Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
“As Aristotle so wisely observed,” Lord Bardwell announced, setting down his fork with the gravity of a man conferring a gift upon the table, “a man’s home is the measure of his character.”
“That was not Aristotle,” Theodore said.
Lord Bardwell blinked and adjusted his cravat. “Well, the meaning, at any rate—”
“Quite.” Theodore reached for his wine.
Across the table, Cressida kept her eyes on her plate and pressed her lips together with great concentration.
The Bardwells had arrived that morning with three trunks, a lady’s maid, and the settled confidence of people who had married their daughter to a duke and intended the duke to appreciate the full weight of this arrangement.
Lord Bardwell had surveyed the castle’s proportions with the assessing eye of a man calculating acreage, already composing, the dinner party anecdote he would make of it.
Lady Bardwell had declared the journey from London “positively medieval” while simultaneously cataloguing every appointment in the entrance hall with sharp, acquisitive attention.
As for her siblings, Peter had arrived reading a pamphlet on Parliamentary reform. Mary had arrived at a dead run and flung herself at Cressida before the footman had finished announcing the party.
That reunion Theodore had watched from the top of the staircase—Cressida catching her sister and laughing into her hair, wholly unguarded, wholly herself—had left him unable to look away.
By the time dinner came around, he was acquainted with how dinners with the Bardwells proceeded.
“A man who will not read has no advantage over one who cannot,” Lord Bardwell announced apropos of very little as the fish course was served. “Seneca, I believe.”
Peter looked up from his plate. “That’s Burke, Father.”
“I beg your pardon?” Lord Bardwell huffed.
“Edmund Burke. The sentiment is Burke’s.” Peter reached for his wine calmly, confidently, precisely like a Cambridge man who considered correction a civic duty. “Seneca was rather more concerned with death.”
Lord Bardwell adjusted his cravat. “Translations vary considerably.”
“It wasn’t translated. Burke wrote in English.”
“Peter,” Cressida said gently.
“I’m simply—”
“I know what you’re simply doing.”
Lady Bardwell set down her fork and turned to survey the north-facing windows with an expression of quiet suffering. “These windows let in a dreadful draught. I noticed it the moment we sat down. Is there nothing to be done?”
“I’ll speak to Mrs. Agnes in the morning,” Cressida said.
“The curtains are very thin.”
“I’ll mention that as well.”
“And the light in here is rather—”
“Mother.” Cressida reached for her wine. “I shall speak to Mrs. Agnes.”
“You are managing well,” Lady Bardwell observed, with an expression hovering between surprise and something akin to approval.
“One learns,” Cressida said composedly.
Theodore watched his wife navigate her family, pride brewing in his chest.
Later, when the gentlemen rejoined the ladies, Lord Bardwell detached himself from the fire and crossed the room with the deliberateness of a man who had prepared remarks.
“A word, Ashmere, if I may.” He settled into the adjacent chair and clasped his hands together.
“I wish to say that this marriage has been of considerable benefit. To Cressida, naturally.” A pause in which something uncomfortable moved beneath the businesslike surface.
“She has always been a good girl. Independent. Too much so, perhaps, for her prospects.”
“She argued because she was correct,” Theodore said. “In most instances, her position was the more defensible one.”
Lord Bardwell sat with that for a moment. The fire crackled.
“Yes,” he said, more quietly. “I suppose she takes after Norwell. That side.” Another pause. “She seems well.”
“She is well. The tenants think very highly of her. She has also improved the library by approximately forty volumes, which I consider an unqualified benefit.”
Something moved across Lord Bardwell’s face that would have looked like pride on a man with a different history with his daughter. He stood, straightened his coat, and the moment folded itself away as though it had never occurred.
“Good,” he said. “That is good.”
He returned to the fire.
Across the room, Cressida looked up from her conversation with Mary and met Theodore’s gaze.
She didn’t look away, and neither did he.
Lady Bardwell came to find her.
That was the first surprising thing. In her twenty-four years, Cressida could count on one hand the number of times her mother had sought her out without an agenda attached.
She set down her pen. “Is everything all right?”
“Perfectly.” Lady Bardwell smoothed her skirt and looked at the view. “This is a good room. The light is excellent.”
“It is.”
She nodded and let another pause pulse between them.
Cressida waited, having learned long ago that pressing her mother produced defensiveness rather than disclosure.
