Chapter 7
“Ring for whatever you need,” Mrs. Wick said, patting the bell pull by the door with the brisk efficiency of a woman who had been ensuring other people’s comfort for thirty years and expected it to continue. “Supper will be laid at seven. If you’re hungry before then, I’ll have somethin' sent up.”
“Thank you,” Charlotte said. “You are very kind.”
Mrs. Wick gave her one more of those sharp, measuring looks—the sort that seemed to weigh a person and find them lighter than expected, but not uninteresting—and then she was gone, the door closing softly behind her.
Charlotte stood in the middle of the room for a moment.
Then she sat on the edge of the bed.
It was a good bed. A proper bed, wide and solid, with a wool coverlet and real pillows, not the thin inn-bed bolsters she had been sleeping against for the better part of a week.
The fire in the grate had already been burning for some time.
Someone had thought of putting a small jug of water on the washstand.
She looked at all of it.
You are free, she thought. There is no one on the other side of that door telling you what to do.
The thought was odd. She turned it over, expecting relief to arrive cleanly, the way she had imagined it might during all those long nights at Ashford estate when freedom had been a thing she pictured from a distance.
It did not arrive neatly or in a certain and precise manner.
It arrived sideways, carrying a question for which she had not adequately prepared.
What do you do now?
She had been so entirely focused on not going home, not meeting Lord Redmont, not becoming a Marchioness at her father’s convenience, that she had not considered the matter of what she did instead.
She was in Scotland. In a stranger’s house.
That is a question for later, she told herself firmly. Later. Not now.
A tap at the door announced the maid, a young girl with a sensible face and a large can of hot water, and Charlotte was enormously grateful for both.
The bath was the finest thing that had happened to her in a week.
She sat in it longer than was strictly necessary and did not feel guilty about it at all.
When she finally emerged and submitted to the maid’s assistance with her hair, she felt like a different person from the one who had climbed out of the Duke’s carriage an hour ago.
A more coherent person. One who could face the day and the future now that she was clean.
The maid produced a dress from somewhere—navy wool, slightly too long, but warm and clean—and Charlotte put it on with genuine gratitude.
Her boy’s clothes were folded on the chair, still present, still practical.
She would need them again, she supposed, though she was not entirely certain in what capacity.
Later, she thought again. Still later.
What she wanted now was to find Ian.
She had observed him on the roof and seen how the boy’s grief was being interpreted as recalcitrance. Charlotte had experienced this when her mother passed.
He had looked at the Duke and found him lacking, and he had not been wrong to make such an assessment. After all, the Duke had not addressed the child as he ought to.
He did not need a plan. He did not need authority. The child needed someone who would sit beside him without wanting anything from him.
Charlotte had some experience, she thought, with wanting to be left alone by people who had good intentions.
She found a footman in the upper hallway, a young man carrying a tray of firewood with a slightly harried expression.
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “Do you know where Master Ian might be at this hour?”
The footman shifted the tray. “Playroom, miss, most like. Up the next stair, near the old nursery. Though—"—He hesitated. “He might not want company.”
“I know,” Charlotte said. “Thank you.”
The playroom was at the end of a short hallway, its door half-open. Charlotte stopped outside for a moment and listened.
No sound. Not the occupied silence of a child playing. The other kind.
She pushed the door open.
Ian was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, a cluster of small wooden soldiers spread on the boards in front of him.
He was not playing with them. He was turning one over in his hands with a methodical, purposeful focus that had nothing to do with games, pressing at the joints until something gave.
He did not look up.
Charlotte came into the room and sat down on the floor beside him. Not close enough to crowd. Close enough to reach the soldiers.
He said nothing. She said nothing. The fire in the small grate made a low, steady sound.
She picked up one of the soldiers nearest to her. It was missing a leg—the right one, snapped off somewhere below the knee. She turned it over and set it on her palm. Then she began to look.
The leg was not far. It had rolled toward the skirting board, which was the natural place for small things to go when they were done being held. She crossed the room, retrieved it, came back, and sat down again.
She pressed the leg back into the joint.
It held for a moment. Then it did not.
Ian was watching her now with those dark eyes that were very much Nathan Drummond’s, based on the family portrait she had glimpsed in the front hall.
Charlotte got back to her feet and looked around the room. She spotted a bureau against the far wall. She crossed to it and opened the top drawer.
Candle stubs. A broken top. Three mismatched buttons. And, at the back, a ball of brown yarn that had seen better days but was perfectly serviceable.
She took it and came back.
Ian had not moved. He was still watching her, the silence unchanged, but the quality of it had shifted slightly. She sat down, settled the soldier in her lap, and wound the yarn around the leg joint with careful, unhurried turns. She tied it off. She held it up.
The leg stayed.
She set it down in front of her and began to hum. The tune she conjured was nothing in particular, just a low, wandering sound, the kind that happened when her hands were occupied and her mind was working pleasantly. She did not look at Ian.
She picked up the next soldier. This one had lost its head entirely, which she thought showed considerable commitment.
