had felt the displacement of weight through the bench—and then she had corrected and he hadn't needed to do whatever he'd been about to do.
She was getting very good at noticing the things he was about to do and then didn't.
"McMillan," she said, returning to the original subject. "I'll write to him tonight."
"Tonight," he said. Something in his voice was slightly different—she couldn't have said precisely how. "Will you have time, after dinner?"
She realised, with a quality of quiet surprise, that he was asking whether she was eating with him.
"I'll have time," she said.
"Good," he said. And looked back out his window with the expression of a man attempting, not entirely successfully, to look as though he hadn't just said something.