Chapter 3
The curious look that passed between the two men lasted only a second, but it was enough.
Eloise understood with a sinking clarity that made her want to close her eyes. The rough-looking man with the scarred face and furious eyes was not a groundskeeper, not a steward, and not any servant she had foolishly imagined him to be.
He was Lord James Macalpine, Viscount, and she had spent several minutes criticizing his household management directly to his face.
She stood very still and searched for an answer that would not make the matter worse.
Beside her, Maisie’s small fingers closed hard around hers. The little girl lifted her face toward her uncle with wary concern, as though she had learned to read trouble in an adult’s expression.
“Please do not be angry,” Maisie said.
The plea crossed the courtyard gently and left Lord Macalpine looking less like a judge than a man who had been struck where he could least defend himself.
Lord Macalpine looked at his niece. His jaw eased by a fraction, and the hard severity in his eyes receded.
“I am not angry,” he said.
Maisie studied him with focused skepticism. Eloise suspected she had been told that before and was not entirely convinced. “You look angry.”
“I look tired,” he said. “There is a difference.”
“You may be both,” Logan said, with an ease that suggested he had survived many such tempers. “I have often found the two conditions travel together in this family.”
Lord Macalpine’s gaze moved to him. “You may cease helping.”
“Gladly,” Logan said. “Though I reserve the right to begin again if the atmosphere grows any colder.”
Duncan stood a few feet away with his hands in his pockets and his gaze fixed on his uncle. The boy who had argued with Eloise at every opportunity since their first meeting gave no reply, and his restraint told her more than another quarrel would have done.
Logan, who had also suffered from Eloise’s considerable misidentification and appeared to find the affair greatly entertaining, cleared his throat.
“Well,” Logan said. “It has been a dreadful afternoon by any measure, and I believe we can agree that a hot drink would serve us better than freezing in the drive.” He looked at Eloise with open friendliness. “May I offer you tea, miss?”
“You are very kind,” Eloise said, grateful for any sentence that did not require her to explain herself further.
“Tea first,” Logan said. “Explanations after. It is a family rule, though Jamie pretends not to remember it.”
“I remember every rule,” Lord Macalpine said.
“Then you remember the part about not terrifying ladies who have just rescued your niece.”
Eloise glanced between them and wondered how often Logan had appointed himself interpreter between Lord Macalpine and the rest of humanity.
The front door opened before anyone moved toward it, and Mrs. Maggie appeared on the steps, looking as though she had surveyed a disaster and had already chosen where to begin repairing things.
Her gaze moved across the group with practiced efficiency: the children, Logan, the viscount, and finally Eloise. A flicker of recognition crossed her face before composure replaced it.
“There you are,” she said.
Maisie released Eloise’s hand and ran forward at full speed, arms open, all anxiety evaporated in an instant. “Mrs. Maggie!”
The housekeeper caught her with practiced ease. Above Maisie’s head, her eyes met Eloise’s, and Eloise understood that the afternoon would be discussed in detail later.
“You are safe,” Mrs. Maggie said into the child’s hair.
“She said I was not a burden,” Maisie added, in a smaller voice.
Mrs. Maggie’s arms tightened around her. “Then she spoke the truth.”
Maisie turned her head enough to look at her uncle. “And she told Duncan he could be useful if he stopped trying to be difficult.”
“I did not use precisely those words,” Eloise said.
Maisie nodded with complete certainty. “She said he was quick enough to help if he wished to be.”
“That is closer,” Eloise said.
Duncan’s chin lifted. “I did help.”
“You did,” Eloise said. “You knew the road signs after the bend, and you kept Maisie from stepping into the ruts.”
The boy looked away, but not before satisfaction touched his face.
“Near enough,” Duncan muttered.
Lord Macalpine watched the exchange with an unreadable expression. “Duncan does not usually accept praise from strangers.”
“I was not praising him for comfort,” Eloise said. “I was reporting an observed fact.”
“Observed facts can be troublesome,” Logan said.
“In this house,” Lord Macalpine said, “they usually are.”
“Miss … um … I forgot her name. But she found me,” Maisie announced, pulling back to deliver her report. “She found me by the road, and she took us for supper at the tavern, and she bought bread and stew and cheese, and Duncan ate most of the bread.”
“I ate my share,” Duncan said, from behind her.
“You ate your share and then you ate some of mine.”
