Chapter 1 #2
The candle flame bent suddenly, and a faint draft slipped through the cracked study window, subtle enough that it should have meant nothing at all, but it carried something with it, something that brought him back again.
Without calling for anyone, he left the study.
The corridor outside was colder than the room he had just abandoned. Ashbourne House stretched around him, and the polished floors and portraits of men who had all looked increasingly alike made him feel as though he was making the household dirty simply by being there.
His footsteps were the only sound as he moved through it, unhurried but not aimless, hoping to restore order to thoughts that had begun to stray.
He did not decide to go into the gardens until he was already opening the door.
Outside, the air was sharper, carrying the remnants of early spring. The estate gardens were perfect—neatly trimmed hedges, stone paths, and the promise of blooms not yet fully realized.
It was quiet there too, but not in the oppressive way that indoors had been. It was the kind of quiet that suggested life beneath it, and though he never would have said it aloud, he needed to see proof of that again.
He walked without direction at first, hands clasped behind his back in his habitual way. The tension in his shoulders did not ease, but the change of air helped. At last, he was somewhere less suffocating.
It was near the west path, where the garden curved toward the old sundial, that he saw her.
Mrs. Pembroke, the housekeeper, stood with a basket at her feet and gardening gloves already dusted with soil, earlier than usual given that it was the early hours of the day. She looked up at him without surprise, as though she had been expecting him to appear sooner or later.
Her presence was not unusual; she often insisted on tending the more stubborn corners of the estate herself, despite having staff who could have done it for her.
“Your Grace,” she said, inclining her head. “I thought you might come out eventually.”
“I was not aware my movements were so easily predicted,” Alexander replied, though without real sharpness.
He stopped a few paces away, glancing briefly at the beds she was working on. The soil had been turned recently, and small green shoots had been carefully protected from the lingering cold.
Mrs. Pembroke straightened slightly, brushing dirt from her hands.
“Forgive me. I did not mean to speak out of turn.”
“You did not,” Alexander said after a moment. “It is good to see you.”
A brief silence passed between them, the kind that existed between two people who had known the same house long enough to understand one another.
“You have been in the study since dawn,” she said gently. “Mr. Thornton told me.”
“Of course he did.”
“He is concerned.”
“I am aware.”
Mrs. Pembroke tilted her head slightly, studying him.
“Are you well?”
He looked away toward the hedges instead of answering immediately.
“I am managing affairs,” he said at last.
The wind moved lightly through the garden then, stirring the edges of new leaves.
Alexander exhaled slowly, choosing his words with care.
He did not want anyone to feel a need to worry, not when he had so much to be grateful for.
He was fortunate, and he knew it, even if it did not always feel like it.
“There are matters that require attention,” he said. “My father’s correspondence, for example, and the estate’s succession planning, and now…and now marriage arrangements.”
Mrs. Pembroke gave a quiet hum, neither surprised nor pleased.
“So it has begun.”
“It was always going to begin eventually,” he replied.
“Yes,” she said, softer now. “But there is a difference between eventually and now.”
“You speak as though I am overwhelmed.”
“I speak as someone who has expected this since you returned,” she corrected calmly. “You are a man who has forgotten that there is a difference between duty and punishment.”
She bent down briefly, adjusting one of the small supports around a plant.
“You do not sleep,” she continued. “You do not sit still unless forced to, and when you do, you look as though the household will burn to the ground. If I may speak plainly, Your Grace, the house is not improved by your suffering in it.”
“I am not suffering,” he said.
“Are you not?”
The words lingered between them. Alexander turned slightly, looking out across the gardens again. The wind moved through the hedges in slow waves, and for a moment, he felt a distance from himself, as though he were watching his own life from somewhere just beyond reach.
“Do you ever find,” he said, “that silence is easier to maintain than speech?”
Mrs. Pembroke considered this carefully, as she always did when he spoke in this way.
“Yes,” she said at last. “But it is rarely the correct thing.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then she picked up her basket again, brushing soil from her gloves.
“If you intend to walk further,” she said, “the south path has been cleared. It would do you more good than remaining in your head.”
“I am not in my head,” he replied automatically.
A small, knowing look passed over her face.
“No,” she said gently. “Of course not.”
And with that, she returned to her work, leaving him with the quiet hum of the garden and the uncomfortable awareness that, for once, his title was not the thing pressing hardest against him.