There was less to complain about now.
She did not tell him that the Duke had begun leaving her favorite tea waiting in the morning, or that he had started asking her opinion on estate matters he once would have dismissed as none of her concern.
She told herself it meant nothing. A husband being polite, nothing more.
But the staff of the house had begun to notice something neither Alister nor Cordelia had named yet. Whispered quietly in the kitchens, that the coldest house in the county had somehow, without anyone deciding it should, begun to grow warm.
A house party arrived with autumn, filled with lords and ladies eager for gossip, and gossip is exactly what they found.
Word had reached the guests that Cordelia's father's shipping business was losing money quickly, his ships delayed, his investors nervous.
By the time the rumor reached the dinner table, it had grown into something far crueler than the truth.
A guest, a woman with a sharp tongue and sharper smile, made a comment loud enough for the whole table to hear, suggesting that Cordelia had married for a title, because soon she would have nothing else to offer.
The table went quiet, the way rooms go quiet right before something breaks.
Alister stood up so fast his chair nearly fell backward.
He said something in Cordelia's defense, something too loud and too fierce for a man who claimed to merely tolerate his wife.
The words surprised the guests. They surprised Cordelia more. They surprised Alister most of all.
The dinner ended awkwardly, guests exchanging glances, whispers following them out the door.
Cordelia said nothing during dessert, nothing during the goodbyes.
Nothing until the last carriage had disappeared down the drive, and the house was finally quiet again.
She found Alister in the hallway outside his study.
"Why did you do that?" she asked, her voice careful, testing.
He gave a short answer, something dismissive about family honor and reputation, something that did not match the fire in his voice at dinner.
She studied his face for a long moment, unconvinced.
"You can stop pretending you only tolerate me," she said quietly. And before he could respond, she walked away, leaving him standing alone among his 17 broken clocks.
He did not sleep that night. He told himself it was the wine from dinner.
He told himself it was the stress of unpaid bills and nervous investors.
He told himself many things, staring up at the ceiling until the sky outside turned gray with morning.
The truth sat heavier than any of his excuses. He had defended her without thinking, without calculating what it would cost him socially, without doing any of the careful math he applied to every other decision in his life.
He had done it because the words about her had made something in his chest tighten painfully, and he had not been able to sit still while they were spoken.
He was not a man used to acting without thinking. It frightened him more than he wanted to admit.
Down the hall, Cordelia lay awake as well, staring at her own ceiling, replaying the moment he stood up so quickly his chair nearly fell.
She thought of the ink blot on the contract, the tea waiting each morning, the way he had stopped correcting her numbers weeks ago.
Something was shifting between them, something neither of them had agreed to.
And for the first time since her wedding day, Cordelia was not entirely sure she wanted to stop it.
The first snow fell early that year, covering the estate grounds in a thin white layer by the time Cordelia went looking for Alister one quiet afternoon.
She found him in a room she had never entered before, a nursery at the far end of the house, dusty and forgotten, filled with small furniture no child had used in many years.
He sat on the floor, an old wooden horse in his hands, turning it over slowly.
He did not hear her approach until she was already standing in the doorway.
She did not ask questions. She simply crossed the room in her good dress, sat down across from him on the dusty floorboards and waited.