“You were not going to finish it.”
“I was absolutely going to finish it.”
Duncan looked unconvinced. Mrs. Maggie gave him a look that required no speech and produced instant results.
“Fine.” Duncan crossed to her and submitted to an embrace with solemn endurance. “I am well. I was never lost.”
“So I see,” Mrs. Maggie said.
“I knew where I was the entire time.”
“Of course you did.”
“Maisie was the one who got turned around.”
“Maisie was not the child who walked ahead without looking back,” Mrs. Maggie said, pleasant and calm, and Duncan had the grace to make no further protest.
The entrance hall of Viscount Macalpine’s estate suited a house of age and consequence.
The ceiling soared overhead, dark wood panels lined the walls, and portraits in gilded frames looked down with composed authority.
The floor gleamed beneath her feet, and every visible surface had been well kept.
It was also, despite all of that, one of the loneliest rooms she had ever stood in.
She could not have explained why. The house had no visible neglect. Servants moved through it with brisk care. Yet the silence pressed against her, not from lack of noise, but from lack of welcome. It felt like a house where people had ceased expecting good news.
She had been in houses like that before. She recognized the feeling.
Ahead of her, Mrs. Maggie led the children toward the staircase. Maisie kept talking, her rising energy melting from fear to relief. Duncan walked close beside his sister, hands in his pockets, ready to intervene if she required him.
Logan disappeared to speak with a footman near the far end of the hall, leaving Eloise in the viscount’s company with the uneasy knowledge that her apology had not yet done enough.
She gathered herself and tried.
“My lord,” she said.
He glanced toward her without breaking stride. “Yes?”
“I owe you an apology for what I said outside. I made assumptions before I understood the circumstances, and I spoke before I had any right to speak.”
He said nothing. The silence invited her to continue, which she suspected was intentional.
“I am not sorry for my concern,” she said, “because the children were hungry and Maisie was frightened. Those matters were real, whatever caused them. But I regret the presumption. I should have asked before I judged.”
He remained silent for a short while. When he spoke, his voice stayed controlled. “You believed I had left them to wander unsupervised.”
“Yes,” Eloise said.
“And what do you believe now?”
She met his gaze. “I believe you spent the afternoon frightened for them, and that your anger came from fear. I also believe I owe you an apology for worsening a difficult afternoon.”
“You assume a great deal from very little acquaintance.”
“I do,” Eloise said. “It is a fault when I am wrong and a useful habit when I am right.”
“And which is it now?”
“I suspect you have not yet decided.”
His gaze lingered on her for a breath longer than politeness required. “I decide slowly when the evidence is inconvenient.”
A hint of interest crossed his face. “You are unusually direct,” he said.
“I have been told so.”
“I imagine you have.”
He looked ahead again, and the conversation lapsed. Eloise counted the absence of open hostility as progress and kept pace beside him.
“You do not defend yourself at greater length?” he asked.
“Would that improve your opinion of me?”
“No.”
“Then I shall spare us both.”
His mouth did not soften, but the stern line of it changed by the smallest degree. “You are either brave or reckless.”
“I have found the distinction is often decided afterward.”
For the first time, Lord Macalpine seemed in danger of answering as a man rather than as a title. The danger passed before it became a smile.
At the foot of the staircase, Mrs. Maggie had paused and turned to address the children.
“Upstairs,” she said. “Both of you. Wash your hands, change your clothes, and I will send up something warm to eat before bed.”
Maisie accepted these terms immediately and began climbing. Duncan did not.
“I am not a child,” he said.
“No,” Mrs. Maggie agreed.
He blinked, apparently having expected more resistance. “Then I do not need to be told to wash my hands.”
“Every person in this house washes before supper,” Mrs. Maggie said, perfectly calm. “The viscount does it, Logan does it, and I do it. It is not a nursery rule. It is a household rule.”
Duncan appeared to be searching for an argument and finding the available options unsatisfactory. He crossed his arms instead. “I am not tired.”
“You have walked five miles today.”
“I am not tired,” he repeated, with iron conviction. He will sleep the moment no one is watching him, Eloise thought with a rush of fondness.
Mrs. Maggie regarded him with patient certainty. “Upstairs, Duncan.”
The boy’s jaw set. He looked at the staircase, then Mrs. Maggie, then his uncle, searching for support that did not appear.
