CHAPTER TEN
“Your Grace, there is correspondence from London.”
Mrs. Kemp stood in the doorway of the study, a silver tray bearing several letters balanced on her palm.
It was the third such delivery this week, each bundle thicker than the last, each bearing the increasingly emphatic handwriting of Mr. Grieves and the various social obligations Rhys had been studiously ignoring.
“Put them on the desk,” he said, without looking up from the book he was reading with Viola.
“I’ll attend to them later.”
“You said that about the previous correspondence, Your Grace.”
“And I will say it about the next batch as well. Later is a flexible concept.”
Mrs. Kemp’s expression suggested she had opinions about flexible concepts and the men who employed them, but she set the tray on the desk and departed without voicing them.
She had learned, over the past three weeks that the Duke of Trevane was not to be moved from Cornwall by anything short of parliamentary emergency.
He had been at Hartfell for three weeks, and London had not collapsed in his absence.
The children’s birthday had come and gone, celebrated with a party that Anna had orchestrated as though she were planning a military campaign. There had been cake and presents and games in the garden, and Rhys had told his daughters, finally, about the woman who had given them their names.
He had gathered them in the nursery on the morning of their birthday, the three of them arranged on Viola’s bed with expectant faces and barely contained excitement.
Thistle had been vibrating with energy, already calculating how quickly she could get to her presents.
Anna had been holding her attendance register, ready to document the proceedings.
Viola had been watching him with those quiet, knowing eyes.
“I would like to tell you about your mother,” he had said.
The room had gone very still.
He had told them the truth, or as much of it as six-year-olds could understand.
He told them about Celeste’s dark hair and French accent, about her passion for Shakespeare and music, about the way she had named each of them with deliberate meaning.
Annabelle for the clever heroine who disguised herself and won the day.
Viola for the quiet observer who saw everything and said little and Thistle for the wildness that every garden needed.
“She cherished you very much,” he had said. “She held each of you when you were born and sang to you in French. She declared, with the greatest tenderness, that you were the most exquisite blessing of her life.”
Thistle asked if their mother had liked toads and Anna had asked why she wasn’t here anymore. Viola had climbed into his lap and held on, and had not asked anything at all.
He had not told them everything he could not, due to his cowardice, or about the fever that had taken Celeste while he was in London pretending his life was not falling apart.
There would be time for those harder truths later, when they were older, when they could understand the complexity of adult failures.
But he had given them something: a beginning, a foundation they could build on.
Mel had watched from the doorway, her expression unreadable but her posture softer than it had been in days. When the children had finally released him and scattered to examine their presents, she had crossed to where he sat and laid her hand briefly on his shoulder.
“That was well done,” she had said, and then she walked away before he could respond.
The touch had lasted perhaps two seconds, but he had felt it for hours.
Now, three weeks later, the household had adjusted to his continued presence in ways both large and small.
The children no longer treated his appearance at breakfast as an occasion for excitement: they simply expected him to be there, complained when he took too long with his coffee and demanded his attention with the casual confidence of small people who knew their demands would be met.
This was what Mel had wanted for them. Not a visiting spectacle who arrived in a blaze of gifts and attention and departed before the glow could fade, but a constant. A presence woven into the fabric of their daily lives so thoroughly that his absence would be noticed rather than his presence.
He was learning to be constant. It was harder than he had expected.
The announcement came at breakfast, delivered by Thistle with the gravity of a royal proclamation.
“Papa is taking us to see the horses.”
“Is he,” Mel said. It was not a question. It was the carefully neutral tone she reserved for plans she had not approved.
“He said so yesterday. He said the ponies needed exercise and we could help. Annabelle has made a list of tasks.”
“I have indeed.” Anna produced the list from behind her toast.
“Item one, grooming. Item two, leading. Item three, which is contingent on successful completion of items one and two, a supervised walk around the paddock on horseback. I have allocated one hour per sister.”
“And Miss Grace,” Thistle added, pointing her spoon at Mel with conviction.
“Miss Grace must come.”
Mel’s teacup met its saucer with a quieter click than usual.
“Miss Grace has lessons to prepare.”
“Lessons can wait,” Rhys said from across the table. He was pretending to read a letter from his solicitor, but she could see the corner of his mouth.
“The children have been promised. Their governess is indispensable to the smooth execution of any educational outing.”
“The stables are not an educational outing.”
“They are now. Anna has a list.”
“Anna always has a list.”
“And yet you have never declined one of her lists before.”
Mel opened her mouth to produce a reason, any reason, and found the drawer empty.
Three pairs of expectant eyes were fixed on her across the table.
Rhys had lowered his letter entirely and was watching her with the mild, curious interest of a man who had noticed something and was waiting to see what it was.
“Very well,” she said.
They walked to the stables after breakfast. Thistle ran ahead with Brutus cupped in her hands, announcing to the toad that he was about to meet his equine cousins. Anna followed with her list. Viola held Mel’s hand and said nothing, which was her way of saying a great deal.
