Chapter Nine
Edmund began, despite himself, to know the shape of Miss Winthrop’s days.
It was not knowledge he sought, which made the knowledge worse.
He did not ask Pritchard what hour she took the children to the lower park.
He did not inquire whether the schoolroom tea had been delivered on time.
He did not arrange his own movements so that he might pass the east corridor just as the children returned with muddy hems and triumphant expressions, Miss Winthrop following behind with a basket of leaves, stones, and whatever educational indignity Mary had decided to champion that afternoon.
Yet the knowledge gathered.
She took tea in the schoolroom at four unless rain altered the day.
She returned the library key each Friday and requested it again each Monday, as if ritual could make the arrangement impersonal.
She wrote reports in a careful, slanted hand that never flattered and never pleaded.
Mary had begun to write longer sentences when permitted to make them dramatic.
Declan had begun correcting maps aloud rather than merely frowning at them in silence.
Outdoor lessons should continue, weather permitting.
Lady Mary had attempted to classify a worm among dangerous creatures.
Lord Declan had objected on grounds of scientific accuracy.
Edmund read every report twice.
That, he told himself, was paternal responsibility.
He preserved them in the left drawer of his desk because they might prove useful in assessing the children’s progress, not because the sight of her handwriting pleased him.
If his hand lingered at the drawer before closing it, that was because the wood swelled in damp weather.
Wrenfield was an old house. Many things stuck where they ought not.
The household continued to alter around her.
Not dramatically. Grief did not pack its trunks because a governess had reorganised the schoolroom.
The rain still came down over the park with the same Devonshire persistence.
The old corridors still held their draughts and shadows.
The west morning room remained closed, its silence kept intact by a boundary neither he nor Miss Winthrop had crossed.
Yet the house had begun to sound different.
Mary’s voice rose often, but less often in rage.
Declan answered more than he retreated. Mrs Holroyd had stopped entering the schoolroom corridor as if she expected to emerge bandaged.
Pritchard, who had once considered all governesses temporary disturbances, had begun speaking of Miss Winthrop’s requests as if they were inconvenient but inevitable facts of administration.
And Miss Winthrop remained everywhere.
Not physically. She remained within the bounds of her employment.
She did not intrude upon family rooms. She did not seek private conversation without cause.
She observed rules with infuriating care, and where rules were absent, she seemed to invent better ones than the house had previously possessed.
Still, evidence of her reached him.
A labelled jar of leaves appeared on a side table near the back hall because Mary wished Mrs Holroyd to admire the correct spelling of foxglove.
Declan’s map of the lower park was pinned in the schoolroom corridor, and Edmund had twice found footmen pausing before it as if Wrenfield had never before been translated into something a child could understand.
The library no longer smelled entirely of disuse.
One of the old estate maps had been returned with a neat slip of paper tucked inside, noting a disagreement between the survey and the actual line of the kitchen garden wall.
He should have found all of it impertinent.
He did. He also found himself waiting for the next report.
On Thursday evening, rain struck Wrenfield hard enough to set the windows trembling in their frames.
The children had been kept indoors all day, which ought to have resulted in catastrophe.
Instead, the schoolroom sent down one broken pencil, no broken crockery, and a note from Miss Winthrop requesting permission to use sealing wax for a geography exercise, with the added assurance that Lady Mary had been informed it was not a substance intended for war.
Edmund approved the sealing wax and stared at his signature for longer than the decision warranted.
After dinner, he took his correspondence to the library rather than the study.
He told himself the study fire smoked in wet weather, which was not untrue.
He did not tell himself that the library was where Miss Winthrop came when she required maps, and that the room had begun to hold some faint trace of her industry.
That would have been a foolish thought; a dangerous one.
The date had turned against him as well.
Eleanor’s birthday was two days away.
He had not forgotten. He never forgot. Forgetting would have been merciful, and he had not believed himself entitled to mercy in years.
He had removed his scarf because he was alone, or because he had meant to be alone.
His beard had grown too long again, and Pritchard had mentioned the village barber that morning with the tact of a man approaching an armed criminal.
