Chapter 25
Eloise was frightened, but she did not show it. She could not let Jamie see how frightened she was, because he had already given enough of himself to the problem and she would not add her terror to his burden.
He had told her what Lawrence had done. Eloise had listened without interruption, recalling what Catriona had said to her. When he stopped and took a deep, heavy breath, Eloise gave him a sad smile.
“Lady Catriona offered to help,” she said.
To her surprise, Jamie nodded.
“I know,” he said. “I spoke with her about everything, as well.”
She nodded, feeling numb. It should have been reassuring that Jamie knew of Catriona’s willingness to help.
But it wounded her. I should not be surprised, she thought with the sudden prickle of tears in her eyes.
They are to be husband and wife. They should discuss important matters if they are to resolve them as such.
And the fact that he had not informed Eloise that he had spoken to Catriona reinforced what she had to realize right then. He would never speak to her the same way ever again.
For a time, it had felt to Eloise as though she and Jamie were a team. And it had been easy to imagine during that time that there was a chance for Jamie and Eloise to build a future together. But with that single statement, Jamie had removed any hopes or ideas of any such thing.
She went first to Mrs. Maggie. The housekeeper was in her sitting room with a mended cuff in her lap and the look she wore when she expected to be the voice of reason when no one else was capable. Eloise shut the door behind her and stood for a second too long.
Mrs. Maggie looked up immediately. “You have the face of a woman who has seen bad news and intends to outwit it.”
Eloise managed a small smile. “I do not intend to outwit my future,” she said. “But I do intend to outwit Lawrence.
Mrs. Maggie set the cuff aside. “Sit down.”
Eloise obeyed. The room was quiet except for the faint crackle of the fire, and everything in it looked calm enough to make the danger outside feel unreal.
“What should I do?” Eloise asked.
Mrs. Maggie’s gaze sharpened. “Keep the children close.”
Eloise nodded.
“Do not let them wander off alone. Do not let anyone question them without you present if it can be helped.”
Eloise looked down. “Should I speak to them? About what is happening?”
“No.” The answer came immediately. Mrs. Maggie leaned back slightly.
“Not unless you must. Duncan will see through everything before you have finished your first sentence. Maisie will follow his face and become frightened because of it. Children know when adults are afraid, but they do not know what to do with the knowledge.”
“That is exactly what I feared,” Eloise said quietly.
“Then do not confirm it for them.”
“I will not.”
Mrs. Maggie nodded once, satisfied. “Will Duncan ask?”
“Probably,” Eloise admitted.
“About the petition.”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Maggie made a low sound in her throat. “He is too perspicacious for his own good.”
Eloise gave a faint, troubled smile. “That is one way of putting it.”
Mrs. Maggie watched her for a moment longer. “You should take care of yourself too.”
Eloise laughed at that. “I am not the one in danger.”
“That is not the only sort of danger.” Mrs. Maggie’s tone was so mild that the words struck her all the harder. It is the only danger that matters right now, she thought silently. The danger of my heart shattering is mine to handle alone, only after the children are safe from that devil, Lawrence.
“Thank you, Mrs. Maggie.”
Mrs. Maggie had already returned to her cuff, but Eloise saw her quick head nod. “If you intend to read yourself senseless, use the library. The books are better there. If the court likes paper so much, let us see what paper can do.”
Eloise stopped in the doorway and turned. The housekeeper glanced up once. It was not comfort she was offering. It was better than comfort. It was confidence. Eloise nodded and went.
The library remained open to her long after the household had gone quiet. Eloise gathered every book she could find on guardianship law, trusts, court practice, and the rights of wards under title and will.
Her father had raised her, in the years before the debts, on books and arguments, and the belief that knowledge was a thing no one could steal once it was truly learned.
Law had always been one of the subjects she loved best. She had not expected that to matter there.
Yet suddenly, it mattered more there than it had ever mattered to her.
She worked at the long table beneath the lamplight, turning pages, copying important lines into a notebook, cross-referencing wherever the texts seemed to speak to each other.
