CHAPTER NINE
“Your Grace, the children are ready for their morning walk.”
The words landed like shards of ice. Rhys looked up from his untouched breakfast to find Mel standing in the doorway of the dining room, her posture impeccable, her expression arranged into the professional neutrality that had characterised their earliest interactions.
She had not called him “Your Grace” since she had learned his title. She had called him Mr. Langford, and then Rhys, and the progression had felt like something earned, something precious.
Now she called him “Your Grace,” and the formality cut like glass.
“Thank you, Miss Grace.” He matched her tone with equal formality, though it cost him more than he cared to admit.
“I’ll join them shortly.”
She inclined her head and departed without another word.
The first day of frost had begun.
Rhys had known it would be like this. He had seen it in her face when she walked out of the study the night before, the careful walls going up, the warmth they had built being methodically dismantled.
She was protecting herself and he understood that.
He had spent fifteen years protecting himself in similar ways.
But understanding did not make it easier to bear.
He found the children assembled in the entrance hall, dressed for their walk in sturdy boots and light coats appropriate to the mild autumn weather. Anna was holding her attendance register and examining him with the particular scrutiny she reserved for anomalies in the established order.
“You look tired,” she observed.
“I slept poorly.”
“That’s inadvisable. Adequate rest is essential for cognitive function.” She made a note in her register.
“I’m recording this under ‘Parental Health Concerns.’”
“Thank you for your attention to my wellbeing.”
“Someone must be attentive. Miss Grace says adults often neglect their own needs in favour of their responsibilities.”
Viola approached him quietly, slipping her hand into his without speaking.
She had always been attuned to emotional currents, sensitive to shifts in atmosphere that her sisters missed.
She looked up at him with those dark eyes that reminded him so much of Celeste, and he saw something there that might have been concern or might have been understanding.
“It’s all right,” he told her softly.
“Adults sometimes have disagreements. It doesn’t mean anything bad is happening.”
Viola nodded, but she did not look convinced.
Thistle, meanwhile, had discovered a particularly interesting beetle on the floor of the entrance hall and was attempting to capture it for closer examination. The question of adult disagreements was entirely beyond her current concerns.
“Brutus would like this one,” she announced. “They could be friends.”
“Brutus already has quite enough friends,” Mel’s voice came from the corridor.
She appeared with her own coat draped over her arm, her expression unchanged from its earlier neutrality.
“The beetle may remain in the entrance hall, Thistle. We are going for a walk, not a specimen collection expedition.”
“Every walk is a specimen collection expedition if you’re paying attention.”
“Nonetheless.”
Thistle sighed dramatically but released the beetle, which scurried toward the safety of the wainscoting with evident relief.
The walk proceeded in silence that was unusual for any excursion involving the children.
Anna attempted several times to engage Mel in conversation about geological formations, and Thistle offered running commentary on the various creatures they encountered, but there was an undercurrent of tension that even the younger girls seemed to sense.
Rhys walked slightly apart from the group, giving Mel the space she had requested while still remaining present for his daughters. He watched her with the children, noting the unchanged quality of her attention, the consistent warmth she offered even as she maintained her frozen distance from him.
She had spoken with the utmost sincerity of heart. Upon no account would she forsake the children; whatever her ultimate determination regarding his character, her devotion to those young souls remained resolute and beyond all shadow of wavering.
It should have been reassuring. Instead, it only highlighted how much he had lost.
That afternoon, while Mel conducted lessons in the schoolroom, Rhys made himself useful.
He found Anna in the garden, examining a rose bush like a botanist cataloguing a rare specimen, and offered to help her catalogue its characteristics for her nature journal.
“You don’t know anything about roses,” she said, not looking up from her examination.
“I know they have thorns and petals and they smell wonderful.”
“That is the most basic possible understanding of roses. Miss Grace could tell you about the cellular structure of the thorns and the chemical compounds responsible for the fragrance.”
“Miss Grace is considerably more educated than I am.”
Anna finally looked up, her expression sharp.