The stables were a low stone building at the far end of the kitchen garden, smelling of hay and leather and the warm, animal sweetness that Mel had spent six years avoiding in other people’s houses. She felt her steps slow as they approached. She corrected them. A governess did not dawdle.
“This is Bess,” Rhys said, stopping at the first stall. A bay mare put her head over the door with the unhurried curiosity of a creature who had met many children and found them adequate.
“She belonged to my mother. She is old enough to have opinions and patient enough to keep most of them to herself.”
Thistle was already reaching up to stroke the mare’s nose. Anna was noting Bess’s coloring in her register. Viola had produced a piece of apple from some private reserve and was offering it on her flat palm with the care of a diplomat.
Mel stood three paces back.
She was aware of this after the fact. She had not decided to stop there. Her feet had simply refused to carry her further, and her hands had folded themselves together in front of her as though one was trying to keep the other from bolting.
Bess turned her head and looked at her.
Mel took a small step back.
“Miss Grace.” Rhys’s voice was quite different now. The teasing had now left.
“Come and meet her.”
“I am quite comfortable where I am, thank you.”
“You are three paces away.”
“A considered distance.”
“From a mare who is two and twenty years old and currently occupied with an apple.”
“Nonetheless.”
The children had stopped what they were doing. Anna’s pencil had paused mid-stroke. Thistle’s mouth was open, the next proclamation caught somewhere in her throat. Even Viola had turned to look.
Mel registered, with the clarity of mortification that she had gone still in the particular way that she had seen horses do when they were preparing to bolt.
Her pulse was doing something undignified behind her ribs.
The mare, sensing attention, shifted her weight, and Mel flinched before she could stop herself.
Rhys saw all of it. She watched the recognition arrive in his face, the narrowing of his eyes, the small adjustment of his whole posture as a man who had been expecting one thing and was now being handed another.
“Girls,” he said, without looking away from Mel.
“Take Bess and an apple each. Anna, you may begin your grooming inspection. I will return in a moment.”
“But the list,” Anna said.
“The list will survive five minutes of unsupervised execution.”
“That is structurally unsound.”
“Annabelle.”
Anna subsided. The children moved further down the row of stalls, dragging Thistle by the elbow when she tried to linger, and Mel was left standing on the flagstones with Rhys three paces away and the bay mare watching them both with mild, chewing interest.
He did not approach. He stayed where he was, which she appreciated more than she could have said.
“You are afraid of horses.”
“I am cautious around large animals with their own opinions.”
“Mel.”
She found she could not answer that, because he had said her name the old way, the way he had said it before the title reveal, without any of the careful formality that had lived between them for weeks. It undid something.
“I was thrown as a girl,” she said. “It was a long time ago. I have preferred my own feet ever since.”
“How old were you.”
“Twelve.”
“Were you hurt?”
“My wrist. It mended badly for a season and then it mended well.” She made herself meet his eyes.
“It was not the mischief of the injury itself, but rather the calamity of the fall. I find I am quite unable to rid my mind of the trepidation it instilled.”
He was quiet for a long moment. She braced for whatever came next. A gentle dismissal. A reassurance. A promise that Bess was harmless, which she knew, which everyone knew, which made no difference at all to the thing in her chest.
“Would you like to leave,” he said instead.
“I can send the children home with Anna’s list intact. Bess will be no worse for our absence.”
“No.” The word came out before she had decided it.
“The children have been promised.”
“The children can be disappointed. It is good for them occasionally.”
“Anna would write it in her register.”
“Anna writes everything in her register.” He took one step toward her, and only one, and stopped.
“May I walk you past her stall? That is all. Past, not to. You need not touch her. You need not look at her if you prefer. I will simply walk with you to the next stall, where there is a very sedate pony called Orpheus who does nothing except sleep and accept carrots.”
“Orpheus.”
Mel found, to her considerable surprise, that she was almost smiling. It was a small almost, and it did not reach further than the corner of her mouth, but it was there.
“Very well,” she said. “Past, not to.”
He did not offer her his arm and for that she was grateful.
She would not have taken it, and then they would have had the awkwardness of the refusal to add to the morning.
He walked on her far side instead, placing himself between her and Bess, a solid, quiet, seven-foot wall of duke against the possibility of an old mare developing sudden opinions.
They reached Orpheus who was fast asleep.
“There,” Rhys said. “As promised. Nothing whatsoever to fear from a pony who is presently dreaming.”
“He is an improvement on Bess.”
“He is everyone’s improvement on Bess. Bess has been known to sigh in a pointed manner.”
“Pointed sighing is a serious accusation in a horse.”
“She is guilty. I have proof. Mrs. Kemp will testify.”
A light peal of laughter escaped her which she quickly stifled, vanishing almost entirely into the stillness of the stable, yet it did not elude his ear. She perceived at once that he had marked it and a particular softening covered his features.
“Come,” she said, because she did not want to stand in the aftermath of that look any longer than was strictly required.
“Anna will have cited us for delay.”
She walked ahead of him back down the row and avoided looking at Bess.
Rhys walked ahead without any more conversation between them.