Chapter Five
The book lay open on Petalia’s coverlet when the sound woke her.
She had been reading Robinson Crusoe by candlelight long after she ought to have slept, partly because Declan had left the volume on the schoolroom table with a studied carelessness too deliberate to be accidental, and partly because she had wanted to know whether the storehouse might truly be placed too near the creek.
She had reached one of Mr Crusoe’s many inventories of tools and provisions when the sound reached her window.
Metal struck stone.
Petalia opened her eyes fully and lay still.
For a moment, there was nothing but the low breathing of the house at night, the faint settling of old timber, and the whisper of wind against the glass. Then the sound came again, slower this time. Metal against stone, followed by the scrape of earth.
She sat up.
Her room was dark except for the last weak glow of the candle she had forgotten to snuff.
The book slid towards her lap. She marked the page with a ribbon, though she could not have said why order mattered when someone appeared to be digging outside at an hour decent people reserved for sleep, illness, or regret.
Another scrape.
Petalia left the bed and crossed to the window.
She drew the curtain back only a little.
Below, beyond the pale stretch of lawn, a lantern burnt near the far edge of the garden.
Its light shifted with the wind, revealing a figure bent over some labour near what she remembered from the afternoon as an overgrown rose bed.
Her first instinct was to fetch someone.
Her second, arriving almost at once, was less useful.
She did not know whom to fetch. Mrs Holroyd slept in the far wing.
The footmen were housed somewhere below stairs, but Petalia had not yet learnt which door belonged to them.
The Duke’s valet was no more approachable than the Duke himself, and waking a household on the strength of a lantern in the garden seemed a fine way to establish herself as both timid and troublesome before her first week had properly begun.
The sound came again.
She wrapped her shawl over her nightdress, pushed her feet into boots, and took up the candle before remembering the absurdity of carrying a candle towards a lantern already burning outside. She set it down again, opened her door, and stepped into the corridor.
The house at night felt like an entirely different residence from the one she had crossed by day.
The walls seemed farther apart and the portraits less willing to be ignored.
Petalia moved quietly, one hand brushing the rail as she took the back stairs down.
A long-case clock in the lower hall ticked with theatrical importance, as if determined to announce that anyone awake at this hour must answer for it.
At the garden door, she paused, listening.
Metal. Stone. Earth.
She opened the door and stepped out.
Cold met her immediately. It went through the shawl, beneath the hem of her nightdress, and into the damp leather of her boots before she had crossed half the lawn.
The grass was wet enough to drag at her hem and darken the leather, but she kept moving, careful not to hurry and risk a fall.
The lantern grew clearer. The figure beside it straightened, bent, and drove the spade into the ground again.
Only when she was within ten paces did she recognise the coat.
Within five, she recognised the man.
The Duke of Ashbourne stood in the ruined rose bed with a spade in his hand and earth on his boots, his knees, and one sleeve.
His scarf hung loose at his collar rather than concealing his jaw, and the lantern under-lit the scar in a way daylight never had.
His hair had fallen across his forehead.
He looked less like a duke than a man caught in battle with the ground and unwilling to admit the ground had the better argument.
A wheelbarrow stood nearby, half-filled with roots and thorny stems.
Petalia stopped. She had not made any sound she was aware of, but he straightened before she spoke, as if the night itself had betrayed her.
“Miss Winthrop,” he said.
It was not a question. It was closer to an accusation.
Petalia gathered the shawl more tightly around herself. “Your Grace.”
His gaze moved from her uncovered hair to the shawl, then to the wet grass around her boots. “You should be indoors.”
“I heard a noise and thought something might be wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong.”
The words were plainly meant to send her away. Petalia had managed difficult children all day and found, to her private irritation, that difficult dukes employed many of the same tactics with more expensive boots.
“Then I am glad of it,” she said, inclining her head. “Good night, Your Grace.”
She turned back towards the house.
She had gone perhaps four paces when his voice reached her again. “Why are you awake, Miss Winthrop?”
Petalia stopped. She did not turn fully around, because doing so would suggest she had been summoned, and she had not yet agreed to be obedient in the garden at one in the morning.
“The sound woke me,” she said. “And I had slept badly already. The evening tea does not agree with me.”
“The tea?”
“Bohea, I think. Excellent, I am sure, for stronger constitutions.”
