Chapter Twelve #3
“Yes, but I allowed hope to interfere with evidence. A common failing in literature and breakfast.”
“I will bring something better next time.”
The sentence came too easily.
Next time.
He heard it. She heard it. Mrs Holroyd, folding linen with unnatural intensity beyond the door, almost certainly heard it too.
Petalia lowered the muffin slightly. “Will there be a next time?”
He looked at her then, and the fragile humour between them thinned into something more honest.
“That depends on what you decide,” he said, “and what damage the county has already done with last night.”
She looked down at the napkin. “You speak as though my decision and the county’s appetite are equal forces.”
“No. Your decision matters more. The county may possess the louder voice.”
“That is not comforting.”
“I have not been a great source of comfort to you.”
“That is not entirely true,” she said.
The answer struck him more deeply than accusation would have done.
He did not trust himself with softness, so he looked towards the window.
“I stayed away because to come sooner would have been another injury to your reputation. I sent physicians, salves, linen, and instructions because those could pass through proper hands. I did not come because I had already made the house too aware of you, and I thought absence was the only honourable thing left to offer.”
Her face gentled, though her voice remained steady. “I know.”
“I am not certain you do. Absence is easy to mistake for indifference. I have practised it so long that even my children cannot tell the difference anymore.”
“Mary asked why you had not come,” Petalia said.
His throat tightened. “She is angry with me; they both are.”
“They are frightened.”
“Mary believes I hurt you. Declan believes I failed to be careful.”
“Children often make more moral sense than adults find comfortable.”
“You defend them even when they wound.”
“They are children,” she said, shifting slightly and stilling when the burn protested. “Mary strikes out. Declan withdraws. Neither does it from cruelty.”
He looked at her properly then. She sat injured under his roof, with her future made uncertain by his household, and still she found room to understand his children.
“You make me sound less patient than a governess should find tolerable,” he said.
“Less patient than is convenient, perhaps. Tolerable is another matter.”
“And am I tolerable?”
The question escaped before he could stop it.
Petalia’s hand stilled upon the napkin. “Sometimes.”
“Only sometimes?”
“When you are not terrifying footmen, frightening maids, glaring at furniture, or offering elderly muffins as though they were terms of surrender.”
He almost laughed. It came no farther than breath, but she saw it.
“Then not often,” he said.
“Often enough that the effort shows.”
The words were quiet. They did not flatter. That made them far more dangerous.
Edmund turned away because he felt, absurdly, that she had touched him.
After a moment he said, “Some of the servants spoke of you. Cruelly. I heard them.”
The warmth left her face. “What did they say?”
“Nothing you need hear.”
“That means it was bad.”
“Yes.”
She looked down at the muffin as if its ridiculousness had become a refuge.
“I dealt with it,” he added.
“Your Grace.”
He drew a breath. “No one has been dismissed. Not yet. Mrs Holroyd is keeping the matter contained. If dismissal becomes necessary, it will be done when it cannot worsen the gossip.”
Petalia’s brows drew together. “Then you consulted wisely.”
“Do not sound surprised.”
“I am not surprised. Only encouraged.”
Their familiar cadence returned, slowly, both of them steadied by disagreement because disagreement had become safer than silence.
“I wanted to do more,” he said.
“I know.”
From the corridor came the smallest sound of linen being folded with unnecessary firmness.
Petalia lowered her gaze. He watched her and wished he could cross the room and arrange the shawl more carefully around her shoulders.
He did not.
He remained two chairs away and let restraint be the only tenderness he could safely offer.
“The salve came,” she said after a quieter moment. “And I was told another jar is on its way from London.”
“Good.”
“I do not need two jars of expensive ointment.”
“You may need one and dislike the other.”
“That seems extravagant.”
“Then be extravagant in recovery. It will make a pleasant change from being economical in pain.”
Her expression altered.
“You attend to more than most people would,” she said softly.
“So do you.”
“Yes, but I am paid for it.”
“Not enough.”
She looked up quickly.
He looked away first. “That was not meant as charity.”
“I know.”
The words should have comforted him. Instead, they made the room feel narrower.
A footstep sounded beyond the corridor. Lady Maria appeared in the doorway and paused, taking in everything with a single glance, the open door, Mrs Holroyd’s guarding presence, Edmund standing rigidly two chairs away from Petalia, and the muffin resting in a napkin upon Petalia’s lap.
“A muffin,” she said.
Edmund’s face darkened. “Aunt.”
“No. I approve. It is plainly unsuitable and yet present. There is courage in that.”
Petalia looked down, but not before Edmund saw the smile she failed to hide.
Lady Maria did not step farther into the room. Her expression sharpened into business.
“Unfortunately, muffins will not be sufficient. Lady Whitcombe has sent word that she will call tomorrow to inquire after Miss Winthrop’s health.”
The warmth left the room.
Petalia’s hand stilled on the napkin. “Who is Lady Whitcombe?”
Lady Maria glanced at Edmund, then answered when he did not. “A neighbour of consequence, a widow of fortune, and a woman whose concern travels faster than most carriages.”
“That is the charitable description,” Edmund said.
Petalia looked between them. “And the less charitable one?”
“She collects weaknesses,” he said. “If she is coming here, it is not because she cares whether your burn pains you. It is because some version of last night has reached her.”
Petalia drew the shawl higher before she could stop herself. “Then the story has left Wrenfield.”
“Yes,” Lady Maria said. “Or at least, enough of it has.”
Mrs Holroyd’s face tightened in the corridor.
“What has she heard?” Petalia asked.
“Enough to ask after your health,” Lady Maria said. “Not enough to be satisfied by the answer.”
No one spoke.
Then Lady Maria added, more quietly, “We have less time than I hoped.”
Edmund looked at Petalia, pale and still in the firelight, the ridiculous muffin now the last harmless object in the room.
He had thought himself beast enough to frighten danger away.
Now he understood that some dangers did not frighten.
They fed.