Chapter 10
Logan came into the study without knocking, as he often did.
The pale bands of afternoon light slanted across the estate accounts Jamie had been avoiding for three days.
He had been staring through the same column of figures without seeing them when Logan crossed the room and dropped into the chair opposite his own.
“You are late,” Jamie said.
“I am on time.”
“You are always late.”
“That is because you insist on starting your day too early. According to a typical schedule, I am actually a bit early.” Logan sat back further into the chair. “I have taken the liberty of keeping an eye on our esteemed guest.”
Jamie set down his pen. “Go on.”
“The marquess rose before the sun,” Logan said dryly. “He took breakfast with the household. Asked after Mrs. Maggie, the children, the servants, the estate in general. He praised Clara’s bread twice. Made a point of addressing the footman by name.”
“Very considerate,” Jamie said.
“Very polished.” Logan paused. “Later, he walked the grounds with the governess for twenty minutes.”
Jamie’s pen stopped on the page. Logan noticed the silence and watched him with patient interest.
“Did he?” Jamie said, keeping his voice level.
“Aye.”
“How long?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Alone?”
“With the children. Though I am certain the children were more focused on playing than on the adults.”
Jamie said nothing. That was not an unusual length of time for two people to walk together on a fine morning. Yet his jaw had tightened regardless, and the tightening annoyed him more than the walk itself.
“Did she seem comfortable?” he asked.
“Perfectly at ease.”
He returned his attention to the ledger and found the columns no more cooperative than before.
Logan continued, almost idly. “He is now in the drawing room writing letters.”
“Of course he is.”
“You do not like that she walked with him.”
“I did not say that.”
“You did not need to.”
Jamie kept his eyes on the ledger. “Was there anything improper about it?”
“No,” Logan said, and that answer annoyed him more than any other could have. “He asked the footman three questions about the household income before his first cup of tea was finished.”
Jamie looked up sharply. “Why would he ask that?”
“He might be curious.”
“About the income?”
“About the household.” Logan spread his hands slightly. “Or perhaps he likes talking to servants.”
“You think him suspicious.”
“I think he is very good at appearing harmless. That is not the same as proof of anything.”
“It is close.”
“It is not.” Logan rose and crossed to the door, then paused with his hand on the frame. “She seemed comfortable with him. Perhaps that should matter more than your dislike of the man.”
The door closed before Jamie could answer.
He sat alone with the ledger for a long while afterward. He did not trust Lawrence’s manners or his polish. He did not like how easily the man moved through the house. And he was flustered that Eloise had seemed comfortable in his company.
Perhaps I am merely seeing things in Lawrence that I do not possess, he considered. That was an uncharitable thought, but knowing did not make it feel less true.
***
That night, unable to sleep, he walked the corridors as he always did and stopped outside the library when he heard a sound from within. A page turning. A chair shifting.
Lawrence, he thought. He pushed the door open.
Eloise sat curled in the window seat with a book open on her lap. She startled at his entrance before settling, the book nearly slipping from her hand. For a moment, neither of them moved.
“You startled me,” she said.
“You should not be wandering about in the dark.”
Her brows rose. “That is a strange thing for you to say.”
He shut the door behind him. “Why are you here?”
“I came for something to read.”
He crossed to the chair near the cold hearth and sat, because there was little point pretending he had not already been caught. The fire had burned low enough that the room had gone nearly blue with moonlight.
“Do you always walk at night?” she asked.
“Usually. The house is quieter when it is dark.”
“I find it louder,” she said. “The thoughts I keep occupied during the day come out at night instead.”
He was disquieted at how much the honesty disarmed him. A long, unhurried silence followed. It occurred to him then that she had never asked about his scars. Before they met, he had been certain they would frighten her.
“I understand that very well,” he said. “I find there are things that cannot be silenced at night as they are during the day.”
She looked at him, and he noticed her eyes flicker to the scars on his face. There was no horror or disgust in her expression. Only sympathy and concern.
