Chapter 16
“Send a note to Edith Barnes at Ashford House,” Charlotte told Mr. Gedge. “Today, if possible. Tell her I require her here.”
Mr. Gedge did not blink. “Of course, Your Grace.”
He went. Charlotte stood at the window of her sitting room and looked at the square below and tried not to think too hard about whether Edith was still at Ashford House, or whether her father had dismissed her, or whether the note would even arrive in time.
She had sent word from Evermere—a short letter, very carefully worded, nothing in it that could be used against either of them if it were opened.
She had not known, when she wrote it, whether Edith had stayed.
She would know for certain soon enough.
Edith arrived with her traveling case, one hat box, and an expression of such visible relief that Charlotte had the door open before she had reached the top step.
“Inside,” Charlotte said. “Now.”
The door to the sitting room shut behind them. Edith set down the traveling case. She looked at Charlotte for two full seconds—at the house, the carpet, the entirely evident fact of Sappherton House arranged around her new mistress—and then she said, “You are married.”
“I am.”
“To a duke.”
“Yes.”
“You left in a borrowed coat and no money.”
“I had some money.”
“You had nine shillings.” Edith sat down in the nearest chair. “Tell me everything.”
Charlotte told her.
When Charlotte finished, Edith stared at her.
“You climbed out of a tree at midnight,” Edith said.
“I was getting air.”
“In a tree.”
“The tree was incidental.”
“The tree was forty feet of Scottish oak in the dark.” Edith pressed both hands to her face. Then she took them away. Her eyes were brilliant. “You married him.”
“I did.”
“The Duke of Sappherton.” A pause. “He is extremely—” She stopped. “I saw him once, from a distance, at Hyde Park two Seasons ago.”
Charlotte folded her hands in her lap and said nothing.
“Charlotte.” Edith leaned forward. “He is extremely— he is very— you married him.”
“You have said that three times.”
“Because I cannot quite believe it.” She let out a breath. “Is he kind to you?”
Charlotte thought about it honestly. “He has been most kind.”
Edith. “And Ian?”
“Is wonderful,” Charlotte said. “He is quite desperately wonderful and entirely exhausting and he has a pony named Tam and I have promised him the garden trees.”
Edith looked at her. Then, quietly and helplessly, she started laughing. Not the polite kind. The real kind, shoulders shaking, one hand over her mouth, and Charlotte found herself laughing too, and the sitting room felt like itself for the first time since she had arrived.
It lasted until it did not. Edith stilled first.
“My father,” Charlotte said.
Edith’s expression shifted. “Yes.” She smoothed her skirts.
“The morning you were discovered missing it was the housemaid who raised the alarm—she went in to draw the curtains and found the room empty.” She paused.
“The Earl was in the study by half past seven. I could hear him from the attic…where I was suddenly quite absorbed in folding and refolding old quilts.”
Charlotte said nothing.
“He summoned me at nine.” Edith looked at her hands.
“He had already spoken to three of the other staff. I could tell by the way he asked—he was not asking because he didn’t know.
He was asking to see what I would say.” A pause.
“I said I knew nothing. That I had seen you to bed the previous evening and had no reason to expect any difficulty.”
“He believed you?”
“He believed nothing I said. But he could not prove otherwise.” Edith turned her hands over in her lap. “I was kept in the house for two weeks. Not under explicit constraint. Simply—not permitted to leave. Questions were asked. Letters were opened.”
“Edith—”
“It was fine,” Edith said, and she said it with the particular flatness that meant it was not fine, but it was done. “I had been considering leaving his service regardless. The situation had become—it was not a comfortable house to be in, afterwards.”
Charlotte was quiet.
“And then your letter came.” Edith looked up. “From Evermere. Very correctly worded. Nothing in it to incriminate either of us.” A small smile. “Very sensible.”
“I was working with limited time.”
“You were always sensible under pressure,” Edith said. “Dreadful under it in every other respect, but sensible in a crisis.”
Charlotte reached across and took her hands. “Stay here,” she said. “As my lady’s maid. Under my employ. Not my father’s. Mine.”
Edith looked at her for a moment. “I had rather hoped you would ask,” she said.
* * *
That following afternoon, Charlotte started small.
She went to the kitchens first, which produced an expression on the cook’s face that suggested Duchesses did not generally do so. Charlotte sat on a stool at the end of the table and asked, with genuine interest, what Ian had eaten that morning and what he had refused.
