Chapter Seven
Edmund had always disliked cheerful houses.
That was not, he thought, a confession likely to recommend him to any clergyman, aunt, governess, housekeeper, or sentimental woman with a fondness for embroidered cushions and open curtains.
Still, it was true enough to require no ornament.
Cheerful houses had expectations. They invited people to linger in doorways, to speak without purpose, to ask after one another’s mornings as if mornings were not largely private burdens endured until luncheon.
Wrenfield had not been cheerful in years, and Edmund had learnt to prefer it that way.
The house had been quiet, watchful, and obedient to grief.
Its servants moved softly. Its doors closed without fuss.
The nursery corridor existed at a remove from him, which he had told himself was for the children’s stability, though the lie had become thinner with age.
The schoolroom had been a place of noise, certainly, but contained noise, with Mary screaming, a governess pleading, Declan silent with the kind of silence that accused no one and excused no one either.
Now the house was altering itself.
Not greatly. Not enough that a guest would have named it.
There were no fresh flowers in the hall, no sudden music, no laughter at breakfast that lasted long enough to be trusted.
Yet the servants no longer approached the schoolroom corridor as though expecting musket fire.
Mrs Holroyd had not reported bloodshed in eleven days.
Pritchard, who had once carried schoolroom messages with the solemnity of a man delivering news from a battlefield, had this morning referred to Lady Mary’s copybook as “improved” and had done so without checking whether the ceiling might fall upon him for optimism.
More disconcerting still, Declan had asked for something at breakfast without first being pressed to speak.
Edmund had not been present. He had been in the estate room with Mr Vale, the steward, discussing drainage accounts, which should have been sufficient protection from domestic surprises.
Yet even drainage had failed him. Pritchard had entered with a note from Mrs Holroyd and mentioned, while setting it down, that Lord Declan had asked for more toast.
Asked. Clearly. At table. In the hearing of persons not bound by blood to love him.
Mr Vale had continued explaining a ditch near the northern boundary. Edmund had heard none of it.
Now, at half past three, he stood at the study window with the drainage accounts open behind him and listened to the faint sound of voices drifting from the direction of the schoolroom.
Mary’s voice rose first. It was not a scream. It was an argument, which in her case marked considerable refinement.
“I do not see why a journal must have dates,” she was saying somewhere down the corridor, loud enough to travel through old walls and ill-fitted doors. “If something happened, I shall remember when it happened.”
Miss Winthrop answered, her voice lower and calmer, the words indistinct at first, then clearer as the schoolroom door opened. “You may remember, Lady Mary, but the journal cannot. Paper is a useful servant, but it requires instruction.”
“Declan’s map does not have dates.”
“Lord Declan’s map is not claiming to be a journal. If it begins making such claims, I shall correct it as firmly as I correct you.”
A pause followed. Then Declan said, more quietly, “Maps have dates when they are proper maps.”
“Then yours is not proper,” Mary declared.
“It is unfinished.”
“That is what people say when something is wrong and they do not want to admit it.”
Miss Winthrop replied with the grave patience Edmund had already learnt to distrust. “That may be true, but in Lord Declan’s defence, many excellent things are unfinished.
I am unfinished as a governess of this house, your journal is unfinished as a record of natural history, and His Grace’s south boundary accounts appear to have been unfinished since Michaelmas, judging by the expression Mr Vale wore at luncheon. ”
Edmund’s head turned sharply towards the door.
There was a beat of silence. Then Mary laughed.
Declan said something Edmund did not catch, and Miss Winthrop replied, “No, I do not think His Grace would appreciate being used as an example twice in one afternoon. We shall leave him to his accounts and return to your dates.”
The schoolroom door closed.
Edmund remained at the window, irritated beyond reason.
She had been in his house less than a fortnight and already spoke of him to his children as though he were part of the furniture, part of the weather, part of the household’s daily material.
Not intimately. Not improperly. That might have been easier to resent.
She spoke of him with practical familiarity, the way one might speak of a library ladder that required caution or a fireplace that smoked in certain winds.
He disliked it.
He disliked more that the children accepted it.
He returned to his desk, sat, and picked up the nearest paper.
