Chapter 16
Honora heard about the day of Lady Isolde Carrington’s arrival from Martha the day after her outing to town with Leopold, mere hours before she was expected.
It was midmorning, and Cecily had just been put down for a nap after a difficult hour of chasing ribbons, a wooden spoon, and one of Honora’s gloves across the nursery floor.
Honora had gone downstairs to fetch more hot water and found Martha in the kitchen with flour on her hands and a look that suggested she had news she did not quite approve of.
Martha did not bother with pleasantries.
“Lady Isolde Carrington is arriving this afternoon.”
Honora stopped at once. “She is?”
Martha nodded. “For a week.”
Honora set the basin down more carefully than necessary. “Why?”
Martha gave her a look. “Because Her Grace arranged it.”
Honora stared at her, choosing her words carefully.
“I recall,” she said. “I just did not expect her arrival so soon.”
Martha crossed her arms. “It is a courtship.”
The words landed harder than Honora expected.
She looked away at once, though there was nowhere in the kitchen to look that would make them easier to hear.
“A courtship,” she repeated, because the alternative was silence.
“That is what I said.”
Honora took a breath and let it out slowly. “I see.”
Martha’s face remained unreadable, but her gaze stayed on Honora long enough to make the meaning of it plain. That she was not asking whether Honora approved, or whether Honora had known, was plain; she was simply watching the way the news struck.
Honora should not have cared.
That much she knew, with the same part of herself that had been warning her for weeks that every soft feeling in Belgrave came with a cost and had no claim on Leopold.
None at all. She had come here under a false name and lied to his face and meant, at the beginning, to steal her niece and disappear.
Nothing in that history made room for heartbreak.
And yet her chest still hurt.
She looked down at her hands.
The village trip from the day before came back to her first. Leopold carrying Cecily on the walk back when the baby had fallen asleep against his shoulder.
The way he had taken her without comment, the way he had smiled in the draper’s shop when Honora had fumbled over being called Your Grace, and how that small smile had been so unexpected that it had made her blush worse than the mistake itself.
She swallowed.
The worst of it was not even the courtship.
It was the thought she had begun to have more than once in the past week.
Telling him the truth.
Not all of it, not yet. She was not that brave. But enough to stop pretending that her name was real, enough to admit that Cecily was not a child from Wiltshire and that she had not arrived by accident, enough perhaps to explain why she had lied at the gate.
She was not ready.
That, too, she knew.
But she was closer than she had been a week ago.
That frightened her more than the lie did.
Martha, who had been kneading dough while all of this passed across Honora’s face, said nothing at first. Then she gave a short breath and went back to her work.
“She will arrive in the afternoon,” Martha said. “There will be tea. Her Grace will be on her best behavior.”
Honora looked up. “Will she?”
Martha snorted. “No. But she will try.”
Honora almost smiled.
Almost.
Instead she bent to lift the basin again, though she did not need to. “Thank you for telling me.”
Martha’s gaze softened by a degree, though only a degree. “You ought not let your face show so much when bad news comes.”
Honora glanced at her. “Does it show much?”
“Yes.”
That was the end of that, and Honora returned to the nursery with the basin in both hands and a hollow feeling she could not quite set down.
By afternoon, Belgrave had begun to change its atmosphere.
She felt it first in the halls. Mrs. Pritchard had the drawing room in order before the usual hour.
The maid who carried up fresh towels did so with the brisk nerves of someone who knew a guest was expected and wished not to be caught looking curious.
Even the air felt altered, as if the house were holding itself in check.
Honora had Cecily with her in the nursery when the sound of voices drifted up from below.
Not just any voices.
Her Grace’s, cool and precise.
And another woman’s, lower and more polished, with the easy self-possession of someone who knew how to enter a house that already wanted her to stay.
Honora went still.
Cecily, sensing her attention had shifted away, wriggled in her lap and patted her chin.
Honora kissed her hair without looking down.
Lady Isolde Carrington had arrived.
