Henry sighed in realization of how nice she was. She was too nice for the world he had forced her into. Visitors had been at a minimum, but eventually, there would be many, and other ladies -nobility and royalty alike... they would chew her up and spit her out. Not all of them, but many would. Especially the ones that were unhappy at his refusing the suggestion of him taking them to wife. Noble ladies could be a vicious lot. More than he was comfortable with. The only way to make that less terrible, was to hopefully make Opal feel less like she didn't belong. Even though, she didn't.
To an extent, he didn't want to either.
His free hand slid around her waist, to the small of her back and guided her the rest of the way in so he could shut the door behind them. “The secret is not something I am trying to keep from you,” he said. He shouldn't have to have secrets with a woman that was suited for him in a way other than title. With all the snobbish and rather self-centered ladies that he had refused in past years, he would have had to keep many secrets. And he would have hated his life. Why did his parents have so much trouble understanding that?
“I'm trying to keep it from my parents.” Henry gave her a small smile and a nod, then started down the line of stalls before ducking into a dark room and emerging with relatively low-key tack and heading for one of the bay horses, instead of the regal gray ones that would rather immediately give him away. “Obviously the servants indulge me, as you've seen from the bag Chef left me.. and the groom who is deliberately pretending he doesn't know we are in here, even though he clearly does. They always have. They don't know where I go, but then,” he paused a moment to do what he needed to do to tack the animal. “They don't have the lie to my parents if they really don't know the truth.”
Henry let it go quiet a bit. He was torn over the point of telling her that he was pretty much going out with the same intention she had been tonight anyway, and that it really was not any inconvenience in that regard, but... he struggled with it. How would that sound to her? He had one friend that knew of his interests. His tutor had known, but then he had been sacked... and things got complicated from there. He was leading the mare down the hall, toward the exit when he stopped and looked at his... wife. “You can come with me if you want to, but I won't force you. I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do.” He sighed, took the bag off his shoulder and tucked into the saddlebag.
“But, if you come with me,” he looked back up at her, “you will see something of mine that only one other living person knows about.” His hand held out toward her, “do you want to come with me?”