It concerned grazing rents. He read the first line four times and absorbed none of it.
His mind, which had once been capable of managing estate matters, parliamentary correspondence, household accounts, and personal misery with admirable separation, insisted instead upon presenting Miss Winthrop as she had stood in his study the previous week, hands folded, chin lifted, asking for outdoor lessons as if permission from a duke were a matter of logic rather than hierarchy.
He had said no.
Then she had waited.
Edmund had known many forms of female persistence.
His aunt’s was martial. His late wife’s had been laughing and relentless, an entire campaign conducted through charm.
Miss Winthrop’s was stranger. She did not press.
She simply remained, steady and unembarrassed, until he had to furnish an actual reason.
It was a deeply inconvenient quality in a woman whose employment required him to speak with her more often than he had anticipated.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come,” he said, too sharply.
Pritchard entered with a tray bearing correspondence. “Letters from London, Your Grace, and a note from Mrs Holroyd regarding the schoolroom supplies.”
“Put them down.”
Pritchard obeyed. Then he lingered.
Edmund looked up. “Is there more?”
“Miss Winthrop asks whether the children may use the small table from the west morning room for their nature specimens, Your Grace. Mrs Holroyd thought it proper to seek your approval before moving furniture.”
“No.”
Pritchard bowed. “Very good, Your Grace.”
The butler reached the door before Edmund closed his eyes briefly.
“Pritchard.”
“Your Grace?”
“Why does she require a table?”
“For leaves, stones, seed pods, and what Lady Mary described to the under-footman as a dead beetle of educational importance.”
“Absolutely not.”
“No beetle, Your Grace?”
“No beetle, no stones, no seed pods, and no removal of furniture from the west morning room.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Pritchard’s hand touched the door again.
Edmund looked towards the window, where rain threatened but had not yet committed. “Is the small table in use?”
Pritchard turned back with admirable caution. “Not to my knowledge, Your Grace.”
“Is the west morning room in use?”
“No, Your Grace.”
“Then why did Mrs Holroyd ask?”
“Because the west morning room has not been disturbed in some years.”
There it was. Not accusation. Not curiosity. A plain domestic fact with a graveyard behind it.
The west morning room had been Eleanor’s preferred sitting room.
She had written letters there, arranged flowers there, laughed at Edmund there when he insisted he had no opinion on fabric and then proceeded to object to three shades of blue.
Since her death, the room had been dusted, aired, and left otherwise untouched by silent consent.
Miss Winthrop, of course, did not know that.
Or perhaps she did. Miss Winthrop seemed to know a great many things no one had told her directly.
“Tell Mrs Holroyd the table may be moved,” Edmund said. “Not the japanned one. The plain oak one by the inner wall.”
“Very good, Your Grace.”
“And Pritchard.”
“Your Grace?”
“No dead beetles in the schoolroom. Educational or otherwise.”
“I shall make the distinction plain.”
When the butler left, Edmund stood again, because sitting had become impossible.
He told himself he was going to inspect the schoolroom supplies to ensure his house was not being converted into a hedgerow.
He told himself a duke had every right to know why furniture was being moved.
He told himself several other things on the way down the corridor, each less convincing than the last.
***
The schoolroom door was open when he reached it.
Miss Winthrop stood alone inside, sorting papers into neat piles.
The children had gone, perhaps to the nursery or to terrorise the kitchen with botanical specimens.
The room bore evidence of occupation rather than battle.
A slate leant against one chair. A page of Mary’s copywork lay drying near the fire.
Declan’s map had been rolled and tied with string.
A small jar held leaves that had been arranged by type, though one of them appeared to have been bitten along the edge.
Miss Winthrop looked up at his knock on the doorframe.
“Your Grace. I hope nothing has happened.”
“Must something happen for me to enter a room in my own house?”
“No, but your visits to the schoolroom have so far been rare enough to suggest either accident or emergency. I was preparing myself for both.”
He stepped inside. “You have requested furniture.”
“I have requested one small table, not the entire contents of the west wing.”
“Furniture has a way of becoming precedent. Today a table, tomorrow a cabinet, by next week my dining room will be full of pressed leaves and moral improvement.”