Chapter 13
Leopold rode out with Barnaby that morning because staying in the house felt, for once, more troublesome than the weather.
The sky was low and colorless, and the ground beyond the drive still held the damp from the night. The horses moved easily over the lane, their breath pale in the cold air.
Barnaby kept his reins loose, and his posture relaxed in the way of a man who had clearly decided that if the world insisted on becoming complicated, he would at least remain comfortable while observing it.
Leopold was less successful.
He had spent the better part of the morning trying not to think about the nursery, which only meant that he thought about it constantly, and he’d spent a good portion of breakfast rereading accounts he had already read twice.
It was easier to deal with figures than with what his mother had said, or with the fact that Phoebe had looked up at him the previous evening with that expression she sometimes wore when she was thinking too hard.
Barnaby glanced at him as they crossed the lower field. “You are unusually quiet.”
Leopold kept his eyes on the track ahead. “I am riding.”
“That is not the same as being quiet.”
“It is for me.”
Barnaby’s mouth twitched. “A useful distinction.”
They rode on for several minutes in silence.
Beyond the hedgerow, the estate stretched in pale winter lines: the far boundary, the low rise toward the east, the fields that would need attention before spring.
Leopold listened to the horses and to the small sounds of the morning and tried to let the movement settle him.
Barnaby, as ever, did not allow that to last.
“We should speak of the north pasture,” he said.
Leopold glanced at him. “Must we?”
“Yes. Because if we ignore it another week, your steward will write in capital letters.”
Leopold huffed once. “He already does.”
Barnaby smiled. “Then he will write more of them.”
They went over the practical matters of the estate as they rode: drainage in the lower field, the fence line near the woods, the tenant who had been too slow with his payment and too quick with his excuses.
Barnaby had the irritating habit of noticing every detail Leopold had meant to deal with later. It made him useful. It also made him impossible to silence for long.
When the estate business had been discussed thoroughly enough to satisfy no one, Barnaby reached up to adjust his glove and said, in a tone so light that Leopold knew immediately it was not light at all, “Have you considered your mother’s suggestion?”
Leopold’s jaw tightened. “Which one?”
Barnaby looked sidelong at him. “Do not make me state it plainly. I dislike giving your mother more power than she already has.”
Leopold looked ahead and said, “No.”
Barnaby was quiet for a beat. Then, “You have not thought about Lady Isolde Carrington at all?”
“I have thought about her name.”
Barnaby gave a short breath that might have been amusement if he had been in a better mood. “That is not reassuring.”
Leopold’s tone went flat. “I am not interested in Lady Isolde.”
“No,” Barnaby said, “that much is obvious.”
Leopold turned his head slightly. “Then why ask?”
Barnaby’s expression remained mild, but his eyes were watchful. “Because that is not what concerns me.”
Barnaby looked forward again, then continued more carefully, “What concerns me is that you have been spending every morning in the nursery for three weeks.”
Leopold’s fingers tightened around the reins.
Barnaby did not look at him when he went on. “And whatever is happening in there is not something that ends well for a duke and a servant.”
The words landed with the precision of a blade laid flat.
Leopold was silent.
The horses moved in steady rhythm. The lane bent near the east boundary, and the gray light made the hedges look harder than they were. Leopold stared ahead, jaw set, and said nothing for long enough that Barnaby finally glanced at him.
Barnaby’s voice dropped a fraction. “Leopold.”
Leopold kept his gaze on the road. “I am aware of the problem. But I care as little for society’s opinions regarding my personal association with Miss Redmond as I do for their opinions about Cecily.”
Barnaby’s face changed only slightly, but enough to show he had expected that answer and had not found it sufficient. “Being aware of it and doing something about it are different things.”
Leopold gave a short, humorless breath. “You think I have not considered that?”
“I think,” Barnaby said carefully, “that you have considered it and then walked directly past the point of consequence.”
Leopold turned his head then, looking at him sharply. “You are giving me advice now?”
Barnaby met his look without flinching. “I have been giving you advice for years. You only object when it becomes relevant.”
Leopold looked away again.
Barnaby did not press further, which was in itself a warning. The silence that followed was not comfortable. It was not meant to be. They rode on while the estate opened around them in lines of bare hedges and pale fields, the morning gradually brightening without becoming warm.
