Chapter 18
By late morning, Edward was beginning to suspect his mother had hired Fate as a footman and set him to bring difficulties in regular intervals on a tray.
He had barely finished signing a letter to the land agent, a simple matter of boundary hedges and a tenant’s miscounted sheep, when his mother swept into his study like a storm in well-cut black silk.
“Cook is threatening to leave,” she announced without preamble. “You must speak to her.”
Edward set down his pen. “On what grounds?”
“On the grounds that the new footman has insulted her pies,” the Dowager said, as if discussing a diplomatic crisis. “If she goes, half the village will take it as a sign that Wexford Hall is failing. You must calm her.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Very well. After luncheon.”
“Before,” she said. “She is already stuffing things into trunks.”
He bit back a groan, rose, and spent a quarter of an hour persuading Mrs. Pike that an ill-chosen comment from a seventeen-year-old was not worth the inconvenience of moving an entire kitchen.
When he returned to his study, his inkwell had dried.
By the time he refilled it and bent once more over the column of figures awaiting his decision, the door creaked again.
“The vicar’s wife,” his mother said from the threshold, “has written to say she is offended that the new hymnals have been purchased without her consultation. She implies you have insulted the parish.”
“I left the choice to the vicar,” Edward said. “If she wishes to be consulted on theology, let her go to Oxford and sit the examinations.”
Stand fast Lieutenant Ravenscroft. This is but a squall. You can weather it.
His mother’s lips thinned. “You cannot speak to Mrs. Pritchard like that.”
“I do not propose to,” he said. “I propose not to speak to her at all.”
“You must write,” the Dowager insisted. “Something tactful. She has influence among the tenants’ wives.”
“Give me the letter,” he said tightly. “I shall compose a paragraph to soothe her and preserve the vicar’s dignity.”
The paragraph took ten minutes, because every civil phrase had to be weighted against the likelihood of encouraging further interference.
No sooner had he sealed it than his mother returned with yet another problem: a dispute between two tenants over a fallen tree, a request from the charity school for slates, a note from the steward about repairs to the west wall of the dovecote.
By noon, Edward felt less like a duke and more like a clerk in some particularly vindictive office. He stood at last, joints protesting, and crossed to the window in search of air.
The view looked out over the stable yard. Cobbles, troughs, the half-door of the stable block thrown open to the mild day. A figure in a plain dark habit moved in the space between stalls, skirts kilted a fraction to avoid the straw, hair pinned up neatly under a small bonnet. Isla.
He had sent word to her that he was returning to Wexford and did she wish a carriage sent to collect her from Portman Square. The messenger had not found her. She had already left.
I have not be able to speak to her since I got back. Is that what my mother’s unending list of petty tasks was about? To stop me spending time with my wife?
Isla stood with Harold Godwin near the paddock gate, one hand on a gelding’s bridle, the other gesturing to something in the distance. Godwin was nodding, listening as intently as if she were a general explaining a new maneuver. The horse had its head bent toward her shoulder as if eavesdropping.
Even at this distance Edward could see the ease in her posture.
The haunted strain she had worn in London, reading and rereading the notice of Strathmore’s ruin as though the ink might change if stared at hard enough, was less visible now.
Here, in his stable yard, among horses and straw, she looked almost herself.
The sight twisted something uncomfortably in his chest.
Almost herself. Wild and beautiful. Well, she is both of those things but there is still a tension there. I can see it in the set of her shoulders.
He wondered at the insight. How well did he know her? How well could he possibly know her? Logic said barely. His heart said that he knew her better than his head would ever agree. Edward refused to listen to his heart.
In the teeth of a storm or French privateer it is dangerous to listen too much to one’s heart.
She laughed at something Godwin said, that quick, bright sound that seemed to leave the air cleaner behind it. Then she led the horse away, toward the paddock. His mother appeared at his elbow, following his line of sight.
“There,” she said, with brittle satisfaction. “your wife, amusing herself while her brother wallows in brandy and her ancestral home lies in ruins.”
Edward did not answer. He kept his gaze on Isla until she vanished from view behind the stable block.
“That was unkind, Mother,” he said at last.
“It was accurate,” she replied. “You are too ready to be moved by a pretty face and a soft voice. See that you are not moved into beggary.”
