Chapter 7 #2
His absence altered the room more than Margaret wished to admit. Guests looked toward the doors whenever carriage wheels stopped outside. Those who had come to see a disputed duke supporting wounded soldiers found an estate manager in moss-green wool telling them where to put their wet gloves.
She had selected the gown because it was warmer than gray, practical beneath ballroom lamps, and sufficiently well cut to prevent anyone calling her neglected. Its sleeves allowed movement, its hem cleared the repaired boards, and its color had no meaning beyond the fact that she owned it.
Three different women had already called it becoming.
Margaret suspected becoming was the word society used when a woman’s clothing threatened to suggest an interior life.
Thomas approached the dais carrying his notes in both hands. His dark coat had been brushed until the cloth shone at the seams, and his cravat sat straight despite the effort of climbing the repaired stair from the writing room.
“Five minutes,” Margaret said. “You may shorten the account if the room grows noisy.”
“It is already noisy.”
“Then you are permitted to improve it.”
He looked toward the gathered donors. “I would rather copy every speech afterward.”
“You may stop before or during it.”
“I know.”
“Sarah has water beside the lectern.”
“I know that also.”
Margaret recognized the quiet strain beneath his patience. She lowered her voice. “Do you wish me to remove your name from the roster?”
Thomas looked down at the careful pages. His penmanship remained exact even where revisions crowded the margins.
“No. I wish the people at the back to stop watching me as though I am about to provide music.”
“You were a bugler.”
“I was also eleven once. I do not intend to demonstrate either condition.”
Margaret’s mouth curved. “Then tell them what you chose.”
He nodded and climbed the two steps to the dais.
The room did not quiet.
A cabinet sale near the east wall had drawn a cluster of bidders. The patroness with the gratitude plan was explaining the ward display incorrectly to a banker’s wife. Two reporters stood close enough to Thomas to make every breath look like testimony.
Margaret moved toward the musicians and signaled them to stop tuning. Joseph struck the floor once with the end of his walking stick.
The sound carried.
Thomas set his papers upon the lectern. “My name is Thomas Bevan. I keep portions of the workshop accounts, copy trust correspondence when authorized, and prepare invoices for work completed in the House.”
His voice reached the first rows and failed before the last.
A cough interrupted the second sentence. Thomas turned his head into a folded handkerchief and waited for it to pass. The ballroom observed him with the dreadful attentiveness polite people offered when they wished to prove discomfort had not disturbed them.
Someone near the ward display whispered.
Thomas looked down at his pages. His next breath came shallowly. Margaret saw his fingers shift along the edge of the lectern, not searching for words but for the place from which to deliver them.
The principal doors opened.
Henry entered with Dyer behind him and a House servant carrying a leather dispatch case. Rain had darkened the shoulders of Henry’s coat. His limp showed more clearly than it had that morning, though his pace did not alter when the room turned toward him.
The attention that had pressed upon Thomas moved at once to the duke.
Henry stopped inside the doors, understood the arrangement, and did not advance to claim it.
The patroness hurried toward him. “Your Grace, Mr. Bevan was just telling us—”
“Then I should hear him.”
Henry crossed the ballroom while the guests parted. His gaze went to Thomas, then to Margaret, who indicated the dais with one small movement of her hand.
A chair had been reserved upon it for Henry.
He did not take it.
Instead, he climbed the first step, moved the chair away from the lectern, and descended again. He stood at the side of the dais where Thomas could see him without having to look past him.
The room waited for the duke to speak.
Henry said nothing.
Thomas looked at him.
Henry’s public face remained controlled, but his position answered what his silence did not. He would not lend Thomas rank by standing before him or take pressure away by taking the words. He simply remained where the room could not ignore that he was listening.
Thomas drew another breath.
“My work at Waterloo House is not given to occupy me,” he said. His voice was still light but carried farther because the room had finally earned quiet. “It is work for which customers pay, when customers remember that invoices are not expressions of hope.”
A few people laughed. Thomas allowed them to finish.
