he watches her with a lawyer's study, for the cracks in the lines, as if her eyes were like pots of ink that might pen lies. she is all fire; not a hearth, for she sparks too much, ready to ignite gunpowder. she laughs, as if it were all so preposterous, as if he does not have the pages of history books and his own grief to prove him otherwise.
she lays out the terms as if she read them from the scroll herself, memorized to synapses. an existence summarized to a few paragraphs. machinations put in place to continue a legacy... to ensure mutual survival.
it is a life beyond his wildest dreams. to be king, and his son after him to be so as well, and to let his blood soak into the tapestry of this country forevermore, to be the river from which it runs. he has already kept a tally of reasons of why she might wish to be free of him. that word in of itself the linguistic noose. wife and husband are they on parchment only; what kind of marriage is this?
his mouth twists in slight displeasure at her mockery, clapping for an empty theater, though it is born more in light annoyance than hard sentiment. that he should relax any more than when he was minister, servant, seems unthinkable to him. complacent men become dead men. "don't you know me better than that, wife?" he mocks back, the lightest repartees. a moment, perhaps, which feels closer to a marriage than most. she knows that worry is at the core of him; crystallized in his veins.
he considers, for a moment, the treachery which has passed through his ears. is the offense so light that it is not worth mentioning, like the barest graze of a dagger? will even a pinprick open a wound and force feverish blood to flow out? would it arouse suspicion not to be told? he must weigh the scales and try to decide which one will not tip it over.
"when last i visited the lady mary," he begins, that title which plagues the former princess, though he imagines it is less than a word to her, as it was to her mother. stripped of title by law but not by honour, she carried herself as queen until heaven. mary remains under house arrest; what is there to do with her? it would be war to kill her, and war to set her free. she is well-treated within her gilded cage, and he goes to visit her sometimes, perhaps out of guilt. these are the way things must be. but a girl can dream, can't she?
"it has been..." what is the right word to use here? proposed does not seem like it. "speculated that there would be peace with spain, if i were to have a different wife." these are put in the lightest terms because such fanciful talk is all there was; a prisoner knows better. "someone recognized by spain." it amuses him, he supposes, that the spain would rather the heretic over the jezebel. but thomas has never intended to be an enemy of them, only made such by fate.
"it is a level of desperation that suggests to me they are exhausting all of their options before considering outright warfare." and that this one is even put into the air makes his bones feel as if they draw very close. he looks to her, with the thought that the greatest turmoil they have dealt with is that amongst each other. peace times bound by law. now, they may have to contend with an invasion, together.
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