Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Several days later, Benedict found himself back in the study, when a cheerful voice interrupted his thoughts.
“Have you reconsidered your position on climbing trees?”
Benedict looked up from the letter before him.
Nathaniel stood in the study doorway, one shoulder resting against the frame.
He carried the same leather portfolio beneath one arm, now thick with revised plans and a mason’s estimate.
The work at Redgrave would begin on Monday.
He had evidently come to return Benedict’s drawings before meeting the engineer at the lower gate.
On crossing the east lawn, however, he had discovered something he considered far more interesting.
Benedict set down his pen. “What do you mean?”
“Only that your household appears to have adopted a more generous policy.”
“What are you talking about, Nathaniel?”
Without waiting to be invited, Nathaniel crossed to the sideboard and poured himself a measure of cognac. The afternoon sun caught the amber liquid as he lifted the glass, then lowered himself into one of the leather chairs before Benedict’s writing table.
“I have just seen Marjorie halfway up a tree.”
Benedict stared at him. “What?”
“A tree,” Nathaniel repeated. “Large. Green. Generally rooted to the ground?”
“I know what a tree is,” Benedict frowned. “Where is Sophia?”
Nathaniel’s grin widened. “Right beside her.”
Benedict pushed back his chair. “In the tree?”
Nathaniel laughed. “No, no. Her Grace remains upon the ground. She is merely watching the whole affair with remarkable composure.”
For one suspended moment, Benedict said nothing, then he rose. The chair struck the carpet behind him.
“Which tree?”
“The oak beyond the east garden.”
Benedict crossed the study before Nathaniel had finished speaking.
“Ah,” Nathaniel pointed out, rising with considerably less urgency. “I see your position remains unchanged.”
Benedict strode into the corridor. His boots struck the polished floor with enough force to summon a footman from the far end of the passage.
Benedict ignored him. The east garden lay beyond the morning room and across the south lawn, farther than he had any patience to walk at present.
Behind him came Nathaniel’s hurried steps.
“Slow down,” Nathaniel called. “Some of us are carrying valuable spirits.”
“No one instructed you to bring the glass.”
“I had scarcely begun it. Abandoning good cognac would be wasteful.”
Benedict descended the stairs two at a time.
“It would be less wasteful than spilling it upon the carpet.”
“You are remarkably concerned with carpets for a man whose ward is apparently in mortal danger.”
The words tightened something already drawn painfully taut inside Benedict.
Marjorie in a tree.
He saw, not the harmless adventure Nathaniel evidently imagined, but the broken branch beneath the old oak at Keswick. He remembered leaves scattered across the grass, Amelia’s white face, and Sophia’s torn glove. He remembered the sickening certainty that he had arrived too late.
He had spoken plainly after that incident. There was to be no climbing without permission, no climbing without supervision and no height greater than he judged safe. There had been no ambiguity.
He crossed the morning room and pushed open the terrace door. The garden air met him, warm and fragrant with roses. Somewhere ahead, beyond the clipped yews, Marjorie’s laughter rang out. Benedict’s jaw tightened.
Nathaniel emerged behind him, still holding his cognac with impressive determination.
“She sounds grievously injured,” he remarked.
Benedict did not answer. They followed the gravel path past the rose beds. The laughter grew clearer. Marjorie’s was bright and triumphant, Amelia’s was softer, and Sophia’s was warm enough that Benedict might have stopped to listen under very different circumstances.
Then the oak came into view. Marjorie was perched upon a broad branch several feet above the ground…
several feet too many. Amelia stood below with both hands cupped around her mouth, offering advice which Marjorie had plainly ignored.
Sophia stood beside her, with one hand raised toward the child, her face turned upward.
“Move your left foot to the branch beneath you,” Sophia instructed. “No, not that one. The thicker branch.”
“I can reach the higher one.”
“You are not going higher.”
“I would only be a little higher.”
“And I would still say no.”
Marjorie sighed with the burden of being denied all reasonable pleasures. Sophia laughed.
Benedict stopped at the edge of the path. “What is the meaning of this?”
His voice crossed the garden like a crack of thunder. The laughter ceased. Sophia turned first. Amelia’s eyes widened. Marjorie froze upon the branch, with one hand curled around the trunk.
“I thought we had spoken about climbing trees.”
“We did,” Sophia replied. Her expression remained calm, though surprise still lingered in her eyes.
“Then perhaps you will explain why Marjorie is presently sitting on one.”
“I am not sitting,” Marjorie protested. “I am balancing.”
“That does not improve the matter.”
Amelia came nearer to Sophia. “She has not climbed very high.”
Benedict looked up at Marjorie. “She has climbed higher than she was given permission to climb.”
“I gave her permission,” Sophia said.
Benedict turned to her. The words struck him with more force than they ought to have done.
“You did?”
Sophia’s brows drew together at his tone. “Yes. I remained beneath her the entire time. I tested the lower branches first, and I made her come down whenever she attempted to climb higher.”
“That was not your decision to make.”
“Marjorie asked first. She listened, she allowed me to show her how to test each branch, and she obeyed when I told her she had gone far enough. I thought that was what you wanted her to learn.”
Nathaniel shifted his weight. “Perhaps we might first establish that Marjorie is safe—”
“She is safe,” Sophia repeated more fiercely.
Benedict’s gaze remained fixed upon her. “For the moment.”
Her chin lifted slightly. “She is being supervised.”
“That does not alter the rule.”
“The rule was that she was not to climb alone.”
“The rule was that she was not to climb without my permission.”
Sophia looked toward the tree, then back at him. “I understood that supervision was the purpose of it.”
“The purpose was to prevent another accident.”
“And that is precisely what I am doing.”