“It seems that horror feels most comfortable tormenting us at night.”
Jamie nodded.
“Shadows always loom larger without daylight to chase them away.”
Eloise gave him a sympathetic smile.
“Sharing the burdens those shadows hold is often the best defense we have against them.”
Jamie nodded again, more slowly. He understood then that she would not ask him about his scars. She was too kind and compassionate for that. What she was doing was giving him the chance to explain if he wished, whenever he was ready.
Was he ready to speak of something that was so cumbersome for him? Would she change her opinion of him, or discover horror in his past, if he spoke of it to her?
At last, he sighed. “There was an explosion.”
She did not move.
“On a ship,” he said. “The powder magazine caught. We were below decks. Men were shouting.” He forced his voice to remain even, although the memory came with its full, heart-wrenching impact. “I gave the order that put the men in danger. They died. I survived.” He hated the words as he spoke them.
“Was it your fault?” she asked.
The question struck harder than comfort would have. “They were dead because of an order I gave.”
“That is not the same as saying it was your fault.”
“It is, when you are the one giving the order.”
She was quiet for a moment. “What were their names?”
He stared at her. No one had ever asked him that. Not once, in all the years since.
“Thomas,” he said, after a long pause. “And … And Bennett.”
She repeated the names softly, as though committing them to memory. He felt tension he had not known he was carrying begin to relax. He had not realized how badly he needed to hear someone else say the names as though they had been men rather than casualties in a report.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“No. That is not why I told you.”
“What is, then?”
He had no answer he could give aloud. “I do not know.”
She accepted that without pressing further. “I do not know much about naval service,” she said. “But I know what responsibility costs people. You sound as though you believe being in command means carrying every outcome alone. That may be true in practice. It is not always true in judgment.”
He looked at her, surprised.
“My father has done himself no favors in life,” she said, with care.
“I learned young that mistakes do not disappear simply because one stops speaking of them. I do not know the details of your command, my lord. But I know you are carrying more than one event, more than one death, and you should not blame yourself more than the facts require.”
“You make it sound simpler than it is.”
“It is never simple. But it is sometimes clearer than people allow it to be.”
He was quiet long enough that she looked faintly uncertain. “I am not sure I am being reassuring,” she said.
“No,” he agreed, and almost laughed. “You speak too pointedly when you think yourself kind.”
Her eyes widened.
“That was not meant as criticism.”
“I did not take it as such.” He studied the moonlight on her hair and the book still open and unread in her lap. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome.”
“I trust your judgment,” he added, and watched her expression warm, only partly hidden.
He had watched how she treated the children, how she listened before she spoke, how she had asked for the names of dead men and treated them as men rather than statistics.
The trust was not casually given, and he suspected she understood that.
“I am grateful for your trust,” she said.
Jamie cleared his throat, smoothing his coat.
“What do you know more than anything else?” he asked.
She considered the question with visible wariness. “That is a dangerous question.”
“Why?”
“Because you may not like the answer.” She hesitated. “I should say schoolroom subjects.”
“That would be expected.”
“I know law,” she admitted, looking faintly embarrassed now. “Quite a bit of it.”
“Why?”
“When one grows up surrounded by debt, one learns where the rules are, even if one cannot alter them.” She held his gaze, more serious now than amused. “Because it makes sense when people do not.”
He stared at her for several seconds, and then, unexpectedly, he laughed.
“Was that ridiculous?” she asked.
“No. I think you have confessed to something worse.”
“Worse?”
“Competence,” he said, and she laughed again, properly this time, and the tension that had sat in the room since his confession dissolved.
At last, she rose. “Goodnight, my lord.”
“It is late,” he said. Then, because the thought had already formed and there was no decent way to leave it unsaid, he hurriedly continued. “You are not a stranger here.”
She stopped at the door and looked back.
“You are part of this household now,” he said. The words came out more awkward than he intended, despite his great need to say them.
