Chapter 13
“You’re early,” Beatrice noted, appearing in the doorway before the butler had quite finished announcing them, as if she had been listening for the carriage from somewhere upstairs and had decided not to pretend otherwise.
She looked at Cecily first—the quick, searching look of a sister taking inventory—and then at William, and then back at Cecily with a look that said very clearly, We will talk later.
“We made good time,” Cecily said.
“You are never early. You were late to your own–” Beatrice stopped. Glanced at William. Reconsidered. “You were late to a great many things growing up.”
“The roads were clear,” Cecily said firmly.
William had removed his hat and was handing it to the footman. He turned to Beatrice and inclined his head. “Duchess. Thank you for having us.”
Beatrice looked at him, then smiled. “Come in. Edward is in the study and will emerge shortly, which in Edward’s language means approximately twenty minutes. Tea is in the drawing room.”
Edward emerged in fourteen minutes, which Beatrice later said was a personal record and which Cecily attributed entirely to curiosity.
He was a large, composed man and undeniably handsome, something Society had spent several seasons remarking upon before he married Beatrice. He wore consequence lightly, the way people did when they had never had to put it on deliberately.
He shook William’s hand, looked at him for a moment, and said, “Blackmoor. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
“I imagine you have,” William returned.
“Some of it from the papers.” Edward settled into the chair across from him. “Rather more from my lovely wife, who has strong opinions about most things and has not exempted you from them.”
“Edward,” Beatrice warned.
“That was a compliment, my love,” Edward said mildly. “Strong opinions are the mark of a person paying attention.” He looked at William. “I understand you’ve been managing your estate since you were nineteen.”
“Since I was eighteen, effectively. The title came at nineteen.”
“That’s a significant acreage for a young man to inherit mid-season.”
“It was March,” William clarified. “Which helped. The drainage trouble waited until April.”
Edward looked at him for a moment. Then he laughed, which made his face look younger than it had a moment before.
“The drainage problems. Yes. I inherited a flooding problem in the east field that my father had apparently been negotiating with for thirty years.” He reached for his tea. “What did you do about yours?”
Cecily settled back in her chair and let the conversation carry on without her, though she was conscious of Beatrice’s gaze on her, which meant she wanted to talk.
“… redirected the overflow channel,” William was saying. “The original design had been routing water toward the lower field, which solved one problem and created another every time we had a wet autumn. It took two seasons to get right.”
“Two seasons is remarkably fast,” Edward remarked. “Mine took four, and I had the benefit of a steward who’d been on the land for thirty years.”
“I have a steward who’d been on the land thirty years,” William said. “He had very strong feelings about the original design and took the redirection as a personal criticism.”
“Did he come round eventually?”
“He is doing a fantastic job,” William said. “The best man I have on ground.”
Edward’s mouth curved. “And the tenants? A change of title at your age—that’s not always a smooth transition.”
“No,” William agreed. “It isn’t. The first year was largely spent convincing people that I intended to stay, which sounds simple and isn’t.
A young duke in London is one thing. A young duke who appears at your gate in November to discuss the state of your cottage roof is something else.
” He paused. “I made a great many unannounced visits that first year.”
“Did it work?”
“Eventually. There was a tenant in the northern field, a man named Garret, who’d been on the land since my grandfather’s time.
He didn’t trust me. He told me so directly, which I respected.
I asked him what would change his mind. He said, come back in five years and I’ll tell you.
” He picked up his tea. “I went back every month for a year instead. At the end of it, he said that wasn’t what he’d meant, but it would do. ”
Edward studied him. Cecily, who had been listening with one ear while appearing to examine the pattern on her teacup, looked up without thinking and found Beatrice watching her with the expression she wore when she was trying very hard not to look pleased about something.
Cecily returned her attention to her teacup.
Edward nodded and reached for the plate of biscuits, and the conversation moved on to the politics of the autumn session in Parliament.
Cecily found herself genuinely listening now, not as a courtesy but because William spoke about the reform proposals with the same directness he brought to everything—no performance of opinion, no positioning, simply what he thought and why he thought it.