He turned from the window. “Do you have anything else that cannot possibly wait?”
“Dozens of things,” she said. “But I will pace them out. One cannot consume all the problems of a day at once.”
He managed not to recoil. “How considerate.”
She sniffed and left the study, trailing a faint scent of lavender and disapproval.
He tried to return to the accounts. The columns refused to sit still.
His mind kept straying to the stable yard, to the way Isla’s hand moved over a horse’s neck, the way Godwin had stood with arms folded, listening, not arguing.
By late afternoon, when Giles appeared at his door with a ledger from the stables, Edward had lost all patience with figures.
“Godwin sends his respect, Your Grace,” Giles said. “He asks if you might sign for the purchase of a new stallion from Mr. Harcourt. The bay we saw at the Newbury sale.”
Edward took the ledger and scanned the neat entries. His own handwriting stared back at him from the page where he had already made brief notes in the margin regarding Harcourt’s horse.
Good shoulders, strong hocks, promising for hunters.
Below his notes, in a different hand, someone had added observations.
Precise. Knowledgeable.
The someone, he suspected, had a Scottish accent.
“Has Godwin been in the office all afternoon?” he asked.
“On and off, sir,” Giles said. “Her Grace was with him for the better part of an hour, going over the broodmares.”
“Broodmares,” Edward repeated.
“Yes, Your Grace. Her Grace seemed very interested in them.”
Giles withdrew tactfully. Edward stared down at the page.
Broodmares. Godwin. Isla.
He found himself rising, ledger in hand, and heading for the stables with his mother’s warnings and his own gnawing uncertainty all scraping together inside his skull.
***
The stable yard smelled of hay and leather, of horses and clean sweat and the faint sharpness of linseed oil. Stable boys moved briskly between stalls, currying coats, filling haynets.
The afternoon light slanted in through the high windows, turning dust motes to gold. Harold Godwin stood in the aisle, arms crossed, listening as Isla spoke. She was beside the door of one of the larger stalls, a small stack of papers in hand, her foot tapping unconsciously as she talked.
“… but if you put Flora to Harcourt’s bay,” she was saying, “you’ll pull out all the wrong faults. Her hindquarters lack strength, his legs are not as clean as they look at first glance. You’d be breeding yourself a stable full of handsome cripples.”
Godwin grunted. “I thought as much.”
“So you need something to correct her faults, not mirror them,” Isla went on. “Whereas Millicent, she’s all length and no power. She’d do better with a deeper-chested stallion. If you insist on bringing in new blood, make sure it’s to improve, not simply to look impressive at the Boxing Day meet.”
Godwin’s mouth twitched under his whiskers. “You’ve more sense than half the men who’ve come through here selling me nags as if they were Arab princes.”
“I have more sense than half the men in London,” she said cheerfully. “But don’t tell them. They would perish of the shock.”
Godwin chuckled. Edward felt something tighten and then loosen inside him. She knew what she was talking about. There was nothing simpering or idle in her manner. This was a woman in earnest conference about stock, not an idle lady meddling for amusement. He stepped forward.
Both Isla and Godwin broke off. Godwin’s easy posture stiffened into respect. Isla straightened, the papers in her hand rustling faintly. There was a reserve in her eyes, a wall.
“Your Grace,” Godwin said. “We were just…”
“Wasting the stable master’s time,” Edward finished, more sharply than he had intended. “Discussing broodmares.”
Isla’s eyes cooled at once. “I was doing nothing of the sort. Merely killing time until I was allowed a window in my husband’s diary.”
“You have not asked for a window.”
“The Dowager Duchess is a high wall to scale.”
“So, you have taken up nearly an hour of my stable master’s afternoon.”
Godwin shifted uncomfortably. “Her Grace was advised to conf …”
“I am speaking to the Duchess,” Edward said, without taking his eyes from Isla. “Godwin, you may leave us.”
The stable master hesitated, plainly reluctant to be dismissed, then tugged his forelock and retreated down the aisle, muttering something about checking the latch on the far stall. Silence dropped between them, filled with the quiet sounds of the horses and the distant clatter of a dropped bucket.
Isla lifted her chin. “If you have a grievance, Your Grace,” she said, “you may as well state it plainly.”