Eloise reached into her traveling bag before caution could stop her.
She had made the puzzle three weeks earlier, during an evening when worry kept sleep away and her hands needed occupation.
Anagrams filled a grid, each answer leading to the next, with a cipher hidden in the final row.
She had labored over it for two evenings and had been privately pleased with the result.
She drew it out and held it toward Duncan as if it were of no great consequence.
“I wonder if I might ask a favor,” she said.
Duncan looked at the paper warily, as if he was being offered something he suspected was a trick. “What sort of favor?”
“I made this puzzle some weeks ago, and I cannot determine whether it is too difficult or merely dull.” She kept her voice practical. “I would value another opinion. You may leave it outside my door when you have finished, if you wish.”
He did not take it right away. He looked at the paper, then at her. “What kind of puzzle?”
“Anagrams to begin with. Then a cipher in the final row.”
“The first answer gives a letter for the second,” Eloise said. “If the first answer is wrong, the rest collapses. I am afraid it is rather unforgiving.”
“I prefer unforgiving puzzles,” Duncan said.
“How fortunate. I prefer honest critics.”
“What kind of cipher?”
“Not the ordinary kind printed in children’s books,” Eloise said. “A substitution, but the key is hidden in the answers.”
Duncan tried to appear bored. “That is not difficult.”
“Then you will return it before breakfast.”
“Perhaps.”
“I shall take your perhaps as confidence in disguise.”
“You would have to solve the anagram sequence to find out.”
Duncan’s eyes narrowed. She could see him deciding whether the task was beneath him and losing the argument. He took the paper with careful indifference, glanced at the first line, and looked up again.
“This looks simple,” he said.
“Does it?” Eloise said. “Good. Then it should not take you long.”
He looked at it again. Interest flashed across his face before pride pulled it back into hiding.
He folded the paper and pushed it into his pocket. “Fine,” he said, as if granting a concession. “I will look at it.”
“I appreciate it,” Eloise said.
He turned and climbed the stairs without further argument.
Maisie turned from the stairs to look back at Eloise with wide, delighted eyes. Eloise gave her a small nod. Maisie beamed and disappeared around the corner.
“Miss.”
She turned. Lord Macalpine regarded her with crossed arms and an even voice, his eyes moving over her face as if his judgment of her refused to form.
“You gave my ward a task without my permission,” he said.
“I asked him for a favor,” Eloise said. “There is a distinction.”
“There is also the matter of who has authority over what he is and is not given to do in this house.”
“Then you may be relieved to know I have no talent for forcing children to learn.”
“That is not a recommendation.”
“It can be. A child who believes he has chosen the task will guard it more fiercely than a lesson assigned by command.”
His eyes narrowed. “You speak as if you have tested that theory.”
“Many times,” she said. She paused, remembering herself.
She was very nervous, and still bothered by the fact that, albeit unintentionally, the children had been able to slip away and flee to the village by themselves, but she knew she could not afford to let her emotions run too far away from her.
“You are correct, of course,” she said, softening her tone.
“ I should have asked you first. I apologize.” She held his gaze. “Though he did go upstairs.”
The viscount looked at the staircase, then back at her. He appeared to acknowledge the point and dislike it.
“That does not make it less presumptuous,” he said.
“No,” Eloise said. “It only makes it useful.”
“Who are you?” he asked. “Precisely.”
The blunt question caught her off guard, though she kept her composure. “A woman who reached your village this afternoon and stepped into a difficulty she did not seek,” she said. “Beyond that, I am the person Mrs. Maggie mentioned in her letter.”
Lord Macalpine froze, not with calm, but with swift internal recalculation.
He turned toward Mrs. Maggie.
The housekeeper had observed the exchange from near the stairs. She straightened.
“This is Miss Eloise Beauchamp,” she said clearly.
“She is the young woman I recommended for the position of governess. She comes with my personal endorsement, she is the daughter of a dear and trusted friend, and you agreed to accept her without an interview because I asked it of you and because you have not managed to keep a governess in this house for longer than four weeks in eighteen months.” She folded her hands.
“I trust there are no further questions.”
The silence that followed was magnificent.
Lord Macalpine stared at Mrs. Maggie. Mrs. Maggie looked back at him with perfect serenity. Logan had reappeared near the far end of the hall and appeared deeply interested in the ceiling.