Chapter Seven
“The library catalogue,” Mrs Harding said, with the air of someone confessing to a minor impropriety, “has not been updated since the old duke’s time.”
Eleanor paused in her examination of the household ledgers and looked up.
They were seated in the housekeeper’s parlour—a small, efficient chamber near the kitchens that served as the administrative heart of Thornwood Park—and Mrs Harding had been conducting her through the estate’s operations with the careful precision of a woman who anticipated criticism.
“How long ago was that?” Eleanor asked.
“Fifteen years, Your Grace.”
Fifteen years. Fifteen years of books acquired, books lent, books mislaid, books damaged—unrecorded, uncatalogued, existing in a state of cheerful disorder that would have distressed any conscientious librarian.
“I see,” Eleanor said mildly.
She made no remark upon the obvious implications. She did not need to. Mrs Harding’s faint stiffening suggested she comprehended perfectly well that fifteen years of neglect could scarcely be described as a minor oversight.
“The previous duke was not… bookish,” the housekeeper offered. “And His Grace has had other concerns.”
Other concerns. A delicate manner of observing that a man consumed by war memories and chosen isolation had not devoted himself to the orderly arrangement of his library.
“Of course,” Eleanor said. “Perhaps I might undertake the catalogue as a project. I find such work… calming.”
Mrs Harding’s brows lifted slightly. “Calming, Your Grace?”
“There is satisfaction in restoring order where disorder has been permitted to linger. In rendering sense from what has drifted.” Eleanor returned her attention to the ledgers, though the figures no longer held her focus. “It is a small matter, I know. But small matters possess value.”
There was a pause. Then, unexpectedly:
“My mother used to say something similar.”
Eleanor looked up. It was the first personal detail Mrs Harding had volunteered since her arrival.
“She was a housekeeper as well,” the older woman continued, her tone carefully neutral. “At a far smaller estate. She used to say that the difference between a house and a home lay in the details no one remarked upon.”
“She sounds wise.”
“She was practical.” A ghost of a smile softened Mrs Harding’s severe expression. “I believe you would have understood one another.”
It was, Eleanor realised, an olive branch. Small. Tentative. Extended with the caution of one long accustomed to disappointment.
She accepted it with equal care. “I believe we would have.”
***
The days that followed settled into a rhythm.
Eleanor rose early—earlier than necessity required, but sleep had never settled easily in unfamiliar surroundings, and Thornwood Park offered little that felt familiar. She took breakfast alone in the small morning room, reviewing correspondence and noting the household matters demanding attention.
There were, she discovered, a great many such matters.
The staff schedules were inefficient, with footmen assigned to tasks more suited to maids, and maids engaged in duties better entrusted to footmen.
Tenant correspondence—much of it in French, written by immigrant families who had settled upon the estate’s northern farms—had accumulated in untranslated piles, their concerns unanswered for months.
The household accounts, though technically balanced, revealed patterns of waste and duplication suggesting they had not been properly reviewed in years.
They have been maintaining, Eleanor realised. Not managing. Preserving function without considering improvement.
It was not Mrs Harding’s failing. The housekeeper was entirely competent within her authority, but that authority had been shaped by a master who asked nothing of his household beyond quiet efficiency.
Without direction, without intention, the estate had drifted into a state of suspended animation—functional yet lifeless, orderly yet uninspired.
Like its master, Eleanor thought—and immediately rebuked herself for the unkindness.
She began, as she always did, with the small things.
“Excusez-moi, madame—je veux dire, Your Grace.”
Eleanor looked up from the tenant ledger to find a young man hovering uncertainly in the doorway of the estate office. He appeared perhaps twenty, with the weathered complexion of one accustomed to outdoor labour and the anxious expression of someone unaccustomed to addressing duchesses.
“Yes?” she said, in French. “Oui? Comment puis-je vous aider?”
Relief flooded his features. “Vous parlez francais!”
“Un peu.” She smiled, gesturing for him to enter. “Comment vous appelez-vous?”
His name, she learned, was Pierre Marchand.
His family had emigrated from Normandy eight years prior and settled upon one of the northern tenant farms. They raised sheep, principally, and his mother produced cheeses for sale in the village market.
