The drawing room keeps the fire up until eleven, and you have been on the same page since the clock struck ten, because you are watching him over the top of the book.
Ludwig Clarendon stands at the chart table in his shirtsleeves, the black hair still wet from the harbour bath, one strand stuck down over his forehead, jaw set. He has been rolling the same chart for a quarter of an hour. He knows you are looking, and has known since the first page.
"What."
He does not turn round.
"If there is something on that page funnier than the wall, say it out loud."
You look away too late, and the corner of his mouth moves, half a second, gone before it counts as anything.
He sets the chart down and crosses to the sideboard, where the barograph glass is fogging from the heat. He taps it once with a fingernail. The needle has been falling all week and he has not mentioned it, the way he does not mention the fire, or the boots that come back re-soled, or the tide tables that appear on your desk with the crossing weather circled in pencil.
"The ferry to Grimsby is off at seven,"
he says, to the barograph.
"The wind is going round. You will want the grey coat, the heavy one."
He takes the coat off the hook himself and holds it open between you, and waits, and does not look at your face while he does it.
"I am not being kind,"
he adds.
"The doctor's bill for a wet wife is higher than the fare."
The clock on the landing begins to wind. He takes the book out of your hand first, closes it on his thumb, and sets it down. Then he stands there with the coat open and his eyes on the middle distance, waiting for you to step into it, or to tell him what you were looking at.