Chapter 9
Sophia’s first morning of married life began with the disappearance of a seven-year-old boy.
She came down to breakfast in her second-best morning dress, a sage green muslin she had selected because it required no thought and found the household in a state of quiet uproar that signaled a domestic crisis being managed without dignity.
Catherine was in the front hall speaking to the housekeeper in a tone that was almost calm and entirely unconvincing.
Mrs. Pratt, Henry’s nurse, was clutching her apron in a way that suggested she had already imagined the worst three times and was working through it a fourth. Two of the housemaids were on the stairs, conducting what appeared to be a methodical search of the morning rooms.
Arabella, in a wrap she had clearly thrown on in haste, was sitting halfway up the staircase with one hand pressed to her cheek, announcing, to no one in particular, that she had read of children stolen from London houses in broad daylight and that Mrs. Pratt should not be permitted to turn her back even for a moment.
“Arabella,” Catherine said, without looking up. “Please go and get dressed.”
“I cannot get dressed. I am too distressed to get dressed.”
“You can be distressed in a morning gown. It is more useful.”
Sophia’s gaze took on the chaotic scene.
“Henry,” Catherine said, by way of explanation, when she saw Sophia.
There was a careful flatness to the word.
“He has gone somewhere. He has not gone far, because his coat is still on its peg and he was last seen approximately fifteen minutes ago by Mrs. Pratt, who turned her back for what she describes as the length of a single sneeze. But he is not in his bedroom, he is not in the schoolroom, and he is not in the kitchen.”
“The garden?” Sophia asked.
“Searched. He is not under the bench, behind the roses, or in the potting shed, the last of which I checked personally because last week he hid in there for an hour with a meat pie and refused to come out.”
“I told you,” Arabella said, from the stairs. “I told you he ought not to be allowed unsupervised on the upper landings. I have been saying it for weeks. I shall faint. I feel I shall faint.”
“If you faint on the stairs you will fall down them,” Sophia observed, mildly. “Please go up two more steps before you do.”
Arabella, startled into something that was nearly a laugh, retreated up two steps.
Sophia considered the situation. The Cavendish townhouse was a tall, narrow building with four floors and an attic, and she had been in it long enough to know that it contained a remarkable number of places a small, determined boy could conceal himself if he applied himself.
She had not yet been in all of them. But she had spent a portion of her childhood at Ashfield in the company of a young man with a similarly inventive disposition, and she remembered something Edmund had told her once, in the confidential tone reserved for state secrets.
That the most reliable hiding places were the ones adults did not consider worth checking.
“The old nursery,” Sophia said. “In the attic.”
Catherine looked at her. “The attic nursery is locked.”
“Is it locked, or is it customarily locked?”
She paused. “It is customarily locked.”
“Then I shall go up.”
She took a candle from the side table, which proved unnecessary because the morning light was reaching the upper landing in broad pale shafts through the staircase window, and made her way up the back stairs to the attic door. It was, as she had suspected, slightly ajar.
She suspected Henry had taken the trouble to push it almost closed behind him, which she found rather touching. He understood the principles of concealment without yet understanding that an attic door three inches open advertised itself more loudly than one left open wide.
She pushed it open the rest of the way and stepped inside.
The old nursery had been kept much the same as the children of the previous generation had left it; the way attic nurseries always were in houses where no one had quite the heart to clear them out.
A small bed stood against one wall under a sheet, the bones of a rocking horse against the other, and a long, narrow window at the far end let in a wedge of dust-flecked light.
In the wedge sat Henry, cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by a regiment of painted tin soldiers arranged with what appeared to be considerable strategic intention.
He was holding a half-eaten breakfast roll in one hand and a wooden horse in the other. Henry looked up when Sophia came in with the expression of a boy who had been expecting her, just not quite so soon.
“Good morning,” Henry said, politely.
“Good morning,” Sophia replied. She crossed the nursery, sat down on the floor beside him without regard for her sage green muslin, and looked at the deployment of his troops. “What is the situation?”
