Chapter 10
The garden table had been Mrs. Hale’s doing. There was a crisp white cloth, three chairs arranged toward the south view, a lunch that was both better and more elaborate than anything strictly required for three women eating brunch outdoors in October.
“These hothouse grapes have no business being so delectable at this time of year,” Anna remarked as she popped one in her mouth.
“You are most right,” Rachel said.
“Indeed,” Lady Oldbarrow said as Anna poured more tea.
Anna watched them go about their meal and could not help but smile.
It was such a welcome distraction from all that had befallen her.
The October sun was doing its best, which in Derbyshire meant a pale, determined light that was not quite warm but was not cold either.
The grounds stretched away from them in the quiet of summer, which felt comforting in its beauty.
She did not think about Birchall. Or rather, she did, but at a remove that had grown untroublesome, the way a bruise moved from sharp to dull. Eventually it would fade, just like the marks on her skin.
What she thought about instead was the letter she had written, which was put in the post four days ago to the attorney. For all she knew, it was currently sitting in a solicitor’s office in London, being read by someone who might be able to do something with it.
“The attorney wrote his Grace back,” she said, setting down the teapot. “His Grace told me yesterday, I wrote a statement. He said it was…” She paused. “He called it compelling. Which I gather is a good sign.”
Lady Oldbarrow’s eyes moved to her as she delicately popped a grape in her mouth. “And?”
“He believes the grounds are sufficient to file with my written testimony and his Grace’s corroboration. Coercion, no consummation, the manner of the ceremony itself…” She looked at the table. “There is still just the question of Maura.”
“Your maid?” Rachel asked.
“Yes. His Grace has arranged for someone to approach her in London. Discreetly, without any connection to me or to this house. A contact of his, apparently, who can make the inquiry and assess whether she is willing to provide a statement without…without Jonathan finding out she’s been approached.”
“She would be a strong witness,” Lady Oldbarrow said. “A lady’s maid present on the morning of the wedding. She would have laid out the dress, seen your state of mind, understood what was happening.”
“She was frightened, my Lady,” Anna said. “I could see it when she woke me. She knew it was wrong and she had no power to do anything about it.” She pressed her lips together. “I don’t want her threatened or dismissed on my account. If she says she can’t speak, I will understand.”
“And if she can?” Rachel asked.
“Then we have everything the attorney needs to win.” Anna turned her teacup in its saucer. “After that ,though, it becomes public.”
The table was quiet for a moment.
“You are very calm about it,” Lady Oldbarrow observed.
“I’ve had time to decide,” Anna said. “The worst thing has already happened. Everything now is just…the shape of what comes after.”
Lady Oldbarrow held her gaze for a moment. Then she reached for another grape.
“Quite right,” she said. “These are quite good.”
Rachel reached across the table and pressed Anna’s hand briefly, and Anna let her, and then she straightened.
“Now, Lady Oldbarrow,” Anna started. “Please do tell me about the Thistledown christening. Rachel mentioned something terribly funny happened with the cake.” She had found, in the past weeks, that the best way to stop being the subject of a conversation was to replace yourself with a better one.
It worked. Rachel lit up immediately as Lady Oldbarrow began to speak.
There’s the little rascal.
Anna spotted him near the end of lunch. Percy was at the far edge of the south lawn, perhaps thirty yards away.
Not quite at the tree line, not quite in the open.
He was sitting as cats do when they are observing something.
In this case, “something” was quite clearly the table.
She took a piece of cold chicken and wrapped it in a napkin.
“Excuse me a moment,” she said quietly, and stood.
Rachel glanced at her. Anna tilted her head toward the far end of the lawn.
Rachel followed the direction, registered Percy, and looked back at Anna with a raised eyebrow, just like her brother did.
Anna walked toward the far lawn at the pace of someone going for a short turn, unhurried, not looking directly at her destination.
When she was close enough for it to matter, she stopped.
Percy had not moved. He was watching her carefully. Anna crouched down. She unwrapped the napkin and extended it, the piece of chicken sitting in the center. Percy looked at it. Looked at her.
“I know,” she said. “You don’t trust me. That’s all right.”
He looked at the chicken again, then up at her.
“You don’t have to come any closer,” she said. “But I’m going to leave this here, and if you’d like it, it’s yours.”
She lowered the napkin to the grass, set the chicken on the edge of it, and stood. Took two steps back. Then three more, and turned slightly, so that she was no longer looking directly at him.
She watched him from the side of her vision. Percy sat, stared at the chicken, stared at Anna’s shoulder. A bird went somewhere overhead, and Percy’s ears turned without the rest of him moving and then returned.
He stood.
He walked toward the napkin, sniffed for a moment, then ate the chicken. Anna did not say anything, did not move, and did not let herself smile until he had finished and sauntered away back to his spot.
Then Anna smiled. Triumphantly.
The carriage was brought round at half past three.
“Write to me,” Lady Oldbarrow said. “When it is resolved. I would like to know.”