“If you cannot understand that,” he added dryly, “I do not know how you are the one teaching.”
The color that rose in her cheeks pleased him more than it should have. She gave him a look that was half dismay and half amusement.
“Goodnight,” she said again at the door, without turning. “Thank you for telling me.”
“Thank you for asking the right questions,” he said.
She left, but he remained by the dead fire for some time afterward. He went upstairs eventually, feeling as though something had slipped out of place and could not easily be righted.
***
The next morning, he found himself outside the schoolroom corridor before he had consciously decided to go there.
He told himself it was to check on the children, which was true, partly, and told himself it was not at all to see whether Eloise had recovered from his unforgivable tendency toward awkward honesty, which was considerably less true.
Her clear, patient voice carried through the half-open door as she walked Duncan through questions of current and wind direction. The boy answered with sharp, engaged interest. Jamie’s heart squeezed at the animation in the child.
When the lesson ended and the children drifted toward the garden, Maisie with a drawing for Clara and Duncan with a book tucked under one arm, Jamie stepped into the corridor.
“May I have a word?” he asked.
Eloise looked up, mildly surprised, and nodded. “Of course.”
He stepped aside as Eloise joined him outside. He closed the schoolroom door behind them, but he quickly found the task of speaking harder than it had been the night before. He tried to speak, but his voice was less than a whisper at first.
“Thank you,” he said when his throat finally permitted sound. For last night. For listening without offering pity.”
She held his gaze, and he hated how direct that made her look, and how much he had come to rely on it.
“I do not say such things often,” he said.
“I know.”
“It was the first time I have spoken of it to anyone.”
Her expression softened into understanding. “You need not speak of it to anyone else,” she said. “And I will not.”
The promise mattered more than he expected it to.
“The men you named deserve to be remembered,” she added, when he asked whether she thought him foolish, and the words sat with more weight than any reassurance could have managed. He nodded once, and an understanding sat between them, unstated, but clearly shared.
“How is Duncan progressing?” he asked, because the ground felt safer there.
“Very well. He is impossible, in the best possible way.” Her expression brightened.
“He has been waiting for you to notice his latest puzzle. Every child needs to know that someone sees their effort. Duncan does not need a governess for this.” There was a pause, careful and deliberate. “He needs his uncle.”
The words found a place in him he had not expected to be touched. “Is that your professional assessment?”
“Yes.”
He studied her. There it was again, no flattery, no pretense, simply the truth laid out plainly enough that he could not easily dismiss it. He nodded once. “I will see to it.”
“That is all I ask.”
He turned to leave. At the door he glanced back at her. She stood in the corridor with her papers folded, the morning light on her face. He knew then that something between them had changed, and he wondered if she noticed it, as well. After another pause, he gave her a brief nod and left.
***
That afternoon, a footman delivered the week’s post to Jamie as he sat at his desk attempting, again, to finish the accounts he had been neglecting.
He sorted through the bundle idly. Estate correspondence.
London papers. A bill from a creditor he would rather not acknowledge.
A note from Mrs. Maggie about supplies that needed ordering before the month’s end.
Then a smaller letter, tucked between the others.
Baron Lawing.
His hand hovered over the desk.
He stared at the envelope as though it had spoken the name aloud. No one in society had forgotten it. Lawing. Debts that had ruined six families besides his own. Loans guaranteed and then abandoned.
Respectability undone so thoroughly that the name itself had become shorthand for its own form of disgrace. It was a name that was whispered in some circles and openly mocked in others.
He turned the letter over.
Miss Eloise Beauchamp.
Lawing. Beauchamp. The two names did not belong together. They could not belong together, and yet here they were, joined on a single envelope that had arrived in his own house, addressed to a woman who had been teaching his wards for the better part of a fortnight.
Which meant that they absolutely did belong together. What association could Eloise have with the baron? And why had she never mentioned any association with the gentleman?