He was wrong about one thing, which she filed away carefully for a later conversation, and right about two others in ways she hadn’t anticipated.
“You don’t support the measure?” Edward asked.
“I support the principle,” William replied.
“The measure as written has three provisions that will create the precise problem it’s attempting to solve, which suggests the people who drafted it did not speak to the people it will affect.
” He set down his cup. “I generally find that to be the central difficulty with well-intentioned legislation.”
“And the poorly-intentioned kind?”
“At least that has the honesty of clear motivation,” William said. “The well-intentioned kind tends to be surprised by its own consequences.”
Edward looked at him with an expression that Cecily had only seen him direct at three people in her acquaintance: Beatrice, his closest friend Sebastian, and the man he considered the best legal mind in the House of Lords.
She stored this information quietly and said nothing.
The door opened.
Eloise arrived ahead of her nurse in the manner of a person who considered being escorted a suggestion.
She was three years old, dark-haired, with her father’s smile and her mother’s eyes and the expression of someone conducting a formal inspection of her own drawing room.
She surveyed the room with the comprehensive attention of a general reviewing unfamiliar terrain.
She looked at her mother and moved on. When she got to Cecily, she studied her briefly, apparently found her acceptable, and moved on. Once her gaze landed on William, she stopped.
William looked back at her with the same seriousness with which she was looking at him, as though they had arrived at a mutual understanding that this was a meeting of equals and neither of them was going to be condescending about it.
She crossed the room, placed both hands on his knee, and climbed up with efficient confidence. She settled herself, smoothed her skirt in an unconscious echo of her mother, and looked up at him with the air of a woman who had taken a seat at a table and was ready to begin.
William had gone very still. Then, carefully, as though handling something that required more delicacy than an estate or a parliamentary debate, he said, “Good afternoon.”
Eloise looked at him. She was doing the thorough, unblinking assessment that very small children did before they had learned that it made adults uncomfortable—taking in his face, his coat, his general dimensions with the focused patience of someone who intended to reach a conclusion and was not going to be rushed.
William waited. He did not smile encouragingly. He did not make the face that most adults made at small children. He simply waited, as though he had all the time in the world and she was welcome to use it.
“Hello,” Eloise said, finally.
“Hello,” he returned. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“I live here,” she said, which she clearly felt was the most relevant credential.
“That explains it. I’ve only just arrived.” He looked around the room with the same assessing expression she’d been using on him. “It’s a very good drawing room.”
Eloise looked around too, as though seeing it fresh through his eyes. “Papa chose the curtains.”
“Did he?”
“Mama says they are too dark, but Papa says they are dig—ni—dignified.”
“They are both correct,” William allowed. “Dark and dignified are not mutually exclusive.”
Eloise considered this with genuine seriousness. “What does exclusive mean?”
“It means two things that cannot exist in the same place. Like being indoors and outdoors at the same time.”
“You can stand in the doorway,” she pointed out immediately.
“You’re right,” William relented. “And the curtains are dark and dignified.”
Eloise looked satisfied. She settled more firmly against his arm, apparently having decided the debate was resolved in her favor, which it was. “Do you have a dog?”
“I don’t.”
“We have a dog. Horatio.”
“After the admiral?”
She blinked at him. “He is brown.”
“Of course,” William said. “My mistake.”
Cecily pressed two fingers briefly against her mouth. Across the room, Edward had found something extremely interesting to look at on the ceiling.
“Is he a good dog?”
Eloise thought about this with visible effort, the particular honesty of a child weighing something properly. “Mostly. He ate Papa’s glove.”
“Oh.”
Eloise looked at her father, then at William. “Are you a solicitor?”
“No. A duke.”
She absorbed this. “Papa is a duke.”
“I know. We have that in common, your father and I. That and an appreciation for well-appointed drawing rooms.”
“And dogs?”
“He has one advantage over me in that respect,” William said. “Though I am open to reconsidering.”
Cecily looked at him. He was looking at Eloise, his expression composed and serious and entirely without the performance of a man trying to be charming, which was, she was finding, considerably more effective than charm.