Chapter 9 #2
His jaw tightened further. He was quiet for several seconds. “My mother did not like him,” he said, his voice flat and completely certain as he spoke.
Eloise looked at him carefully. “Did she say that?”
He shook his head.
“Then how do you know?”
He shrugged, the movement stiff and unwilling. “She did not like him. I just know.”
“Duncan …”
“She just did not.” The words came out final, the way children state things they believe so firmly that they feel there is no sense defending them. He opened his book with sudden force and bent over it as though determined to disappear into the page entirely.
Eloise did not press him. She turned instead to Maisie, who had been quiet through the entire exchange, bent over her drawing paper with careful, deliberate pencil strokes. Eloise crossed to look over her shoulder.
A house. The estate, drawn with painstaking attention to the windows and the chimneys. In front of it was four figures.
Eloise recognized the first as Maisie herself, the second as Duncan, the third unmistakably herself, with her hair pinned the way she wore it for lessons.
The fourth was a tall man with dark hair.
Not Lawrence.
“Who is this?” Eloise asked, though she already knew.
Maisie looked up, pleased with herself. “Uncle Jamie.”
Something caught sharply in Eloise’s chest. The four figures stood in front of the house exactly as though they belonged together.
As though they were a loving family. It made sense that Maisie saw her uncle as a new father figure.
But did it mean that she saw Eloise as a mother figure?
How would Eloise handle such a notion if that was the case?
“You drew him very tall,” she said, smoothing Maisie’s hair.
“He is tall.”
“He is.”
“And he looks after us,” Maisie said, with simple certainty, as if what she said could not possibly be argued.
“Yes,” Eloise said quietly. “I think he does.”
She pinned the drawing to the schoolroom wall where both children could see it from the table. Duncan glanced up from his book despite himself, looked at it a moment longer than he likely intended to, and returned to his reading with his face set in a more woeful expression than before.
Eloise pretended not to notice, even though she did.
She did not want to make the boy uncomfortable.
But she could never forget what the children clearly longed for.
They wanted a family like the one they lost. While Eloise knew they could never have that, she hoped they could have one where they felt just as loved and valued as they once did.
***
The afternoon sky cleared enough to tempt them outside, and Eloise took the children into the garden before the next lesson.
The hedges still held the morning’s mist, glittering faintly in the pale light.
Maisie walked close beside her with a fistful of daisies she had insisted on gathering despite Eloise’s warning that half of them would be lost before they reached the path.
Duncan walked a little ahead, pretending to be interested in neither flowers nor conversation, and Eloise let him be.
“Miss Beauchamp.”
She turned. Lawrence stood on the path, immaculate even among the damp hedges, one hand folded behind his back.
“Good afternoon, my lord.”
“You are escaping the house.”
“Only for a moment.”
“May I join you?”
She could hardly refuse without seeming rude.
"What a fine afternoon for a walk," Lawrence said, falling into step beside her. "Though I imagine the weather here changes its mind rather more often than it does in the south."
"It does, my lord."
"And this path, does it lead all the way down to the sea?"
"Eventually. Though it grows rather steep near the end."
He glanced at Maisie. "Do you like flowers, my dear?"
Maisie nodded but stayed close to Eloise’s side.
“And you,” Lawrence said, turning to Duncan. “Has the new puzzle proven difficult?”
Duncan shrugged.
“You do not waste time with false modesty, then,” Lawrence said, and Duncan looked up, caught off guard by the small joke despite himself.
They walked in silence for a short while. Then, Lawrence looked over at her. “You must miss your family.”
Eloise had prepared for the question, and the answer came smoothly enough. “I miss them very much.”
“Your parents are well, I hope?”
“Yes.”
“And your mother’s family?”
She thought the specific question was odd, especially since he had just asked about her family. But perhaps he simply had a strange way of phrasing his questions.
“Also well.”
“A great responsibility for your parents, I imagine. An only child.”
“Yes.”
“Your father is a country gentleman, I believe.”
Eloise could not identify the exact reason her stomach began to tighten at the questions. They seemed harmless enough. But it felt as though something was trying to warn her that the conversation was far from innocent. But why?
“Yes,” she said. “I have a very modest background.”
He nodded warmly. “It must have required a great deal of courage, to take on a household such as this one.”
The compliment was kind enough to disarm her. She gave the answer she had rehearsed since her conversation with Mrs. Maggie in the village when she first arrived in the village. “My mother’s family was Beauchamp.”
Lawrence’s expression remained entirely pleasant. “That name sounds familiar.”
A cold thread moved through her stomach, her suspicion raised once more. “Does it?”
“I believe so.” He said it lightly, looking ahead at the path as though the matter was completely immaterial. Yet Eloise suddenly felt sure it was anything but meaningless to the marquess.
“It is a common enough name,” Eloise said.
“Of course.” He smiled at her, an expression that revealed nothing whatsoever, and the back of her neck prickled.
He continued walking beside her, speaking now of the roads and the weather, his pace unhurried and his manner entirely ordinary, and it was impossible to know whether the remark had meant nothing at all or everything.
She was incapable of following anything he was saying then. The sensation of paranoia was becoming so intense that she could not focus on anything else.
When it was time to take the children to finish their lessons, Lawrence excused himself with perfect grace. “I should not keep you.”
“No,” Eloise said.
“Perhaps I shall see you at tea.”
“I am sure you shall.”
He turned to go, then paused, looking back at her with the same unreadable expression. “I am glad you are here, Miss Beauchamp.”
“That is kind of you.”
His gaze held a moment longer than necessary. “Beauchamp,” he said idly.
The name struck her like a slap, not for the fact that he said it, but for how carefully he did so. As though he were turning it over. Testing it. Trying to place it against something he half remembered.
“An uncommon name in some parts, I believe,” he said, seemingly dismissing her previous remark about how common the name was.
She forced her voice to be calm and even. “Though common enough in others.”
“Of course.” He nodded slowly and walked away.
Eloise did not move until he had disappeared around the hedge. She did not move for some time after that either, standing very still on the garden path while the cold settled through her in a way that had nothing to do with the weather.
Beauchamp. He had said it too thoughtfully. As though something about it had stirred a memory he had not yet located.
She looked down and found her hands trembling enough to confirm that the feeling welling against her ribs was entirely real.
She closed her fists until the trembling eased. Then she lifted her chin and walked back toward the house. Where she had only been concerned before, she was suddenly certain that he had recognized the name.
But had he, perhaps, simply known someone in her mother’s family? Or did he know something about her father, as well? If he did, he would know soon enough, if not already, who she truly was. What would come of her then?