She would stay a week, Martha had said, for an official courtship with all the propriety such an arrangement could require.
Honora did not need to see her to know what that would mean.
Flowers in the room. Tea in the drawing room.
Guided walks. Observations by his mother.
Leopold was required to be charming at intervals and silent at others.
She had no right to feel what she was feeling.
That did not stop it.
Sometime later the laughter reached her from downstairs.
Women’s laughter.
Not faint, not polite, but real enough to carry. Honora paused with a folded blanket in her hands and listened before she could stop herself.
Her Grace and Lady Isolde.
The kind of laughter that belonged to women who understood each other.
Honora stood in the nursery doorway for a moment, Cecily resting against her shoulder, and felt the odd sharpness of it.
She had thought, perhaps foolishly, that if Leopold were forced into this, there would be resistance visible to anyone with eyes. There was none she could hear from upstairs. Only laughter. Smoothness. Ease.
She turned back to the room before she could think too hard about it.
***
That evening, Lady Isolde came to the nursery with Leopold.
Honora had just finished settling Cecily when the door opened, and she looked up to find them both in the doorway.
Lady Isolde Carrington was tall, beautifully dressed, and composed in the way of a woman who had never once been uncertain of where she stood in a room.
Her gown was pale and well cut, her gloves immaculate, and her dark hair arranged in a style that looked effortless only because it had clearly cost time. She moved with the ease of someone who had been in Belgrave before, or at least somewhere like it, and intended to belong wherever she entered.
Leopold stood slightly behind her.
Honora’s hand tightened once at her side before she made herself still.
Lady Isolde smiled at her at once. “Miss Redmond, I believe?”
“It is Phoebe Redmond,” Honora said.
Lady Isolde’s smile did not change. “Of course. How fortunate I am to meet you.”
There was no threat in the words.
That was part of what made them dangerous.
Honora inclined her head. “My lady.”
Lady Isolde’s gaze moved to Cecily at once. “And this must be the baby everyone has been talking about.”
Cecily, bright-eyed and curious, stared back at her with complete indifference.
Leopold said, “Her name is Cecily.”
“Of course,” Lady Isolde said lightly. “Forgive me.”
She stepped farther into the room with Leopold close behind and looked around the nursery as if she were considering it with genuine interest. Her expression was pleasant, and not once did she glance at Honora in the way the dowager sometimes did.
There was no suspicion in her face. No challenge. Only a sort of easy, polished warmth.
That, Honora thought, was worse.
Lady Isolde looked at Cecily again. “May I?”
Honora hesitated just a moment before lifting the baby into her arms, and then, after another polite glance, passed her over.
Lady Isolde took Cecily without hesitation.
It was a small thing, but Honora noticed it. The certainty, the confidence, the assumption that the child would come when asked.
Cecily blinked at her, then reached for the ribbon on Lady Isolde’s sleeve.
Lady Isolde laughed under her breath and adjusted her hold with practiced ease. “What a sweet child.”
Honora said nothing.
Lady Isolde’s attention stayed on Cecily for a moment longer, then she handed her back and stepped away without comment. “She has very good color.”
Leopold’s face remained composed, but Honora saw the faintest shift in his jaw.
Lady Isolde did not ask about Honora’s background, about references, about how long she had worked there, or where she had come from, or why she seemed to know Cecily so well.
Honora understood at once that she was not threatened by the nursemaid because the nursemaid was staff, and Lady Isolde was about to be the duchess.
She treated Honora with the polite warmth of someone who had already decided where everyone belonged and was comfortable with the arrangement.
That should not have unsettled her as much as it did.
Lady Isolde smiled again. “You must be very devoted to the child.”
Honora answered carefully. “Yes, my lady.”
“How fortunate for her.”
Leopold looked from one woman to the other, saying nothing. His expression had gone very still.
Then someone called him from downstairs. Mrs. Pritchard, perhaps. A groom. Honora did not hear the name.
“Lord Belgrave?” a voice called from the hall.