“I will,” Anna said to her. “Thank you. For all of it. For not—”
“Oh, don’t thank me.” Lady Oldbarrow dismissed this with a small wave. “I have known far too many women told to be grateful for basic decency. You don’t owe me anything.” She paused. “Except the letter. That, I will collect on.”
Frederick watched Anna smile at her. “You’ll have it.”
Lady Oldbarrow held her gaze for a moment, then looked up the stairs to see him at the top, listening. “I’ll say goodbye to Frederick.”
He retreated to his study quickly and left the door open for when she reached it. He was standing by the window, which was also his way. He thought better on his feet.
“You’re going,” he said.
“I am, just as I promised.” She came in and sat without being asked. “The house will survive without me.”
“It was surviving before you arrived.”
“Surviving is not the same as thriving, Frederick, though I know you sometimes struggle to tell the difference.” She folded her hands in her lap and looked at him pleasantly. “How are you doing?”
“Fine.” He turned from the window. “My attorney is moving forward. It should be resolved within the month, as planned. After that…” He paused. “We’ll make proper arrangements for Anna’s situation.”
“Anna,” Lady Oldbarrow said, in the tone of someone noting a word choice.
“Miss Cartwell.”
“Yes, you said Anna.”
“She is Rachel’s friend. The name is not—”
“I noticed you watching her last night,” Lady Oldbarrow said. She said it comfortably, as if noting the weather. “At dinner. When she laughed.”
The pause was brief. “I was not—”
“You went very still,” Lady Oldbarrow said. “It is the way you go still when something has surprised you. Which is not often, might I say.” She tilted her head. “You hid it well. You always do. But I have known you a very long time.”
“She is under my roof,” Frederick said. His voice had settled into the flat, certain register that meant the door was closing.
“She is here for a month while her situation is resolved. She is—” He stopped.
“She is Rachel’s friend, and she is in a difficult circumstance, and she will leave when it is safe for her to do so. That is the entirety of it.”
Lady Oldbarrow looked at him for a long moment.
“All right,” she said.
“I mean it, Godmother.”
“I know you mean it.” She rose, smoothed her skirts, and crossed to him.
She put her hand briefly against his jaw the way she had done when he was seventeen, and she had been the only person in the house who had understood that he was holding up a heaviness that few boys his age did.
“I know you mean everything you say. You always have.” She patted his cheek once, lightly. “Walk me out.”
And so, he walked her out himself, waving off the footman as he always did when Lady Oldbarrow departed. He handed her up gently into the carriage with his hand under hers.
Her fingers were cool through the thin kid of her glove, and she held onto him a beat. Then she drew her hand back into her lap, folded it over the other as though tucking the moment away, and settled against the velvet cushions. “Until next time, Godmother,” he said.
“Farewell, Frederick. Be good.”
“I always am,” he replied, a small smile forming at the corners of his mouth.
“Hrmm.”
“What?” He asked as he crossed his arms over his chest.
“Perhaps don’t be too good then.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said and closed the door.
Then, he stood at the top of the front steps and watched the carriage go down the drive until it turned through the park gate and was gone.
He did not go back to the papers.
He stood at the window in his study and took in the park view, the oak, the long slope of the east lawn.
No, he did not go back to the papers because the papers required him to think about drainage contracts and tenancy renewals and a letter from Barnes that he had already read twice, and his mind was doing something else.
No matter how hard he told it to think about papers.
You went very still.
He had. He was aware of that. He had been in the middle of a completely ordinary dinner, and Anna Cartwell had laughed. She had been surprised into it, he could tell, by his godmother’s observation about Percy, and the laugh was…
Beautiful, genuine, real.
It was not a social laugh. It had not been managed or modulated or produced for the benefit of the room, like most women had been groomed to do. It was the real thing, unguarded, and it had lasted only a moment.
He pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose and pinched hard. He needed a stiff drink.
She has been under this roof for a month; the curve of her soft lips pulls at me as much as her sharp wit, like a moth to a flame. Yet, she is legally bound to another man. At least for now. Even so…
She was frightened in ways she was too composed to show entirely, and she was writing statements for his solicitor and hoping her lady’s maid was brave enough to speak. He closed his eyes, and all he could see was soft honey-blonde locks of hair, bright hazel eyes beneath full eyelashes…
She is not…
She was nothing he was going to think about in the way he was currently thinking about her.
At least not in the future. He was certain of that, or hoped he was.
He had removed himself from enough situations in his life to know he was capable of it, and this was considerably less complicated than most of those situations because the reasoning was entirely clear.
He picked up Barnes’s letter, and put it down, and picked it up again. Then, he strode to his decanter and poured himself a tumbler of scotch to still himself.
From somewhere below him, carried through the old bones of the house, he could faintly hear Rachel and Anna in the entrance hall. It was some exchange, Rachel’s voice and then Anna’s, and then both of them, some ordinary conversation about some ordinary thing.
He put the glass down on his desk.
He paced to his window and stood there for what may have been minutes or hours. He looked at the oak tree, which had been there for three hundred years.
He was grateful it had no opinions about any of this. At this point, the tree was the most restful company he’d found in months.