Chapter Two
The Duke of Ashbourne had been in his study for forty-three minutes, and every one of those minutes had been an argument against going downstairs.
The argument was not improving with repetition.
He stood near the window with one shoulder angled towards the glass, watching rain thread down the panes and gather in the dark lines of the garden below.
He had no interest in the garden. He had no interest in the correspondence spread open on his desk.
He had even less interest in the voices that had risen from the hall shortly after ten o’clock, one belonging unmistakably to his aunt and the other carrying a cadence he had heard once before in a wet passage off Gable Lane.
Miss Petalia Winthrop had used the card.
That should not have surprised him. She had not looked like a woman easily turned aside by embarrassment.
Still, when he had written his aunt’s address on the back of the card four days earlier, some unreasonable part of him had relied upon the world’s usual inefficiency.
He had expected the card to be mislaid, or the rain to spoil it, or pride to keep her from presenting herself at a Mayfair door with a borrowed recommendation and damp courage.
Instead, she was in his drawing room.
A knock sounded at the study door.
Ashbourne did not turn. “No.”
After a careful pause, Bellamy’s voice came through the wood. “Your Grace, I have not yet stated my errand.”
“You are on my aunt’s business, which means the answer is no.”
“Her Ladyship anticipated that possibility.”
“Of course she did. My aunt has never met a refusal she did not consider a temporary misunderstanding.”
“She asked me to inquire whether Your Grace intends to join her in the drawing room.”
“Tell Lady Maria I am engaged.”
“I believe she anticipated that also.”
Ashbourne turned from the window. “Bellamy, if you continue to bring me anticipated responses, I shall begin to doubt the usefulness of having a door between us.”
“Her Ladyship did say, Your Grace, that if you were engaged, she would be happy to come up and admire the object of your engagement herself.”
“That is not admiration. That is siegecraft.”
“I could not presume to define Her Ladyship’s methods.”
“You define nothing when courage is required. It is one of your most consistent qualities.”
“I have always considered consistency a virtue in service, Your Grace.”
Ashbourne crossed the room and stopped short of opening the door. Bellamy had served his family for nearly twenty years and had perfected the art of delivering domestic threats in tones suitable for announcing tea.
“Who is with her?” Ashbourne asked.
Another pause followed, smaller and more revealing than Bellamy likely intended.
“A Miss Winthrop, Your Grace.”
“I did not ask for the name.”
“No, Your Grace.”
“You gave it with a certain weight.”
“I gave it because it was the answer.”
“Do not become clever, Bellamy. I am not in the mood.”
“As you wish, Your Grace.”
Ashbourne opened the door at last. Bellamy stood in the corridor, perfectly composed, his silver hair immaculate, his expression arranged into the particular blankness that meant he knew far more than he intended to reveal.
“What does my aunt want with Miss Winthrop?” Ashbourne asked.
Bellamy lowered his eyes with exquisite caution. “I believe Her Ladyship wishes to explain the matter herself.”
“Which means you know.”
“I know only what has been discussed below stairs and in the drawing room.”
“That is another way of saying you know everything.”
“It is another way of saying, Your Grace, that I have learnt which explanations are mine to give and which are not.”
Ashbourne gave him a flat look. “You are enjoying this.”
“No, Your Grace.”
“You hesitated.”
“Only to prevent myself from denying it too quickly.”
Against his will, Ashbourne nearly smiled. The danger passed. “Tell my aunt I will come down presently.”
“Very good, Your Grace.”
Bellamy reached the door.
“She did instruct me to say that, should you delay too long, she reserves the right to come up herself.”
“Bellamy.”
“Your Grace.”
“You are dismissed.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
The butler bowed and withdrew. Ashbourne shut the door, but not before hearing the measured retreat of Bellamy’s steps and, from below, the faint sound of his aunt’s voice carrying upward as if walls had been invented for less determined women.
He returned to the window.
Miss Winthrop had found his aunt. The fact ought not to have concerned him. He had sent a desperate woman to Lady Maria Fenwick and told himself it was not a recommendation. It had been a convenient fiction.
In truth, he had been moved by a single word.
Inconvenience.
He disliked the memory as soon as it entered him, but memory did not obey rank.
His late wife had used that word once, pale and exhausted and trying to smile through pain he had been too young, too arrogant, and too frightened to understand.
She had called the labour an inconvenience, as if minimising it could spare him terror.
