Chapter 8
Samuel Rutherford's estate was, in Thomas Harrington's considered opinion, one of the more honestly proportioned houses in the whole of the county.
It was not the grandest, it could not compete with the Harrington estate in terms of scale, nor with several of the older families in terms of lineage, but it had a quality of rightness about it that Thomas had always found difficult to articulate and impossible to dismiss.
The rooms were the correct size. The proportions were considered.
The grounds were maintained with evident care and no particular interest in impressing anyone.
It was the home of a man who knew precisely who he was and had made a comfortable peace with it, and Thomas had always found it an easy place to breathe.
Despite not being titled, Samuel had always been the gregarious type.
Thomas had once watched him enter a room, look at a man, and apparently decide they were to be friends for life.
As such, Samuel was the man Thomas went to when he needed to know the social climate.
What was being said. Who said it. Why and where it was said.
Thomas rode up on the path, his horse familiar with the area and not at all worried as a horse was normally wont to be. The servants greeted him warmly, helping him down from the animal, and escorting him inside for what they assumed would be a normal morning call.
Samuel was in the breakfast room, which is to say he was sitting at the table with a cup of tea and a broadsheet and a look of profound contentment, doing nothing that could not have been interrupted at any point without loss.
He was, Thomas had long observed, extraordinarily good at occupying time without being occupied by it. He looked up when Thomas came in and took in his expression with the particular perceptiveness that was Samuel's most significant quality; quiet, thorough, and never deployed unkindly.
"You look," Samuel said, setting down the broadsheet, "as though you have not slept especially well."
"I have slept perfectly well, thank you," Thomas said, sitting down and accepting the tea that appeared at his elbow with the efficiency of a household that had learned not to ask unnecessary questions about unexpected early callers.
“It has been some time since I have seen you,” Samuel said.
“Not so long to cause a tension between us?”
“Of course not, although I am curious as to why you are here. Should you not be at home with your new wife?” Samuel replied.
“I suppose, but I am in need of information, and I have not been able to come out to social events as I usually would,” Thomas sighed.
“I would say that is a blessing for a newlywed,” Samuel laughed. “So, what do you need information about?”
"I need to know what people are saying."
“About?” Samuel asked with a slight grin.
“My marriage,” Thomas said, his patience waning.
“The marriage I was told on the day of I should not attend?” Samuel asked.
“What other marriage could I possibly mean?” Thomas asked.
“I was not sure, as you see, I was under the impression that of course you would invite your best friend to be at your side when you were stood in that chapel,” Samuel said before taking a sip of his tea.
“The circumstances were outside of my control. Surely you are not truly offended, my dear friend?” Thomas asked.
“Not so much that it should worry you,” Samuel grinned.
“Samuel,” Thomas sighed. “Please.”
Samuel’s expression softened and he leaned back in his seat and nodded.
“I apologize. I expected you would be in need of some levity after Clarissa,” Samuel said.
The name dropped into the room with the particular weight that her name had acquired in recent weeks. Thomas was aware of it landing—was aware of the precise quality of the silence that followed it—and kept his expression entirely neutral through both. He had become rather practiced at that.
"I am here to learn what is being said about my marriage but… If you have something to say on that subject," he said, in a tone that was conversational and not entirely a warning, "I would ask you to say it plainly and then we can move on."
Samuel looked at him steadily.
"I thought she was after your money," he said.
"I thought so from the beginning of your courtship and I think so now, and I am telling you this not to wound you but because I believe you deserve to have heard it from someone who genuinely cares about your welfare, rather than piecing it together yourself over the coming months. "
Thomas felt the anger move through him in a clean cold wave.
Not hot, not irrational, just present and significant.
He had known, on some level, that Samuel had reservations about Clarissa.
He had not known quite how specifically those reservations had been held.
He let the anger exist for the appropriate amount of time and then put it somewhere it would not interfere with the conversation, which was a skill he had been developing since boyhood under his grandmother's watchful eye.
“I see,” Thomas said, putting his teacup down slowly. “We should move on from this.”
"Yes," Samuel agreed, with the ease of a man who had said what he came to say and required nothing further from it. "The marriage, then. You want to know about the gossip."
"I want to know about the gossip," Thomas confirmed.
He sat back in his chair and looked at his friend, trying to read his expression, which was as pleasant and considered as it always was and told him nothing he could not have assumed in advance.
"The paper has run it. I know that. I know that people are talking.
What I do not know is the quality of what they are saying, and that is what I need from you. "
Samuel was quiet for a moment. The fire in the breakfast room grate shifted and settled.
"The quality," Samuel said at last, "is better than one would have expected."
Thomas looked at him.
"People are curious," Samuel continued, in the measured way he had when he was building toward something rather than simply stating it.
"Endlessly and exhaustingly curious, which is their natural condition and one I long ago accepted as immovable. They want to know what happened and why it happened. There is some talk of an officer… is there any validity in that?”
Thomas tensed, his hand tightening on the teacup.
“Yes,” he whispered harshly. Samuel’s expression softened with sympathy, and he patted Thomas on the shoulder.
“Then you must expect them to get closer to that truth.
They will want to know who the officer was and what his family situation is, and whether there was a formal understanding between Clarissa and this captain before the betrothal to you was announced, and so on and so forth.
That curiosity will not go away in short order, and I would not suggest pretending it will. "
"But?" Thomas knew there was clearly a but.
"But," Samuel said, "the direction of that curiosity is almost entirely toward Clarissa. Not toward Genevieve." He tilted his head slightly. "People are not, in any significant quarter, inclined to speak ill of your wife."
Thomas found himself leaning forward despite himself.
"Explain that."
"She is liked well enough," Samuel said simply.
"Has been for a number of years, quietly, in the way that people who are genuinely good at being in the world often are without quite realizing it themselves.
Not many people remember her especially well, but those who remember her remember her fondly.
They remember the particular way she had at gatherings of making the person she was speaking to feel as though they had her complete attention.
They remember that she was always kind to people who did not necessarily warrant kindness—which is the truest test of character there is and one that is noticed more than people admit. They remember the smile that is constantly on her expression."
He set down his cup. "She has never, in all her years in society, caused a moment of scandal or distress or trouble for anyone.
She is, if anything, regarded with sympathy.
A blameless young woman caught entirely in the wake of her sister's choices, handling a thoroughly impossible situation with a composure that a great many people with considerably more practice would struggle to match. "
Something in Thomas's chest, which had been maintaining a state of low-grade tension for the better part of several days, released by a measure he had not anticipated and was quietly grateful for.
He had known, in the abstract, that Genevieve was well regarded.
He had not known quite how specifically or quite how sincerely.
"The other observation," Samuel continued, "is that people have seen you at church, and at the market, and going about ordinary life, and they have noted that you treat her well.
Being kind and considerate to her, even if not outwardly affectionate.
Which is doing considerably more to settle the matter than any amount of deliberate social maneuvering could accomplish.
Authenticity shines, even in rooms full of people who have spent decades cultivating the performance of it. "
Thomas absorbed this. "You said the curiosity will not go away quickly."
"It will not. But it will go away. And in the meantime, you can accelerate the process considerably.
" Samuel looked at him with the directness of old and trusted friendship.
"Take her somewhere public. Somewhere of note, where the right people will see you together and observe that this is a real marriage being made into something by two people who are approaching it seriously.
Let them see her as your wife, not simply as the woman who replaced her sister. "
"The Hervey ball," Thomas said, because the thought had been forming since before he arrived here this morning. "In two days."