“She’s also angry with you. I can tell. She uses ’Your Grace’ when she’s angry. She used it with Mrs. Kemp once when Mrs. Kemp forgot to order more drawing paper.”
“People sometimes become angry when others make mistakes.”
“What mistake did you make?”
Rhys considered how to answer. His daughter was watching him with the same assessing gaze that Mel employed, the same demand for honesty that characterised everything in this household.
“I didn’t tell her something important about myself. I thought I was protecting her, but really I was protecting myself. And now she feels that I was dishonest with her.”
“Were you dishonest?”
“I withheld information. Some people consider that a form of dishonesty.”
“Miss Grace says that honesty is not merely the absence of falsehoods. It is the presence of relevant truth.” Anna returned her attention to the rose bush.
“That bears the very countenance of a falsehood.”
“You may be right.”
“I’m usually right. It’s my defining characteristic.”
Despite the heaviness in his chest, Rhys felt the corner of his mouth twitch.
“That’s a very confident assessment.”
“Confidence based on evidence is merely accuracy. Miss Grace taught me that too.”
He left Anna to her cataloguing and sought out Viola, who was curled in the window seat of the library with her sketchbook. She looked up when he entered, her expression was wary but not unwelcoming.
“May I sit with you?” he asked.
She nodded and shifted slightly to make room, though the window seat was already too small for two people. Rhys settled himself as best he could, his shoulder pressed against hers, and looked at the drawing she was working on.
It was the view from the window, the garden stretching toward the distant cliffs, the sky heavy with clouds that promised rain before evening.
But she had added something that wasn’t there in reality.
A figure standing near the rose bushes, small and precise, examining the flowers with evident concentration.
“That’s Anna,” he said.
Viola nodded.
“You draw your sisters often.”
Another nod.
“Do you ever draw yourself?”
She was quiet for a moment. Then, in that whisper-soft voice that always required leaning closer to hear:
“I don’t know what I look like from the outside.”
The words struck him with unexpected force. His quiet daughter, who observed everything and everyone, who captured the world in careful lines and shaded shadows, did not know how to see herself.
“You look like your mother,” he said. The words came out before he could stop them, before he could decide whether this was the right moment or the right thing to say.
“You have her eyes. Her way of watching the world as though you’re memorising it.”
Viola turned to look at him, and he saw something new in her expression. Not wariness, but hunger. A desperate desire to know more about the woman who had given her life and then left it too soon.
“What else?” she whispered.
“She had dark hair, like yours. She wore it loose when she was at home, but she pinned it up when she went out, and she always complained about the pins. She said they were instruments of torture invented by men who had never worn them.”
A ghost of a smile crossed Viola’s face.
“She adored music. She could sing in three languages. She used to sing you to sleep when you were babies, French lullabies that had been passed down in her family.” Rhys’s voice had gone rough, the memories pressing against his chest with familiar weight.
“She named you Viola because she simply adored Shakespeare, and because the viola is the instrument that provides harmony without demanding attention. She said you would be the heart of your sisters’ orchestra.”
Viola’s eyes were bright with tears that did not fall. She reached out and took his hand, her small fingers curling around his with surprising strength.
“I wish I remembered her,” she whispered.
“So do I.” He squeezed her hand gently.
“I wish you all remembered her. But I will tell you about her, whenever you want. I should have told you sooner. I should have told you everything.”
They sat together in the window seat until the light began to fade, and Rhys told his daughter about the woman who had given her the gift of quiet observation and the burden of loss she was too young to understand.
The second day followed a similar pattern with frost from Mel and her impeccable professionalism.
Rhys continued to give her space. He took Thistle on a long walk after lunch, following her as she explored the hedgerows and catalogued every insect they encountered like a naturalist decades older than her years.
“This is a stag beetle,” she announced, presenting him with a specimen that she had somehow captured without injuring either herself or the beetle.
“Lucanus cervus. They’re the largest beetles in Britain. Miss Grace showed me pictures in a book. This one is a female. You can tell because the mandibles are smaller.”
“You remember all of this?”