The half smile, the hand gesture... everything in her answer is encouraging, and he drinks it in with a relief he hadn't been expecting at all. For all that he can't read her at times, Robert is convinced -- rightly or wrongly -- that she can see through him as though he's made of glass. It would bother him if it were anyone else in the world. Had driven him mad when it was his mother.
But the last thing he needed was to paint Adelaide with a brush shaped anything like Christine. His stoic little wife wasn't comprised of arsenic and icy disdain like his mother was. Adelaide's distance was more mild sort. He was willing to take the lion's share of responsibility for it, in fact. They didn't talk very much. Not at all. And who's fault was that? Who'd set the precedence, honestly?
"I was hoping to do exactly that," he admits, given that she left the door wide open for confession. Here he does take the bite. Chews. Swallows. Even follows it with a sip of wine before wetting his lips and considering his next data point.
"You know that I love you, Adelaide, and that I'd prefer to protect you from... outside concerns," he begins. "But lately that's become more difficult. There are things you should know. You gave me solid advice in Boston, and I... may have been amiss not consulting you since Thomas was born."
It hurts for him to admit that particular mistake, but it's true. He had been keeping more and more information from Adelaide since moving to Austin and becoming mired in the Mayor's political intrigue. After the baby was born, he stopped telling her things out of a desire to not burden her. Let her play the role of homemaker and mother. A simple woman who arranged the curtains and kept to her garden in exchange for pretty things.
But he hadn't married a simple woman. The woman he'd married was the one who had subtly but effectively propositioned the move to Austin in the first place. She'd listened to his proposals back in Boston and had offered opinions. He'd seen her skill at politics at dinner parties, effortlessly charming people that they both held in disdain but whose support he needed. He'd sensed an equal within her when she'd pushed back against his stubborn resistance to color in interior design. As much as Robert loved the enigma of Adelaide, and wanted to spare her from worry, he needed people around him whose intelligence he could respect. Now more than ever.
Which meant some of the game he played with his wife needed to stop. After this latest discovery, he was starting to think that intelligence in the Capitol was a very rare resource.