Benedict felt his temper sharpen. Sophia did not appear careless. That almost made the matter worse. She stood before him with perfect sincerity, believing she had interpreted his rule wisely rather than disregarded it.
Yet he had entrusted the girls to her care. He expected her to reinforce the structure he had created, not quietly revise it whenever she thought his caution excessive.
“They require consistency,” he reminded her. “If I forbid something and you permit it the moment my back is turned, the rule becomes meaningless.”
“I did not wait for your back to be turned.”
Nathaniel lowered his head over his glass. Under any other circumstance, Benedict might have recognized the answer as one of Sophia’s quieter provocations. Now it only increased his irritation.
“This is not amusing.”
“I did not say it was.”
“Uncle Benedict,” Marjorie called from above. “Sophia taught me how to test the branches before I put my weight upon them.”
“That is not the point.”
“She made me come down twice when I went too high.”
Benedict looked up sharply. “You went higher than this?”
Marjorie realized her error. “Only a little.”
Amelia took Sophia’s hand. “She was very careful.”
Benedict saw the gesture. Both girls stood with Sophia as though she required protection from him. Something cold and uncomfortable entered his anger.
“I do not doubt that Sophia believed she was being careful,” he spoke calmly. “But care does not mean disregarding every restriction one finds inconvenient.”
Sophia’s expression altered. “I do not find your concern inconvenient.”
“Only the rules produced by it.”
“That is unfair.”
“Is it?”
She held his gaze. “You told Marjorie she might climb if it was discussed beforehand, supervised, and kept to a reasonable height.”
Nathaniel closed his eyes briefly, as though Benedict and Sophia had confirmed some private expectation of his.
Benedict scarcely noticed. He remembered Sophia beneath that first oak, telling him that a rule forbidding all risk might teach a child to take risks in secret.
He listened. He revised his judgment. He permitted supervised climbing because she persuaded him that protection could become confinement.
But he had not surrendered all authority over the girls.
“They need to understand that instructions are not invitations to negotiate until they receive the answer they prefer.”
Marjorie frowned. “We did not negotiate.”
Benedict gave her a look.
She considered. “Not very much.”
Sophia’s hand closed gently around Amelia’s. “They also need to learn to judge danger for themselves. We cannot keep them upon the ground forever.”
“They are eight years old.”
“And this is how they begin learning.”
“They are not being raised to run wild through the countryside. They must grow into sensible, proper young ladies.”
Marjorie looked offended. “I can be proper in a tree.”
Nathaniel coughed, turning the sound into something suspiciously like laughter.
Benedict’s gaze moved to him. “Do you have something useful to add?”
“Not if useful is the standard.”
“Then remain silent.”
Nathaniel lifted his glass in surrender. Sophia looked at Benedict with a disappointment that reached him more readily than anger would have.
“No one is allowing them to run wild,” she told him calmly. “Marjorie was learning. Amelia was watching. I was here every moment.”
“And what would you have done had she fallen?”
The question left him more harshly than he intended. Sophia went still. Benedict saw the answer in her face before she spoke. She would have tried to catch the child. She would have placed herself between Marjorie and the ground without considering what it might cost her.
That knowledge did not soothe him. It frightened him more.
“I would not have allowed her to fall,” Sophia said quietly.
“You cannot promise that.”
“No,” she replied. “Nor can you promise that no harm will ever reach them simply because you make enough rules.”
The words struck the oldest wound within him. For an instant, the garden disappeared beneath other images: his brother’s empty chair, two little girls in black, Amelia asleep against his chest while he wondered how a man protected children from a world that had already taken too much.
Benedict’s voice became colder because the alternative was to let it break. “The rule remains.”
Sophia opened her mouth. He had no wish to hear another argument, not while Marjorie remained above the ground, not while the girls watched them, and not while Nathaniel stood near enough to observe every failure of Benedict’s self-command.
“Marjorie, come down.”
“But—”
“Now.”
The child’s mouth tightened.
Sophia looked up at her. “Do as your uncle says.”
There was no resentment in her voice, only a quiet firmness which made Benedict’s anger falter for half a heartbeat.
Marjorie began descending. She moved carefully, using the lower branches exactly as Sophia had evidently taught her.
When she reached the final one, Sophia stepped forward and placed both hands at her waist, guiding her safely onto the grass.
Benedict watched until both of the child’s feet were firmly upon the ground. Relief came first, then the anger returned to cover it.
“This conversation is finished,” he said.
Sophia’s eyes met his. “Benedict—”
“I have correspondence waiting.”
It was a poor excuse. They both knew it. He turned before her expression could compel him to remain. Nathaniel glanced between them, then hurried after Benedict, protecting what remained of his cognac from the sudden movement. They crossed the lawn in silence for several steps.
“For what it is worth, Marjorie appeared to know precisely what she was doing,” Nathaniel told him.
Benedict did not slow. “She is eight.”
“Yes.”
“And Sophia should have supported my rule.”
Nathaniel looked back toward the tree. “She supported the purpose of it. She merely disagreed with the execution.”
“That distinction is unlikely to comfort anyone after a broken neck.”
Nathaniel’s amusement vanished. Benedict regretted the words as soon as he spoke them, but he could not call them back. He returned to the house. The laughter which had drawn him from his study was gone now.
Nathaniel did not follow him inside. The engineer would be waiting at the lower gate by now. After one last uneasy glance toward the oak, he set his glass upon the terrace wall and went to meet him.
When he reached his writing table, the letters still waited exactly where he had left them. Benedict sat, picked up his pen, and stared at the unfinished page.
The silence of the study should have restored him. Instead, he could see only Sophia’s disappointed eyes and the careful certainty with which she had caught Marjorie and placed her safely upon the ground.