She found the head after a brief search—it was under Ian’s knee, which he had apparently been sitting on without noticing—and he moved without comment to let her retrieve it.
She pressed the head back into the socket and held it there.
“There was a pirate,” she said, “who lost his leg to a kraken.”
She was not looking at Ian. She was looking at the soldier in her hands. She kept her voice pleasant, the way she used to read aloud in the library at Ashford estate when the only person listening was herself.
“He could have called it the end of his sailing days. Some men would have. Instead he thought—well, I have survived a kraken. Which means I know more about krakens than almost anyone alive.” She set the headless soldier down and began wrapping yarn around the neck.
“So he became the person ships went to when they were heading into kraken-infested waters. Not because he was the bravest. Because he had already been in the water with one and come out the other side.”
She tied off the yarn and held the soldier up. The head listed to the left, but it held.
Ian said nothing.
Charlotte set the soldier beside the first one and looked at the remaining cluster on the floor.
Then Ian picked up a soldier with a snapped sword arm and held it out to her.
She took it without pausing. She turned it over, examined the break, and began to look for the arm.
“Did he get a new leg?” Ian said.
Charlotte found the arm near her knee. “He did. Carved it himself, out of driftwood. He said it was better than the old one because he could stick things in it.”
“What kind of things?”
“Fishhooks, mostly. Also a small knife.” She unraveled a bit of the brown yarn and began working. “It was considered a useful tool.”
Ian picked up another broken soldier and turned it over in his hands. “What was the kraken like?”
“Large. Incredibly old. Considerably more interested in ships than in conversation.” She took the soldier Ian was holding and examined it.
The arm was present, but the musket had snapped clean off.
“The pirate said its eyes were the size of carriage wheels, which may have been an exaggeration, but sailors are known for exaggeration.”
“Me da says sailors exaggerate everythin',” Ian said. “He says they’re worse than fishermen.”
“Your father sounds like a sensible man.”
“Aye.” A pause. “He is.”
Charlotte kept her hands moving. She did not look at Ian directly. Instead, she picked up a soldier who was likely supposed to be a member of the calvary for he was mounted astride a small wooden horse. This gave her an idea.
“Do you have a horse?” she asked, after a moment. “I noticed the stables are quite large here.”
That landed differently. Ian straightened, marginally. “A pony. His name is Tam. He’s grey with a white nose.” A beat. “He’s better than a horse. Horses are too tall. Tam lets me brush him without the need for standin' on a stool.”
“Tam sounds entirely sensible.”
“He is. He’s the most sensible animal on the whole estate.” Ian was quiet for a moment, rolling a headless soldier between his palms. “Better than the tutors, anyway.”
“Are the tutors very bad?”
“The last one had cold hands,” Ian said, with feeling. “He would put them on the back of me neck when I was copyin' out me letters. It was awful.”
Charlotte pressed her lips together. “That does sound deeply unpleasant.”
“And the one before smelled of cabbage. Nae a little. A great deal.” He considered this. “I didnae mind the one before that so much. He let me draw maps.” He glanced at the soldiers. “But he left.”
“Why?”
Ian shrugged one shoulder. “They all leave.”
He said it plainly, without complaint, which was worse than if he had said it with feeling.
Charlotte finished binding the soldier in her hands and set it with the others. She looked at the row of them, the repaired and the still broken, and said nothing for a moment.
“Da reads to me at night,” Ian said. “Mam does voices.” He turned a soldier over.
“She’s particularly good at the villain’s voices.
She makes it low, like this—” He dropped his voice into a growling rumble that was entirely unconvincing and entirely endearing.
“Da says she should have been on the stage.”
Charlotte felt something tighten in her chest. She kept her face still.
“They’re coming back,” Ian said. He did not look at her. He said it the way he had said it to everyone else—flat, certain, not inviting argument. “I know everyone thinks they’re nae. But they are.”
“I know you believe that,” Charlotte said carefully.
“I’m nae makin’ it up,” Ian said, with a sudden sharpness that was the first crack in the composure. “I ken the difference. I’m nae a baby.”
“I did not say you were.”
“You were thinkin' it.”
“I was thinking,” Charlotte said, “that you know your parents better than anyone else in this house. And that it is not a foolish thing to wait for someone you love.”
Ian looked at her. It was an exceedingly long look for a six-year-old. Something in it was assessing again, the same quality she had seen in him on the roof, but it was not quite the same as when he had looked at the Duke. There was something in it that was more uncertain. More careful.
His chin wobbled, once. He got it back under control very quickly.
Charlotte set down the soldiers. She put her arm around him and pulled him in, and he came without resisting. He leaned into her side with the sudden weight of a child who had been holding himself very upright for an exceptionally long time.
“All shall be well,” she said. “I promise you.”
She felt him breathe.
Outside the playroom window, the light had turned thin and grey, and the moorland beyond the wall was quiet. Ian was warm against her side, his head heavy on her shoulder, still gripping one of the repaired soldiers in his small hand.
All shall be well, she had said.
She held him tighter, and she hoped, with everything she had, that it was true.