He had lain down and stared upward in the near-darkness at the familiar pattern of the canopy above his bed. He had stood at the window gazing out at moonlit darkness, his fingernails drumming on the windowsill. There had been a sheen of moonlight across the lake.He had felt restless. His brain had teemed with jumbled memories of the day—his father's gray complexion, Charles's transformation from an awkward boy to a tall, self-assured young man, Claudia's mature beauty, William's reticence, Augusta's formality, Marianne's affectionate treatment of himself, his wife seated behind the tea tray at teatime, his wife making conversation with Twynham and Will at dinner, his wife playing the pianoforte very precisely and skillfully, his wife with her arm linked through the duke's, smiling at him and forcing him into conversation.He had smiled himself at that last memory. His grace hated to be touched. He never smiled or was smiled at. No one ever initiated conversation with him. And of course no one ever called him Father.She was quite perfect.