They were reliable tenants, he assured her earnestly—punctual in rent, careful in maintenance, peaceable in conduct.
But there was difficulty with the north pasture fence.
Storm damage three months earlier had left it compromised, and despite repeated letters to the estate office, no repairs had been undertaken.
The sheep escaped regularly. His father had injured his leg retrieving them. They did not wish to complain, but—
“Trois mois?” Eleanor interrupted, frowning. “You have waited three months for a fence repair?”
Pierre nodded miserably. “Oui, madame—Your Grace. We wrote letters, but no one…” He faltered into hesitant English. “No one answer. We think perhaps our writing not good. Our English is…”
“Your English is entirely sufficient,” Eleanor said firmly. “The fault was not yours.”
She turned to the correspondence she had been sorting—the accumulation of untranslated French letters that had lain unread in a desk drawer.
It did not take long to locate the Marchands’ appeals. Three letters, each more urgent than the last, each written in careful, perfectly comprehensible French.
It appeared that no one at Thornwood Park possessed even rudimentary knowledge of the language.
“I shall attend to this personally,” Eleanor told Pierre, setting the letters aside.
“A carpenter will be dispatched within the week to repair your fence. And please—” She met his gaze steadily.
“If you have concerns in future, you may write directly to me. In French. I will ensure your letters are read and answered.”
Pierre’s expression transformed. Anxiety dissolved into something that resembled hope.
“Merci, Your Grace,” he said, gratitude thick in his voice. “Merci beaucoup. Vous êtes très gentille.”
“Ce n’est rien,” she replied. “It is only what ought to have been done long ago.”
She escorted him to the door, repeating her assurances that repairs would be made, that his family’s concerns mattered, that they had not been ignored—merely overlooked by a household that had forgotten how to see.
When she turned back toward the office, she discovered Benjamin standing in the corridor.
He had been watching.
Eleanor could not determine for how long—she had been too absorbed in conversation with Pierre to notice anything beyond the young man’s anxious countenance and hesitant speech. But the Duke stood there now, his scarred profile half-shadowed by the dim corridor light, his expression unreadable.
“Your Grace,” she said, proud of the steadiness of her voice despite the sudden quickening of her pulse. “I did not realise you were—”
“Three months.”
The words were flat. Toneless. Yet something in his dark eyes suggested a storm held carefully in check.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The Marchands have waited three months for a fence repair.” He stepped closer—once, then again—until he stood near enough that Eleanor observed the tension in his jaw, the rigid set of his shoulders.
“Three months of letters no one read. Three months of a family struggling because my household could not be troubled to find someone who speaks French.”
Eleanor hesitated. She had not intended to expose the estate’s failings. She had meant to correct them quietly, efficiently, without drawing attention to the neglect that had allowed them to accumulate. But he had witnessed her exchange with Pierre, and denial was no longer possible.
“The letters were not… prioritised,” she said carefully. “There is a backlog of correspondence requiring attention. I have been working through it.”
“A backlog.”
“Yes.”
“How extensive a backlog?”
Eleanor considered softening the truth. Considered shielding him from the full extent of her discoveries. But he had asked plainly, and she had promised herself—had promised him, though never aloud—that she would be honest.
“Considerable,” she said. “Several months of tenant communications, some in French and German that no one upon the staff could translate. Unanswered requests for repairs, unresolved disputes regarding grazing rights, unacknowledged complaints concerning drainage affecting three farms. The tenants have not been deliberately neglected, Your Grace. Some of their concerns appear to have escaped timely attention.”
Benjamin grew very still. It was a stillness Eleanor was beginning to recognise—the sort that preceded either withdrawal or eruption.
“Why did no one tell me?”
“I suspect no one wished to trouble you.” She paused, choosing her next words with care. “You have made it plain that you prefer solitude. Your staff has respected that preference. Perhaps… too faithfully.”
It was gentle criticism. A measured observation that stopped short of accusation. Yet she saw it strike its mark—saw the flicker of something in his expression that might have been guilt, or shame, or merely the recognition of a truth long avoided.
“The fence will be repaired,” he said abruptly. “Tomorrow. I shall send carpenters myself.”
“I had already intended to arrange—”
“Tomorrow,” he repeated. “I shall attend to it personally.”