He described the writing desks, workshop contracts, copied pension inquiries, and the system by which men who chose to work received wages entered separately from lodging and food.
He did not mention the battle that had damaged his lungs.
He did not offer gratitude. He explained that beautiful penmanship did not cause officials to answer quickly, but it prevented them claiming they could not read the question.
When his breath shortened, he drank water and continued.
Henry remained beside the dais.
Margaret watched guests alter under the pressure of ordinary detail.
The banker’s wife who had wanted a patient to admire began asking about paid orders.
A gentleman near the sale tables examined a writing desk’s joints rather than the carpenter’s missing limb.
One reporter crossed out several lines and began again.
Thomas finished with the current contract list and the amount due upon completion. His closing words were not stirring. They were the dates by which three customers had promised payment.
The applause began uncertainly and became respectable when Lady Georgiana made refusal socially dangerous.
Thomas gathered his papers. Henry offered no arm and no congratulation audible to the room. He moved aside so Thomas could descend at his own pace, then asked quietly, “Where do you want the pages?”
“With Margaret.”
Henry carried them to her.
“They belong in the account box after the assembly,” she said.
“Thomas instructed me to give them to you.”
“Then you have followed the chain admirably.”
He looked at her for one beat longer than the remark required. Rain still shone along the short side-whiskers near his ears, and his scar appeared pale against the cold color in his face.
“You have three reporters,” he said.
“We invited one.”
“An encouraging rate of increase.”
“Not if they consume supper.”
His gaze travelled over the ballroom, taking in exits, residents, patrons, furniture, and the subscription slate. “What has changed?”
“Two subscriptions withdrawn. Lord Wexham’s received. Four workshop pieces sold. The room is interested and preparing to leave before interest becomes expensive.”
Henry looked toward the front hall.
Margaret followed his attention. Near the principal doors, servants had begun returning cloaks to several guests who had planned to remain through the concert.
The title gossip had done what Croft’s closure schedule could not: made sympathy cautious.
People would admire the House until support threatened to associate their names with a disputed duke and a marriage described in drawing rooms as administrative desperation.
Joseph was preparing the first auction lot, a pair of dining chairs. His expression suggested that anyone who offered less than the timber cost would be invited to sit upon the floor.
The musicians lifted their instruments.
“Begin the auction now,” Margaret said. “Once the guests reach the hall, we lose them.”
“They will not hear Joseph over the cloakroom.”
“They will hear a duke.”
Henry’s expression hardened. “You want me to call them back.”
“No. They expect you to speak. If you do, they will listen to your title and forget the chairs.”
“What do you propose?”
Margaret looked at the central floor.
The new boards formed a pale track through the darker oak. She knew which joins had been reinforced, which portion near the east carpet remained uneven, and where Joseph had marked one doubtful edge beneath a pot of rosemary because high society respected foliage more readily than chalk.
“Dance,” she said.
Henry looked at the floor, then at her. “That is your administrative remedy?”
“It is a ballroom.”
“I had noticed the chandeliers.”
“The room is waiting to decide whether it is an institution or an entertainment. We shall make it both.”
His attention moved to the musicians. “My knee will manage one measure.”
“And your shoulder?”
“It has been manageable today.”
“That is not a quantity.”
“One dance,” he said. “No lifting, no ambitious turns, and no attempt by the musicians to conquer Europe.”
Margaret studied his stance. He had arrived from Rothbury House after meetings with Dyer, travelled in the rain, and crossed the ballroom without seeking a chair.
The left knee was stiff but bearing weight.
His right shoulder sat lower beneath the cut of his coat, though no tremor showed in the arm.
“You tell me if it changes,” she said.
“Yes.”
She signaled the musicians.
The first violinist understood faster than the donors. He drew his bow across the strings and began a slow waltz. The other instruments joined, the melody expanding beneath the voices until the ballroom noticed what had happened.
Henry removed his gloves.
He offered Margaret his left hand rather than the right, making the accommodation appear deliberate enough that no one could mistake it for weakness. She placed her hand in his and stepped onto the repaired floor.
A murmur passed through the room.