There was a pause long enough for her to wish she had said less. He stood in the lantern light with both hands resting on the spade, his face unreadable except for the hard set of his mouth.
“You came into the garden because of the tea?”
“No, Your Grace. I came into the garden because I heard metal striking stone, saw a lantern moving among the roses, and briefly thought it might be an intruder.”
“There is no intruder.”
“So I see.”
“Then you may go in.”
Petalia hesitated. The roses around him had been cut down brutally, not pruned. Several bushes lay uprooted, their pale roots exposed. The bed must once have been orderly, perhaps even beautiful, but neglect had turned it into a tangle and his labour had turned the tangle into a wound.
“Were they diseased?” she asked.
His grip shifted on the spade. “What?”
“The roses. Were they diseased?”
“They were dead.”
Not all of them, she thought, but she did not say it. A few stems still showed life. Even in the uncertain lantern light, she could see it.
“I am sorry,” she said instead.
His expression hardened. “For the roses?”
“For whatever made it necessary to dig them up after midnight.”
The words had gone too far. She knew it at once. Ashbourne’s face closed so completely that she might as well have watched a door barred from the inside.
“Go indoors, Miss Winthrop. You will catch your death.”
The phrase, ordinary as it was, landed strangely after Mary’s question that afternoon. Petalia folded her shawl closer.
“I shall make every reasonable effort not to.”
“Begin by leaving the wet grass.”
“Good night, Your Grace.”
This time, he did not call her back.
She crossed the lawn, cold and embarrassed and annoyed with herself for having said more than prudence required. At the garden door, she looked back once. He had returned to the work. The spade rose and fell. The lantern threw his shadow long across the torn bed.
Petalia went inside.
She was back in her bed by ten minutes to two, though sleep did not return at once. The Robinson Crusoe volume lay on the coverlet beside her. She opened it, read the same paragraph three times without understanding a word, and closed it again.
She decided she was shaking from the cold. It was the simplest explanation and made no demands upon her honesty.
The next morning, Mary noticed at once.
“You look tired,” she said, climbing into her chair with a piece of toast in her hand and suspicion in every line of her small body.
“That is because I slept badly.”
“Why?”
“Because I woke and then failed to improve the situation.”
Mary considered this. “I wake sometimes.”
“Many people do.”
“Declan reads when he wakes.”
Declan, who had just entered with the day’s Latin grammar beneath one arm, looked at his sister with betrayal.
Petalia set Robinson Crusoe on the desk. “So do I, on occasion. I borrowed this from the schoolroom last night. I hope I have not violated island law.”
Declan’s gaze fixed on the book. “You read it?”
“A little. Mr Crusoe was taking inventory with great seriousness.”
“The tools matter.”
“So I am beginning to understand.”
Mary bit into her toast. “It is a stupid book.”
Declan looked at the desk. “It is practical,” he said quietly, as if testing whether the words would be permitted to remain.
Petalia opened the grammar to the marked page and did not look too pleased.
“A useful distinction. We shall see whether Latin can make itself equally practical this morning. The first sentence appears to have defeated at least two previous pupils, judging by the ink blot.”
Declan sat.
Mary leant forward. “Was Papa awake last night?”
Petalia’s hand paused only slightly over the page. “Why do you ask?”
“Because the garden door stuck this morning, and Pritchard said it was the damp, but it only sticks when someone has used it after dark.”
Declan looked at her. Mary did not. She watched Petalia, waiting.
“I do not know all the habits of the house yet,” Petalia said. “If the door troubles the servants, I imagine they will report it.”
“Papa goes out sometimes.”
“Does he?”
“Mary,” Declan said quietly.
She scowled at him. “He does. You know he does.”
Petalia moved Robinson Crusoe within Declan’s reach. “Then perhaps His Grace enjoys fresh air, as I suspect we all might if the weather permits. For now, Lord Declan, Latin. Lady Mary, copywork. No one is required to discuss garden doors before breakfast has properly settled.”
Mary looked as if she might argue, but the return to ordinary lessons seemed to steal the force from her curiosity. She dragged her slate closer and began drawing a ship in the margin instead of letters.
Petalia allowed the ship for several minutes. Then she said, “That vessel will sail better if its mast is straight.”
Mary looked up. “You said copywork.”