Chapter 6
The staff assembled in the servants' hall with the quiet efficiency of a well-run household that had been asked to do something unusual and was collectively determined not to show that it found it so.
Thomas stood at the head of the room and looked at them, the full complement of indoor staff, from Mr. Cavendish down to the youngest housemaid, who appeared to be approximately fourteen and was working very hard to look as though she was not nervous, and said what needed to be said.
“I understand that today was, perhaps, a shock to you all. You had all become well acquainted with Miss Clarissa, and so the arrival of her sister as my wife will have surprised you all. Understand this, though. Mrs. Harrington is now my wife. Even if she has arrived under strange circumstances, she is to be treated with all the respect, care, and kindness that one should show to the lady of the house,” he said.
He kept it plain. He had found, over years of managing both the estate and the people on it, that plainness was almost always more effective than elaboration.
Elaboration invited questions. Plainness invited compliance.
They all knew this was unusual. He would not insult their intelligence by pretending otherwise.
“Furthermore, I will not tolerate any gossip on the matter. Mrs. Harrington is the mistress of Harrington Hall. She will be treated as such in every particular, by every member of staff, without exception and without qualification.” He looked at them steadily while he said it, and the room was very quiet.
"Mr. Harrington." Mr. Cavendish spoke from his position at his right, and his voice had the quality of a man who had never in his professional life said anything he did not mean entirely. "You have my word. And mine is sufficient for this household."
"Thank you, Mr. Cavendish." He meant it. The man had been running his house since before Thomas was born. He trusted Mr. Cavendish with far more difficult things. "I know I can rely on you all."
He said it to the room, and the room received it with the collective gravity that he had hoped for.
The young housemaid had stopped looking nervous.
The footmen stood straight. Even Mr. Dobson, who had come in from the gardens still carrying the suggestion of soil about him and who generally held the opinion that anything occurring indoors was of limited relevance to his concerns, gave a single short nod that constituted, from him, a solemn oath.
Thomas thanked them again, and they dispersed, and he stood for a moment in the emptying room with the quiet satisfaction of a man who has done one thing correctly in an otherwise bewildering day.
Then he went to find his grandmother. She most of all would have her own… opinions… on what had occurred.
She was in the drawing room, as he had known she would be.
She had always claimed the drawing room of whatever house she was in with the unhurried assurance of a woman who had never in her life been uncertain of her welcome, and she sat now in the chair nearest the fireplace, unlit in the June warmth, but she always preferred that chair regardless, with a book open on her lap that he was fairly certain she was not reading.
He closed the door behind him.
She looked up immediately. The book was set aside without any pretense of finishing a sentence.
"Sit down, Thomas."
He nodded, almost glad for her giving that order.
The day had been a long one by any measure, and it was not yet finished, and the chair opposite her was familiar in the way that only a handful of things in his life were familiar, the particular comfort of a place associated, over many years, with being permitted to simply be.
"Tell me," she said.
“What is there to tell?” he asked. “I have already said, Clarissa eloped…”
“I do not mean that,” his grandmother scoffed, shaking her head. “I have little fondness for that woman.”
“Grandmother,” he said, using the formal term almost plaintively.
“It is true, and you know it to be so. I have little interest in retreading the events that she has caused in an attempt to find some reason or meaning. I was asking how your new wife is settling in.”
He nodded slowly.
“She is settling well. The staff have already accepted her,” he said, doing his best to mask the volley of emotions that had filled his chest. “I think she will do well here.”
“I hope so,” his grandmother said. She looked at him, and he knew. She could see through the masks he wore, and the walls he built. After all, she had once been an architect of similar walls. She understood their construction and how to break them.
“Thomas,” she said, reaching a hand out to him and gently patting his knee with all the strength her wizened hand would allow. “I will not look if you need a moment of sadness.”
“Do not worry,” he shook his head. “You do not need to think of such things. I imagine it is, in fact, a relief to you that Clarissa and I did not marry. I—”
"I am sorry," she said, interrupting him. He felt his chest ache at the words. "Whatever I thought of the girl, and you know what I thought, I know that you loved her. I am sorry for it, Thomas. Truly."
He held her gaze.
"I know."
"It is a real thing, what has happened to you today. It is permitted to be a real thing."
"Yes," he said, and heard in his own voice the slight tightening that told him he had reached the limit of what he was going to allow this conversation to be.
"And I am aware of that. But I would ask that we not," he paused, choosing the words carefully, "that we not dwell on it at length. It does not help."
She studied him for a moment with those sharp, steady eyes. Then she gave the small, accepting nod of a woman who knew when to press and when to leave a door closed.
"Very well," she said. "What would you like to talk about instead?"
"Genevieve," he said, without hesitation.
Something shifted almost imperceptibly in his grandmother's expression. Not surprise, she was rarely surprised, but a kind of quiet attention, a recalibration.
"I do not wish for her to suffer for her sister’s actions," Thomas said.
He leaned forward slightly, his elbows on his knees, and found that speaking about this, specifically, was easier, that it had the quality of solid ground after an uncertain morning.
Something he could actually do something about.
"The talk will begin within the week. It may already have begun.
She is going to find herself the subject of a great deal of scrutiny that she has done nothing whatsoever to deserve, in a house she does not yet know, among people who are strangers to her.
" He paused. "She does not know anyone here. "
"She knows you."
"She has known me for approximately one day.
" He said it without bitterness. It was simply the truth of it, and he had always found it more useful to look at the truth of things directly rather than approaching them sideways.
"We are essentially strangers to each other.
Which is manageable, at least I think we shall manage it well enough, but she should not have to manage the rest of it without support.
She should not have to walk into every drawing room in the county alone. "
His grandmother was quiet for a moment, and he could see her thinking, that particular, efficient quality of her thought, the way she assembled things.
"She conducted herself very well today," she said. "With the staff."
"Yes." He had seen it. Had watched her move down the line of them and say the right thing to each face, and absorb the surprise in their eyes without flinching, and gradually, visibly, settle the temperature of the room by the simple force of behaving as though there was nothing unusual to remark upon.
It had been, he had not expected it. He was not certain what he had expected, but it had not been that particular, quiet competence. "She did."
"She has sense," his grandmother said. "And composure. They are underrated qualities in a young woman." A pause. "Considerably more useful than beauty alone, though I see no reason one cannot have both."
Thomas looked at her steadily and said nothing.
"I will call on her, when the circumstances have settled," his grandmother continued, in the tone of a woman whose decisions, once made, required no further discussion.
"And I will introduce her to the right people at the right time, in the right way.
Anyone in this county who wishes to remain on good terms with me will extend her every courtesy. "
This was not an idle claim. His grandmother had been a social force in that part of the world for fifty years.
The particular combination of her age, her position, and her sheer implacable will had produced a local influence that Thomas had occasionally found useful and always found impressive.
There were families in a twenty-mile radius who had been behaving themselves in various respects for decades on the strength of her regard.
"Thank you," he said. "That is a considerable relief to me."
She looked at him with a slight softening around the eyes that she would never have permitted on any other part of her face.
"She is your wife, Thomas. She is family now. It is not a kindness. It is simply what is done."
He nodded. Then stood, because there was nothing more to say, and because if he remained much longer in that particular chair in that particular room with that particular woman looking at him with that expression, he was going to come to the end of his composure.
"Dinner at seven," he said.
"I am more than aware," she said. "I have been eating dinner at seven in this house for forty years."
The corner of his mouth moved.
"Goodnight, Grandmama."
"Goodnight," she said. And then, as he reached the door: "Thomas."
He turned.