“He had the toast,” the cook said, cautiously. “And some of the porridge. He wouldn’t touch the kippers.”
“He won’t,” Charlotte said. “He is not fond of fish. He will eat almost anything with eggs, and he has a particular weakness for anything with jam. If you can manage a simple supper—something recognizable rather than elaborate—he does considerably better.”
The cook looked at her as though being asked her opinion was slightly alarming but not entirely unwelcome. “I can manage that, Your Grace.”
“Excellent.” Charlotte stood. “I heard your shortbread is exceptional.”
The cook’s expression changed entirely. “It is, Your Grace.”
“Ian would very much appreciate it, I think.” Charlotte smiled. “As would I.”
She found Mrs. Ellison in the upper hallway. “Is the morning room always shut?” she asked, bracing herself for the housekeeper’s defense.
Mrs. Ellison surprised her with a smile. “The Duchess used it often when she was alive, but that was decades ago. It has not been used since her passing and only opened on occasion to be cleaned.”
Charlotte nodded.
“Would you like to have it opened, Your Grace?”
She considered her authority for a moment, whether or not she had the right. “Yes, please.”
Then she went into the morning room and moved a chair from the center of it to the window, because the light was better there, and it felt like a room that had been too still for too long.
On her way back through the entrance hall, she stopped at the garden door, collected an armful of late season stems from the small bed by the path, and arranged them in the largest vase on the hall table.
Then she went upstairs to find Ian.
He was in his room with the soldier, not playing, not reading. Just sitting.
“The back garden,” Charlotte said, from the doorway, “has a wall.”
Ian looked up.
“It looks,” she said, “extremely climbable. I intend to investigate.”
He was on his feet before she had finished the sentence.
The wall was not, on closer inspection, as cooperative as it looked from the garden path. It was old brick, the mortar worn away in places, but the handholds were shallow and the base was too smooth. Ian circled it for five minutes with mounting dissatisfaction.
“There aren’t enough cracks,” he announced.
Charlotte studied the wall. “The left side looks more promising.”
“I tried the left side. It’s worse.” He pressed his palm flat to the surface. “There’s nothing to hold. You’d need to be a very thin cat.”
“We are not thin cats.”
“No.” He stepped back and looked at it with his hands on his hips, which was an expression Charlotte was fairly certain he had borrowed from Henry. “This wall is very bad at being climbable.”
“I’ll grant you that,” Charlotte said. “We may need to bring equipment.”
“What kind of equipment?”
“I’m not entirely sure yet. I’m working through it.”
Ian looked at her. Then he looked back at the wall. “We could try the elm. The one at the far end.”
“We could,” Charlotte said. “Though I suspect your guardian might have—”
She stopped.
Henry was standing at the garden entrance.
“What…” He stepped forward. “…are you doing to my wall?”
Ian turned. “We’re investigating it.”
“Investigating it.”
“For climbing.” Ian gestured at the brickwork with the authority of a surveyor delivering an unfavorable report. “It’s bad. There arenae enough cracks.”
Henry looked at the wall. Then he looked at Charlotte.
She smiled at him. Pleasantly. With a great deal of innocence.
“It is excellent exercise,” she said. “For the boy.”
“For the—” He looked back at Ian. Then at Charlotte. “You were proposing to climb my garden wall.”
“I was proposing to investigate the feasibility of climbing your garden wall. There is a distinction.”
“The distinction is academic. You are standing at the base of it.”
“And finding it wanting,” Charlotte said. “Which is, in fact, the responsible conclusion.”
Henry opened his mouth. Then he closed it. He looked at the wall again, and Charlotte had the very distinct impression that he was deciding between three different responses and that none of them were winning outright.
“We were going to try the elm next,” Ian offered helpfully.
Henry looked at the elm. It was, objectively, an excellent climbing tree. Wide-branched, low to the ground, the first branch at approximately the height of a small, determined child.
“Absolutely not,” Henry said.
“Henry—”
“The bark is wet from this morning’s rain and that first branch is higher than it looks. Ian would be on the ground inside of two minutes.”
Ian considered this. “I wouldnae fall.”
“I was told you fell off the stable gate at Drummond Hall twice in one afternoon last summer.”
“That was different.”
“How was it different?”