By morning, she was dead, and the word had remained lodged somewhere in him like a splinter no physician could extract.
Then, four days ago, in a wet passage, Miss Winthrop had used the same word to describe the collapse of her prospects, and Ashbourne had done what he had spent years training himself not to do.
He had interfered.
There was a second knock.
“I have already said I would come down presently,” he called.
The door opened anyway.
Lady Maria Fenwick entered with the unhurried confidence of a woman who considered closed doors a courtesy extended to weaker opponents.
She was small, silver-haired, and dressed in dove grey, with a lace cap tied beneath her chin and an expression that had defeated more capable men than her nephew.
“You are hiding,” she said.
“I am working.”
Lady Maria glanced at the untouched correspondence. “You are hiding.”
Ashbourne set down his pen. “Miss Winthrop is downstairs.”
“Yes.”
“You have already interviewed her.”
Lady Maria settled into a chair. “Yes.”
He looked at her. “You move quickly.”
“You sent her to me.”
“I sent her to you because she needed help.”
“And she does.”
“Aunt.”
“We are in need of a governess. She is in need of employment. I fail to see the difficulty.”
Ashbourne exhaled. “You have known her for a morning.”
“So have you.”
That was irritatingly difficult to dispute. He frowned. “You have already decided.”
“No. I have formed an encouraging preliminary opinion.”
“That is merely a longer way of saying the same thing.”
“Not at all. If I had decided, she would already be employed.”
Ashbourne looked away. “She would be responsible for Mary and Declan.”
“Yes.”
The single word carried more weight than a paragraph.
Lady Maria rose. “Which is why I should like you to meet her.”
“I have met her.”
“You met a woman in distress.”
Lady Maria moved towards the door.
“Come downstairs.”
“I said I would.”
Lady Maria opened the door.
“Does Miss Winthrop know what she is walking into?” he asked.
She paused. “She knows the children have had difficulties with previous staff.”
“That is a polished phrase.”
“I am a polished woman.”
“Does she know Mary may bite?”
“I told her Mary may resist discipline.”
“Did you mention the teeth?”
“Not as a central feature of the position, no.”
Despite himself, he exhaled something close to a laugh. “You have deceived her.”
“I have not deceived her. I have merely allowed her to meet the household before furnishing her with every alarming anecdote. Had I begun with teeth, locked schoolroom doors, and Declan disappearing beneath the pianoforte for half an afternoon, she might have left before tea.”
“A sensible woman might still leave after tea.”
“Then you had better come downstairs before the tea cools and she remembers she is sensible.”
He studied his aunt. “You truly think she can manage them?”
“I think she will see them. Not as problems to be corrected and not as tragic ornaments in a ducal household. As children. That is rarer than it ought to be.”
“You gathered all that from one morning?”
“I gathered it from the way she spoke of losing her mother’s hairpin.”
Ashbourne stilled.
Lady Maria’s expression softened. “I gathered it also from the way she listened, Edmund. There are people who merely wait for their turn to speak, and there are people who hear. Miss Winthrop hears. Your children need that more than they need French verbs, though I hope she will provide those as well.”
He rubbed a hand across his brow. “This is madness.”
“It is employment. The two are frequently confused in aristocratic households.” She paused. Then, after a while: “Come, Edmund. You need only meet her. You are a duke. Surely you can survive a governess for a quarter of an hour.”
“That depends on the governess.”
“This one has already survived you in a passage, which recommends her strongly.”
He shook his head, but crossed the room at last.
Lady Maria’s smile went unseen as they left together.
***
The walk downstairs felt longer than it had any right to be. Bellamy appeared at the foot of the staircase with an expression of profound professional innocence, which fooled no one.
“The drawing room, Your Grace,” he said.
“I know, Bellamy.”
Bellamy opened the drawing-room door.
Miss Winthrop stood near the hearth, not sitting despite the chair placed beside her.
She wore a dark gown brushed carefully into respectability, and her hair had been pinned with plain neatness.
Without the rain, the ruined boot, and the shock of the passage, she looked less like a woman rescued from misfortune and more like what she must have been before the theft interrupted her life, a governess of experience, self-command, and very little tolerance for foolishness dressed as authority.
She turned as they entered.
Recognition moved across her face in a single controlled flicker. It was there and gone quickly enough that anyone less attentive might have missed it. Ashbourne did not miss it. Neither, he suspected, did his aunt.