“At dinner last night,” Lady Bardwell began, “when your father said that thing about Burke… you didn’t correct him.”
“No. Peter did.”
“Yes, I recall that. What I meant to say is… Well, you would have before.” She said it without accusation.
“You would have corrected your father and then explained at length why he was wrong, and he would have adjusted his cravat, and he and I would have exchanged a look, and—” She stopped.
“I’m not saying you were wrong to correct him all those times before, nor that your brother was.
Your father was wrong about Burke. He is frequently wrong and rarely aware of it. ”
Cressida said nothing, startled into silence.
“I am saying,” her mother continued, more carefully, “that last night you caught your husband’s eye instead and let it pass, and it struck me that…
that you have become someone who chooses her battles.
” She paused again. “That is not a small thing, seeing as I did not teach you that. It is good to see you arrive at it by yourself.”
Cressida clenched her jaw. “His Grace is good practice,” she said, after a moment. “He is considerably more stubborn than Father.”
Her mother looked at her directly for the first time since sitting down. “Are you happy, Cressida? Truly.”
Cressida blinked, stunned by the honesty in her mother’s voice.
Since when did Lady Bardwell ever care about her happiness? Did she consider her happiness all these years, correcting her stance, suppressing her wit, criticizing her interests, then promptly sending her away to the tyrannical Aunt Agatha?
Her blood boiled. Did her mother truly have the audacity to consider her happiness now, after all the pain she’d caused her?
Cressida opened her mouth to challenge her, to argue with her, to shut her down. But then she paused to ponder what exactly would happen if she did. Her mother would huff, claim that Cressida hadn’t changed at all, then storm off to save face.
What was the point of that? Certainly, Cressida would feel some sense of relief by confronting her, but ultimately, would it make things any better between them, knowing her mother?
No.
Cressida let out a long breath, trying to imagine the anger coming out like steam from a kettle, then straightened her back.
“I am,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “And I believe he is, too. Which is more than I expected at our rushed wedding.”
Lady Bardwell was quiet for a moment, twiddling her thumbs. “I should have come to visit sooner, I know that, but your letters always sounded as though you were managing.”
“I was.”
“Yes. You are very good at that.” Her voice was dry, but not unkindly.
“You get it from me, unfortunately. It is not an entirely useful quality.” She stood, smoothed her skirt again, and looked out the window at the grounds below.
“He watched you throughout dinner, you know. He thinks he’s being subtle. ”
At that, Cressida beamed, content to bask in the reality of having such a banal conversation with her mother. “He is not remotely subtle.”
“No.” Lady Bardwell nodded. “It is delightful to watch,” she said with a somewhat naughty smile.
Cressida felt herself smiling back.
And for once, her body relaxed, and she let herself enjoy a quiet little moment with her mother.
By the third day, Theodore had developed a working theory about the Bardwells: they did not so much occupy a castle as metabolize it.
Lord Bardwell had rearranged the furniture on principle. Lady Bardwell had found seventeen things to improve and worked her way through Mrs. Agnes, then Cressida, then Theodore, to communicate them.
Peter had returned three of four borrowed library books to the wrong shelves. Mary had personally introduced herself to all the servants, including the boot boy, who appeared to have never experienced this and didn’t know what to do with it.
And now, on the afternoon of the third day, they were all outside, and Mary had a toad in her hands.
Theodore had no idea how. He had watched her put it down by the lake twenty minutes ago. Yet here it was, cupped in her palms, being introduced to Peter, who had lowered his pamphlet by approximately two inches to acknowledge it.
“It’s a common toad,” he said.
“He has a name,” Mary scoffed.
“Toads don’t have names.”
“This one does. It’s Gerald.”
“You’ve had Gerald for twenty minutes.”
“That’s long enough.”
Theodore looked at Cressida. Cressida looked back at him with an expression that said clearly, Yes, and this is every day of my life.
Lord Bardwell had stopped to interrogate a section of dry stone wall with the intensity of a man who had found his purpose. Lady Bardwell stood beside him with her arms folded, her eyes following Mary.
“She will put that creature in her luggage,” she said with a sigh, as though pondering a deep philosophical concept. “She did it with a hedgehog in Shropshire, and we didn’t find it until Marlborough.”
“What happened in Marlborough?” Theodore asked, before he could think better of it.