Henry brightened. He had clearly been hoping for the question and was prepared to answer it at length.
“The cavalry is here,” he said, indicating six soldiers on the left flank.
“They are under attack from the artillery, which is over there. The infantry is in reserve. The wooden horse is the general, because I did not have a proper one. He is called Wellington.”
“A sound choice.”
“I am losing.”
“I see that.”
“It is because the artillery is too well placed. I should not have allowed them to take the high ground. Uncle Edmund said it was a mistake.”
“Did Uncle Edmund know you were planning this campaign?”
“Not yet,” Henry said, with a candor that did him credit. “He was working on correspondence and I did not wish to disturb him.”
Sophia accepted that. She studied the battlefield for a moment, considered the placement of the cavalry, and offered the opinion that a flanking maneuver around the artillery’s right side might recover the position, provided the cavalry could be persuaded to coordinate with the infantry, which was not always reliable in painted tin form.
Henry considered the suggestion with great seriousness. “You understand the situation,” he said, after a moment. “Mrs. Pratt does not. She thinks the soldiers are a mess.”
“They are in a campaign. There is a distinction.”
“I have been trying to explain it.” He sighed, a small, world-weary sigh of a man who had been misunderstood by adults all his life and had resigned himself to it. “Are you going to make me come down?”
“I am going to negotiate with you,” Sophia said, “as one reasonable person to another. Mrs. Pratt is frightened and your mother has searched the potting shed twice, which she did not enjoy.
If you come down now and apologize, you may set the soldiers out on the wide sill of the morning room window, where the light is good and you can see them from your chair at the table.
The condition is that you tell someone in advance the next time you intend to disappear into a part of the house your nurse has forbidden you to enter. ”
Henry considered the terms. “The morning room window faces South,” he said, weighing the matter.
“It does. The light will last until the afternoon.”
“And I may leave them there?”
“For the day. Mrs. Holloway will turn me out of the house if they are still there at supper.”
“Very well.” He extended a small, smudged hand. “I accept.”
She shook it gravely. They gathered the soldiers, with Henry insisting on a specific order of collection that preserved the integrity of the deployment for later reconstruction and made their way down the back stairs together.
Henry held her hand. He did so unceremoniously, which Sophia found more affecting than she had expected, and she walked carefully because his fingers were warm in hers and the small weight of them was producing an effect in her chest she had not anticipated.
She delivered him to Catherine in the front hall. Catherine looked at her son, looked at Sophia, and said only, with the slight quaver of a woman who had been preparing to feel something stronger and realized she did not need to, “Thank you.”
From the staircase, Arabella, who had not gone up to dress, pressed a hand to her chest and announced that she had known all along that Henry would be found and that her own nerves were requiring tea.
Catherine, who had not yet released the breath she had been holding for the better part of half an hour, said only that she suspected the household’s nerves were unanimous on the question of tea.
Edmund was standing in the hallway, observing the reunion.
Sophia had not seen him come in. He must have been in the study when the search began; must have heard the disturbance and come out, and he was leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded and an expression Sophia could not immediately read.
He was watching her. He had, she suspected, been watching for some time, perhaps since she came down the back stairs with Henry’s hand in hers.
The look he gave her lasted only a second before he controlled it. But she caught it. It was full of surprise and warmth, and entirely unguarded in a way she had not seen on his face before. It made her breath catch in a manner that her composure could not quite disguise.
“Lady Ashfield,” he said, with a formal courtesy that was undermined by the fact that the corner of his mouth was twitching upward. “A successful first morning, I gather.”
“It was a tactical exercise, Lord Ashfield,” Sophia said with the same formality he offered. “Henry will explain.”
“I shall look forward to the briefing.”
Henry, oblivious to the exchange, was already heading toward Mrs. Pratt to deliver his apology in full. Sophia walked past Edmund toward the breakfast room without quite meeting his eyes, because she did not, in that moment, trust herself to.
“Lady Ashfield,” Edmund said, behind her, quietly.
She paused.
“Thank you,” he said.