At length Barnaby sighed. “You need to think about your apparent, growing interest in your nursemaid. All of London is speculating, but you of all people need to know where she stands with you.”
Leopold’s mouth flattened. “That sounds unhelpfully dramatic. And terribly presumptuous.”
“Perhaps,” Barnaby said. “It is still true. And I see that you do not deny it.”
“What is there to deny?” he asked, refusing to discuss the subject further. He knew the silence was damning, and perhaps that was for the best. How could he consider feelings he was struggling to understand himself?
By the time they turned back toward the house, the conversation had been abandoned in favor of estate matters again, though Leopold was not fooled by the ease with which Barnaby had let it go. His friend had said enough to make the point, and perhaps that had been the intention all along.
Leopold rode up to the stable yard and got the sense that something in the house had shifted while he was away, though he could not yet tell what.
He found out later that afternoon.
Sabina called at Belgrave with papers relating to a boundary dispute before the tea had fully been set out.
Leopold was in the library with Barnaby when Mrs. Pritchard announced her arrival. Barnaby, hearing the name, gave Leopold a look that suggested he had already decided the afternoon would be more entertaining than the morning. Leopold, who had not, had no particular reason to object.
“Show her in,” he said.
Sabina entered with the confidence of someone who had been invited to disagree.
She wore a dark riding habit and carried a folded packet of papers under one arm.
Her hat was still on, though slightly tilted from travel, and her expression suggested she had come prepared for both argument and amusement.
“Your Grace,” she said, inclining her head.
“Miss Montrose.”
She smiled. “Are we back to such cruel formalities?”
“I use your proper title when I am being polite, and in front of polite company.”
“That explains the shortage.”
Barnaby, standing near the fire with his hands behind his back, gave a low, approving sound. “She has not lost her edge.”
Sabina glanced at him. “And you are still taller in your own imagination.”
Barnaby’s mouth twitched. “I was hoping you had come with better news.”
“I have come with maps,” Sabina said, holding the packet up. “Not miracles.”
Leopold gestured toward the table. “Let us see them.”
She crossed the room and laid the papers down.
They spoke first of the boundary line, then of the survey markers, then of the section near the Montrose property where the line had been disputed since before Leopold inherited the title.
The conversation had the usual mixture of practicality and irritation that tended to accompany such matters.
Sabina argued with Barnaby about land tax reform before Leopold had even finished skimming the notes.
Barnaby folded one arm across his chest. “You cannot simply redraw the countryside because it offends you.”
Sabina looked at him as if he had said something quaint. “It offends me because it is inefficient.”
“It is land.”
“Yes,” she said. “Which is precisely why it ought to be handled efficiently.”
Barnaby’s expression remained pleasantly infuriating. “That is not how land works.”
“It is how men should work.”
Leopold, who had expected to be necessary to the discussion, found himself instead watching it with an interest he did not bother to conceal.
Sabina had always spoken as if the world were an argument worth winning. Barnaby, to his credit, gave back as good as he got, though with less force and more amusement than she did. They were evenly matched in exactly the way people who enjoyed making each other angry often were.
Leopold leaned one hip against the table and said, “You are both impossible.”
Sabina glanced at him. “You say that as if it is news.”
Barnaby added, “We are only difficult to those who insist on being dull.”
Sabina smiled with open satisfaction. “See? He understands.”
Leopold shook his head once and turned back to the papers. “And yet neither of you is helpful.”
“Helpfulness,” Barnaby said, “is overrated in company like this.”
Sabina’s brows rose. “Are you calling me company?”
“No,” he said. “I am calling you a complication.”
Her smile widened. “That is better.”
Leopold looked between them and allowed himself the faintest hint of a smile. He was still reading the maps when Mrs. Pritchard appeared in the doorway and informed him, with her usual exactness, that Miss Redmond had brought the child downstairs, as requested.
Leopold set the paper down at once. “Bring them in.”
Sabina’s gaze sharpened with interest. Barnaby looked mildly amused, as if he knew very well why Leopold had asked for the child and was choosing not to comment on it.
Phoebe arrived a moment later with Cecily on her hip.
Leopold’s attention moved to them before she had crossed the threshold.