She read through the night. At first, it felt like panic. Then like labor. Then, by some time later, like purpose. One book described the rights of a legal guardian named in the father’s will and noted that any extraordinary removal required strong evidence and immediate justification.
Another explained that a petitioner could not simply rely on displeasure with a household’s appearance unless there was proof of imminent harm.
Another made clear that a guardian was entitled to notice and a chance to respond before extraordinary trust interference could be finalized.
The pages seemed to support one another in elegant ways.
As dawn crept in, she heard movement in the corridor. Eloise held her breath looking toward the doorway just as Catriona stepped into view. She passed the open door with a small stack of correspondence in hand, moving with her usual calm but with a purposefulness that Eloise noticed right away.
A few minutes later, Catriona passed again carrying two sealed letters. She stopped when she saw Eloise still at the table.
For a second neither spoke.
“Have you been reading all night?” Catriona asked.
Eloise closed one book carefully. “Yes.”
Catriona glanced at the stack beside her. “I hope the books have been useful.”
“Very.”
The widow’s face did not change, but Eloise had the impression that Catriona understood exactly what kind of usefulness she meant. Catriona lifted one of the letters slightly. “I have written to my cousin in Glasgow.”
Eloise looked up.
“And to the wife of a Scottish judge who used to summer at my late husband’s house.” There was no drama in the statement. Only fact.
Eloise stared. “You have already done that?”
“I am awake too,” Catriona said, with the smallest possible shrug.
Eloise looked at the letters. “You did this because of what I said?”
“I did this because the house is in danger and because I believe in being useful when one can.”
The words were plain. Eloise had not expected them to move her so much.
She looked down at the books and then back up again.
Catriona nodded slightly, as though the conversation had completed itself, and left the room without fanfare, as though the exchange had been no more significant than a note about weather.
Catriona was genuinely kind and thoughtful, that much was clear.
And she evidently cared about Jamie and the children.
And the brief but warm interaction and the wink had not felt at all like condescension. In fact, it had felt like Catriona was showing Eloise that she liked her, and that it was all right for Eloise to like her back, while also conveying that it was all right if she did not like Catriona yet, also.
Eloise sat for a while after she was gone and thought that Catriona was, in her own way, very good indeed.
She had not imagined she would like her so much.
She thought it would make her heartache easier if she did not like Catriona.
But if anything, Catriona’s compassion and empathy only showed Eloise that nothing could soothe her.
***
By the time noon arrived, Eloise still had not slept. Yet she did not feel tired. She felt sharpened. There was a brief bit of time early in the morning before the house became fully awake, and she used it to ride out alone into the fields beyond the grounds.
The air was cold enough to sting her cheeks at first, but the motion of the horse and the wind through her bonnet soothed her immediately. She had not realized how tightly she had been holding herself until she let go.
For a few glorious minutes, the world narrowed to the sound of the horse’s hooves, the movement of the wind, and the clean open line of the fields. She had not felt that sort of freedom since before the petition, before the engagement, before she had said the words that sent Jamie toward Catriona.
The melody came to her without thinking. It was one she sometimes sang softly to the children when they were tired or restless, a simple tune, old enough to feel like memory and gentle enough to soothe. She sang under her breath at first, then a little more freely as the horse moved on.
She was so lost in the sound that she startled when a voice came from the hedgerow.
“I did not know you sang so well.”
She turned, startled. Jamie stood by the path near the trees with his hands behind his back and a gaze much less severe than the one she had expected to meet that morning.
Her heart gave one sharp thump before she managed to answer. “You were eavesdropping.”
“I was arriving.”
“That sounds suspiciously like the same thing.”
His mouth twitched. She had not seen that look on him in too many days, not since the pressure in the house had become so thick and the future so uncertain. The sight of it made her ache.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked.
His gaze moved over the fields, then back to her. “Thinking.”
“That does not surprise me.”
He looked at her more fully then, and she became aware of a strange and sudden quiet between them.
“You sing to the children,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I had not realized you sang like that.”
She lifted one shoulder. “How disappointed are you?”
“Not at all.”