Chapter 17
The carriage had barely stopped when Letitia stepped out of it, looked up at the house, and said, “It’s enormous. James, why is it so enormous? What do you need all of this for?”
“Good afternoon to you too, Letitia.”
“Seriously. How many rooms?”
“I have not counted.”
“You have not—” She turned to William, who was descending behind her with a protesting Thomas in his arms. “He has not counted the rooms in his own house.”
“I have better things to do than count rooms.”
“That is exactly what someone says when the answer is embarrassing.” She looked at the house again as if conducting an audit. “Izzy.” She turned, located Isadora at the top of the steps, and her whole expression changed. “Oh, good, you have not wasted away.”
“I was never going to waste away.”
“I told William you would not, but he worried anyway. He did not say he was worried. He just asked Prentiss for a report on the household, which amounts to the same thing.”
“I did not ask Prentiss,” William scoffed, setting Thomas down.
“You did,” Cecily said pleasantly, stepping out of the carriage with Eleanor. “You absolutely asked Prentiss. You asked him in the study on a Thursday, and you thought I did not know.”
“I was making a routine enquiry about the estate.”
“About Isadora specifically.”
“The estate includes—”
“William.” Cecily shot him a look.
He closed his mouth.
Isadora had come down the steps by now, and Letitia reached her first, which was entirely typical, embracing her with full-bodied enthusiasm that Isadora really missed.
“You look well,” Letitia said into her shoulder. “You look annoyingly well, actually. I was prepared to be concerned, and now that I cannot be, it’s very inconvenient.”
“I’m so sorry to have disrupted your plans.”
“You always do.” Letitia pulled back, held her at arm’s length, and swept sharp eyes over her. “You look…” She tilted her head. “Different.”
“I’m the same.”
“You are not the same. You look…” She searched for the right word. “Occupied. Like you have things on your mind that are not dreadful.”
“What a compliment.”
“For you, it is. Your default things-on-my-mind face is very serious.” She released her and looked past her at James with an assessing gaze. “You, Your Grace, look less like a man drowning in paperwork than you did a month ago.”
“Lady Letitia,” James said. “What a thorough assessment.”
“I’m very observant. Ask anyone.” She looked between him and Isadora. “Ashbourne looks well. Not that I have ever seen it up close.”
“It had a difficult month.”
“It has clearly seen better times since,” she said lightly, looking at Isadora.
Isadora returned her attention to Cecily, who had stepped up to her and embraced her with warmth.
“Are you well?” Cecily murmured.
“Yes,” Isadora replied.
Cecily eyed her carefully. “Good,” she said simply, though she meant several things by it.
William reached Isadora last, which was always how it went. He was always the one who waited until the noise had died down, who found the quieter moment rather than competing for one.
He put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her in the way he always had, the direct look of a man who had been making sure she was well her entire life and had not stopped.
“You’ve lost weight,” he noted.
“I have not lost weight.”
“You look—”
“William, I am perfectly well. I am better than perfectly well, actually.” She chuckled. “I promise.”
He studied her for another moment.
“Hmm,” he murmured. Then he pulled her into a brief, firm embrace that conveyed everything he had been checking for.
After releasing her, he turned to James.
“Harcliffe,” he greeted.
“Whitmore,” James returned.
A pause that contained fifteen years of friendship and a great deal that had accumulated in the past month and would not be addressed directly in a driveway.
“You look terrible,” William remarked.
“Thank you. Fatherhood seems to agree with me.”
William looked at Isadora and then back at James, frowning. “You’re not a—”
“That was a joke, William.”
“I know it was a joke.”
“You looked alarmed for a moment.”
“I always look alarmed.”
William looked at him for another moment with that expression he always reserved for him, somewhere between exasperation and affection.
Thomas, who had spent the past sixty seconds conducting his own survey of the situation out of the reach of his nurse, stepped up to James and looked up at him .
“You have a big house,” he said.
“I do,” James agreed.
“We have a big house too.”
“Your father’s house is very fine.”
Thomas considered this. “Ours has a dog.”
“Ours has a baby,” James said.
Thomas’s eyes went wide. “Where?”
“Inside.”
Thomas turned toward the door with the immediate purposefulness as if his priorities had just been entirely reorganized.
“Slowly,” Cecily warned without looking.
Thomas slowed to what he clearly felt was a reasonable compromise between slowly and his current objective.
Eleanor, who had been standing beside her mother with a composed, watchful expression she had inherited entirely from William, looked up at Isadora.
“Is the baby nice?” she asked.
“She is very nice,” Isadora replied.
“Does she pull hair?”
“Occasionally.”
Eleanor accepted that with a nod. “I do not mind,” she decided. “I’ll be careful.”
“She’ll like you,” Isadora assured her.
Eleanor looked pleased by that.
“Right,” Letitia said, materializing beside Isadora again as though she had been circling and had just returned.
“Tea. Now. I have been stuck in a carriage since nine o’clock this morning, and Thomas has been singing the same song for the last two hours.
The same song, Izzy. Every word, every verse, and then back to the beginning without pause. ”
“I like the song,” Thomas said, pulling away from his nurse.
“We know you like the song, sweetheart,” Cecily interjected.
“I can sing it again.”
“Perhaps later,” William suggested with a pained smile as he walked with James to the door.
“Now?”
“Later,” three adults said simultaneously.