Edmund had ignored him. His hair fell into his eyes when he bent over the map spread across the table, and he pushed it back with a hand that had ink on the thumb and temper in the movement.
The knock came at a quarter past nine.
He did not answer immediately.
The door opened a fraction. “Your Grace?”
Miss Winthrop stood in the gap, a folded report in one hand and a shawl drawn around her shoulders. She did not step in without permission. She never did. That should have pleased him. Instead, it made him conscious of how many permissions he was in danger of wanting to give.
“Come in,” he said.
She entered but left the door partly open behind her. Sensible. Proper. Infuriatingly careful.
“I beg your pardon for disturbing you after dinner,” she said.
“I had meant to send this with Pritchard, but he is occupied with a leak near the servants’ stair, and Mrs Holroyd is threatening the roof with dismissal.
I thought the report better delivered before she moved from threats to structural reform. ”
“Mrs Holroyd has suspected the roof of poor character for some years. The rain merely strengthens her case.”
Miss Winthrop’s mouth softened, though she did not quite smile. “Then I hope the roof has prepared its defence.”
He held out his hand for the paper. “A report?”
“Yes, and one request regarding tomorrow, if the weather clears. The children have been indoors all day, and the schoolroom survived by means of negotiation, sealing wax, and what I must confess was a limited concession to Lady Mary’s desire to name a peninsula after herself.”
He glanced at the report. “Maryland?”
“Lady Mary considered that insufficiently grand. She settled upon The Dominions of Mary, First of Her Name, Defender of the Inkstand. Lord Declan objected to the length on cartographical grounds.”
Edmund laughed.
It was brief, unwilling, and out before he could stop it. Miss Winthrop looked up, and the surprise in her face made him regret the sound more than he ought. She looked at him as if the laugh had done something to the room. As if he had opened a window neither of them had known was there.
He lowered his gaze to the report. “You are encouraging their oddities.”
“No, Your Grace. I am giving their existing oddities a scholarly outlet.”
“A fine distinction.”
“Many fine distinctions keep a schoolroom standing.”
She remained near the door, the shawl close around her.
Rain struck the windows in hard silver lines.
The library fire gave the only warm light, and it softened the signs of the long day upon her, the faint chalk mark on one cuff, the loosened strand of hair near her cheek, the tiredness she carried without complaint.
She was not beautiful in the manner London would have applauded.
She had no artful helplessness, no languid manner, no cultivated softness designed to invite rescue.
She was pretty in a more troublesome way.
Alive. Alert. Difficult to overlook.
He realised too late that his scarf was absent.
Her gaze had noticed the scar, as any gaze would. But it did not cling there, and it did not dart away with the artificial politeness he had come to loathe. She saw it and allowed it to be seen without making herself the heroine of tolerating it.
“You need not pretend not to see it,” he said.
The words emerged harsher than intended.
Miss Winthrop drew herself a little straighter. “I was not pretending, Your Grace. I saw it. I merely did not think it required my comment.”
“Most people find it requires a reaction.”
“Most people are very fond of making themselves central to other people’s injuries.”
The answer stopped him.
For a moment, there was only rain, fire, and the uncomfortable precision of what she had said. He looked down at the report because looking at her had become unwise.
“You have a talent,” he said, “for sounding impertinent and humane in the same sentence.”
“It is a difficult balance. I am pleased you noticed the labour.”
He almost smiled. “Do you flatter anyone, Miss Winthrop?”
“When it is useful.”
“Not from principle?”
“From economy. You would distrust flattery, Your Grace, and I have too much to do to waste tools that do not work.”
“You speak of managing me as if I were one of your pupils.”
“No. If you were one of my pupils, I should have made you trim your pencil before now.”
“My pencil?”
“A metaphorical one. Though since you ask, your correspondence table suggests a mind at war with filing.”
His eyes moved to the papers spread across the table. “This is an organised system.”
“I believe you. Many ancient ruins began as organised systems.”
“You came to deliver a report, I believe, not insult my table.”
“The table entered the conversation of its own accord.”