Her question shocked him enough that he let go of her wrist. What had he been doing with himself? Going slowly mad — what else could he possibly have been doing, without her? He'd never before been forced to actually examine the depth of his feeling for his wife, because her presence by his side had always been a foregone conclusion. There had never been an alternative to her, since the day he'd decided to propose. Then, suddenly, there was an alternative, and he was forced to live it. He'd felt the lack of her so keenly that he didn't think he could have described it, even if he'd been inclined to try.

She knew that. She had to. Thomasina knew him better than anyone else. She understood the things he never said aloud. Why ask this question, then? Why try to force an admission of what she must have already suspected? Did she only want to humiliate him? Under normal circumstances he might have appreciated the impulse and responded with a riposte of his own, because this was one of the games they played with each other. Right now, when he was still trying to emotionally readjust to her presence, it felt unfair.

He couldn't stand to look at her smiling, so he leaned against the wall of the lift and shifted his eyes to the door. "They said you were a cat," he said, not because he wanted to talk about it but because he needed to say something to make it clear he had no intention of answering her question. His tone was distant and a little hollow. Defenses up, for the moment. A ride in the lift, a walk across the Atrium, half a house to go until they had privacy, and if Sina was going to throw questions like that at him he'd need to keep his distance to survive it.

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