Leopold glanced toward the door. “Excuse me.”
“Of course,” Lady Isolde said.
He left the room at once.
The change in Lady Isolde was immediate and so slight that only someone watching closely would have noticed it; the pleasant expression remained.
But it thinned.
She looked at the baby once more, then turned that same polished attention back to Honora. “How long have you been with the household?”
Honora kept her face calm. “A little while, my lady.”
“And before that?”
“Here and there.”
Lady Isolde nodded, as if that answer suited her entirely.
Then, with the sort of calm Honora found more dangerous than cruelty, she said, “You manage the child very well.”
Honora said nothing.
Lady Isolde’s smile returned. “Belgrave is fortunate.”
A moment later she turned toward the nursery window as if the question had already been settled and there was no reason to pursue it further.
Honora watched her go, and when she looked back, she understood something that had not been clear at the beginning.
This woman was dangerous.
Not because she was cruel, not because she was cold.
Because she was comfortable.
Comfortable with the house, with being there, with Leopold, with the child, with the whole arrangement, as if she had already accepted the part she was meant to play.
That was dangerous for Cecily.
Not for Honora.
She knew that much at once.
When Lady Isolde left the room with Leopold still outside, Honora stood in the nursery doorway. She watched her go down the corridor, tall and elegant and entirely certain of herself.
She did not like the feeling that settled in her chest as she watched.
It was not jealousy.
Not exactly.
It was fear.
***
That night Honora woke before dawn from a dream so vivid it left her with tears she had not realized she was crying.
Celestine was in it.
A garden.
Bright light.
The two of them sitting side by side the way they used to when they were younger and the world had not yet split. Celestine had been saying something. Honora could not hear the words. She had woken before she could.
What remained was the sound of Celestine laughing.
Not a memory of the laugh.
The sound itself.
It stopped Honora in the dark.
She lay very still, staring at the ceiling, and listened to the quiet of the room around her while the dream slipped away piece by piece.
Four months.
She had not heard that laugh in four months. She rose quietly so she would not wake Cecily, lighting the smallest lamp she could manage before sitting at the little table with a sheet of paper and the pen she had begun to keep there.
The letter came slowly at first.
Dear Celestine,
I dreamed of you tonight.
She paused. Then she put quill to paper again.
We were in the garden. I could not hear what you were saying, only that you were saying something to me and laughing. I woke before I could hear the rest.
Honora stopped for a moment and looked at the page through a blur she did not bother to wipe away.
Then she continued.
I have not heard you laugh in four months, and I think I forgot how much I miss it until now.
The words sat on the page longer than she wanted. She had been writing to her sister since the day Celestine died. Though no one would ever read them, it helped her work through her feelings and think more clearly. At least, it usually did.
Still, she wrote.
I still have not been able to make myself take Cecily and leave.
There is a woman at Belgrave now who has come to court the duke. Her name is Lady Isolde Carrington. She is very beautiful and very sure of herself. She belongs to the house in a way I do not.
Honora paused and stared at that line for a long time.
I thought I would be relieved when he married.
The pen hovered.
She set it down for a heartbeat, then picked it up again.
I am not.
She folded the letter carefully when it was finished and placed it with the others in the lining of her bag.
Then she sat on the edge of the bed and remained still for a long time, staring into the darkness.
Cecily made a small sound down the corridor.
Honora rose at once.
It was not yet a cry. Only the faint beginning of one.
She crossed to the nursery door and opened it, listening.
The sound came again.
A little louder that time.
Honora stepped in and stopped.
Cecily was stirring in her crib, her face flushed beneath the blanket.
Honora touched her forehead and felt the heat at once.
Her breath caught.
Then Cecily gave a small, unhappy cry.
Honora bent down and lifted her into her arms.
The baby was warm.
Too warm.
Honora stood very still in the dim nursery and felt the night settle around her in a single hard moment.
Then Cecily whimpered again, and Honora turned toward the door.
She was already moving when the worry fully took shape.
That night Cecily ran a fever.