Thomas seemed to file that away as a negotiating position rather than a conclusion.
“So, I need tea, and I need you to tell me everything, and I need them in that order.”
“There is nothing to tell.”
Letitia made a sound of comprehensive disagreement. “Isadora Margaret Whitmore—”
“Harcliffe,” James corrected mildly from where he was holding the door.
Everyone looked at him, but he seemed entirely untroubled by the attention.
Letitia turned back to Isadora with an expression that had gone from interested to fascinated in approximately one second. “Harcliffe,” she repeated with great care.
“Letitia,” Isadora warned.
“I’m just—”
“Tea,” she said firmly. “Come inside.”
Letitia followed her inside, wearing the expression of a woman with a great deal to say and the patience to wait for the right moment to say it. Which, in Isadora’s experience, was never very long.
“Briggs looks less…” Cecily trailed off, handing her coat to the butler with one hand and steering Thomas away from the umbrella stand with the other.
“Less what?”
“He looked very stressed the last time I was here.”
“He is considerably less stressed now,” Isadora confirmed.
* * *
Tea arrived before anyone sat down, and Violet was brought down by Mrs. Plum, who delivered her into the center of the room.
The room reorganized itself around the baby immediately.
Eleanor was on the floor beside her within moments, introducing herself with great seriousness.
Thomas had abandoned the biscuits, which indicated the strength of the competition, and was sitting cross-legged across from Violet.
He had discovered that she found sneezing hilarious and was conducting experiments.
“Thomas.” Cecily did not look up from Violet. “One more sneeze, and we are going outside.”
His nurse hurried towards him with a napkin, and he retired to the window with a biscuit.
Letitia, who had been draped across the settee, looked between them both. “I want to say that I think Ashbourne is beautiful, and that I am deeply annoyed that Isadora gets to live here while I am still at Blackmoor, enduring the east wing in winter.”
“The east wing is perfectly comfortable,” Isadora stated.
“The east wing,” Letitia said, “has a window that rattles every time the wind comes from the north, which means always in August, and everyone has decided that the solution is additional curtains rather than actually fixing the window. I have woken up three times this week to what sounds like a very small, very angry ghost.”
“Have you mentioned it to William?”
“William says it builds character.”
Cecily pressed her lips together.
“It builds nothing,” Letitia scoffed. “It builds irritation and a strong desire to live somewhere with modern windows.” She looked around the drawing room with appreciation. “These windows, for example, look entirely competent.”
“James had them assessed in September,” Isadora said, and then stopped because she had said it with the casual familiarity of someone reporting a fact that she simply knew, and because Letitia was already looking at her.
“Did he?” Letitia asked.
“The whole south wing. It was a routine check.”
“I’m sure it was,” Letitia said pleasantly.
Cecily was looking at Violet with a smile.
Eleanor looked up from the floor. “Archibald needs a story,” she announced.
“He has one,” Isadora said, grateful for the interruption. “He belongs to a princess named Eleanor.”
Eleanor stared at her.
“A different Eleanor,” Isadora clarified. “But equally brilliant.”
Eleanor seemed to accept that and returned to toys. Violet grabbed her sleeve. “Ta!”
“She does that,” Isadora said. “She’s checking you’re staying.”
Eleanor looked at the hand on her sleeve with the serious consideration she applied to most things. “I’m staying,” she told Violet. “I’m going to be here the whole visit. For three whole days.”
Violet released the sleeve and chewed on her finger.
“She understood,” Eleanor said, her eyes lighting up.
“She understands most things,” Isadora said. “She simply cannot say them back yet.”
“I cannot say yet, too,” Thomas said from the window, with the air of someone contributing to a conversation he had technically been excluded from.
“That’s very wise, darling,” Cecily offered.
Thomas returned to his biscuit, satisfied.
Letitia sat up slightly, tucking her feet beneath her, and looked at Isadora with the expression that meant she had been waiting for the room to settle into something comfortable enough for a real conversation.
“Tell me about the county,” she demanded. “Have you met the neighbors? Are they dreadful? I want the full details.”
“They are mostly very kind,” Isadora answered. “The Ashfields, in particular.”
“Lady Eversleigh came over for dinner,” Cecily elaborated. “I heard from William, who heard from James.”
“What dinner?”
“Their first dinner as a married couple,” she said. “A small affair.”
Letitia looked at Isadora. “You hosted a dinner?”
“It was James’s—”
“You hosted a dinner,” Letitia interrupted. “Three weeks in, and you’re hosting dinners.”
“It was only eight people.”
“You are very domesticated for someone who said last April that she would rather read every book in England than manage a household.”
“I said I would rather read than attend a Season,” Isadora corrected. “That is different.”
“The implication is the same.”
“The implication is not—”
“Lady Eversleigh said they suit each other,” Cecily said to no one in particular, looking at her tea.
Letitia turned to her with glittering eyes. “Did she?”
“Apparently.”
“And what did James say in response?”
“He said she was very kind.”
Letitia looked at Isadora.
Isadora looked at Violet.
“She needs—” she began.
“She is perfectly content,” Letitia cut in. “Eleanor has her entirely in hand.” She paused for a beat. “What did you say?”
“I smiled,” Isadora replied.
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
Letitia and Cecily exchanged a look that suggested they had both arrived at the same conclusion.
“More tea?” Isadora suggested.
“Yes, please,” Letitia said cheerfully.