Ian thought about it. “I was in a hurry,” he said, with great dignity.
Charlotte pressed her lips together. She really was trying.
Henry’s gaze moved to her face. She could see him noticing that she was trying. He did not appear appeased.
“This is your doing,” he said.
“It brought a smile to Ian’s face.”
“I see,” Henry murmured. “Do you not think that climbing my—"
There was a rustle in the privet hedge to the left. Something moved in it, fast and low, and then went still.
Ian’s entire body oriented toward it like a pointer.
“A rabbit,” Charlotte said quietly.
The hedge rustled again.
“A rabbit!” Ian launched himself at the privet with a shout of pure joy that scattered three sparrows from the nearby yew and caused the rabbit in question—brown, fat, and possessed of excellent instincts—to bolt from the far end of the hedge at considerable speed.
Ian bolted after it.
The rabbit dodged left along the garden wall. Ian dodged left. The rabbit cut back across the lawn. Ian cut back. The rabbit made a desperate break for the rose bed. Ian, apparently unconcerned by thorns, followed.
Charlotte watched.
Henry watched.
Ian tripped over a loose stone at the edge of the path, caught himself with both hands, was back on his feet in two seconds, and was still running, his shout now reduced to something more concentrated, the pure focused silence of a boy who had committed.
The rabbit found the gap under the kitchen garden gate and was gone in a flash of brown. Ian arrived at the gate four seconds later, tried it, found it latched, pressed his face against the bars, and watched the rabbit disappear into the vegetable beds beyond.
Charlotte heard it. She turned.
Henry was smiling.
Not the contained, controlled expression he deployed at dinner, or the polite version he used with solicitors.
The real one. Unguarded. His shoulders had dropped and one corner of his mouth was up, and his eyes had gone warm, and he was watching Ian with something in his face that was entirely open.
And then he realized she was looking at him.
The smile was gone in an instant. He looked at the gate. Then at the rose bed. Then at the middle distance. Charlotte turned to face him fully.
“You smiled,” she said.
“I did not.”
“You absolutely did. Just now. At Ian and the rabbit.”
“I was assessing whether he had hurt himself on the path.”
“You were smiling.”
“I was concerned.”
“Henry.” She tilted her head. “Your concern looked remarkably like delight.”
“You are misreading the situation.”
“I am reading it with considerable accuracy.” She folded her arms. “Your mouth went up at the left corner. Your shoulders dropped. You looked—” She searched for the right word. “—quite pleased.”
“I am never quite pleased.”
“You were quite pleased.”
Henry turned to look at her. He was deploying the full force of his composure now—chin level and gaze even.
“I was,” he said, “checking on the boy.”
“While smiling.”
“While maintaining an expression appropriate to the circumstances.”
“The circumstances being Ian chasing a rabbit into the rose bed.”
“Exactly.” A pause. “Which was not amusing.”
Charlotte bit the inside of her cheek. “Not in the slightest.”
Henry looked back at Ian, who had abandoned the gate and was now examining the rose bed on his side of it.
“Ian,” Henry called. “Leave the rabbit.”
Ian looked up. “I almost had it.”
“You were never going to have it.”
“I was very close.”
“The gap under the gate is four inches. You are not four inches.”
Ian studied the gap with one eye closed. He appeared to be calculating. Then he straightened and brushed his hands on his coat, which did nothing to clean them, and came back up the path.
Charlotte watched Henry track the boy across the grass.
The wariness was back in his face, the careful containment.
But it was thinner than it had been. She could see the edges of it.
Not the man, she thought, but the habit.
The habit of holding everything at a distance that felt, from the inside, like safety and looked, from the outside, like cold.
It was not cold. She knew that. She had known it since a Scottish coaching inn, since a pair of hands wrapped her ankle without being asked, since a duke who put himself between her and a hired man without making anything of it.
She had been filing the evidence away, piece by piece, and the picture it made was clear.
He was going to make it quite difficult to keep her feelings properly arranged.
She was still thinking about that when she heard the footstep on the path behind her.
Mr. Gedge stopped at a respectful distance. “Your Grace.” He looked at Henry, then at Charlotte, then—very correctly—back at Henry. “I beg your pardon for the interruption.”
“What is it, Gedge?” Henry said.
Mr. Gedge drew himself up. “Lord Ashford is here, Your Grace. He is asking to see Her Grace.”