Chapter 14
She had taken to spending her mornings in the library, among Lady Warrington’s papers: the long table still set out as the lady had left it, as though she had only stepped away and meant to return.
Lord Carrington called most days now, on one pretext or another, and they had fallen into the habit of working side by side, each taking a portion, reading until the light failed them.
“Here is another,” he said.
Viola looked up. He had a letter in one hand and one of Lady Warrington’s memoranda in the other, and his brow was drawn.
“A family named Aldous. She writes of them here: the father lately dead, the widow left with very little, three children.” He set the letter down and touched the memorandum beside it.
“And here, her own note: what she meant to send them, and when. The spring of two years past, and again the following quarter.”
“As with my father.”
“As with your father.” He said nothing for a moment.
“I have been looking. It is not only Tyne. It is not only the once. She kept a great many such people, quietly, without their knowing all of it, often without their knowing her hand in it at all. She made it her work.” His jaw tightened.
“And the same thing repeats, family after family. What she set down to send never matched what reached them. Not for your father. Not for the Aldous family. Not, I think, for the Colbournes either. There is a note here of the late earl, and a sum, and the sum is one of those that does not arrive.”
The names meant little to Viola. But the pattern of them — laid out in a dead woman’s careful hand, the same betrayal worked again and again upon people who had no one to count their losses for them — settled over her like cold water.
“How many?” she asked.
“I do not yet know. Several. Perhaps a great many.” He set the papers down and pressed the heel of his hand briefly to his eyes. “She was generous past all sense, and someone preyed upon it. Year after year. While she believed — ” He stopped.
“While she believed her kindness was reaching them,” Viola finished softly. “And it was not.”
“No.” The word came hard.
She watched him. There was something in his face she had seen before — at the box, and again now, stronger — a thing reached for and refused, held down by main force. He turned one of the memoranda over in his hands as though the back of it might say something the front did not.
“You know more than you are saying,” she said. Not an accusation. Only the truth, gently put.
“I know nothing.” He said it too quickly, and heard himself, and his mouth twisted.
“I know — that a thing done so often, so neatly, to so many, is not chance. Money does not lose itself by the same road a dozen times. Someone stood between her hand and theirs, and took what passed through.” His voice had gone low and rough.
“That much I will say. I find I cannot yet say more.”
“Because to say more is to name someone.”
He looked at her, and for a moment she thought he would answer it. Then he set the paper down with great care, as a man sets down something he is afraid of breaking, or of breaking himself upon.
“Let us read on,” he said. “I would be certain. Before I — before anything, I would be certain.”
And Viola, who understood a great deal about the cost of looking squarely at a truth one would rather not own, did not press him.
She drew the next bundle toward her, and they read on together, the afternoon failing around them, two people bent over the evidence of one woman’s ruined kindness.
Neither of them yet willing to speak, into that quiet room, the name that had begun to take shape in both their minds.
* * *
Viola was standing at the drawing room window when a carriage drew up outside Stoneleigh House.
A note had come from Miss Galbraith that morning, asking to call on her and Hannah both.
Disinclined as Viola was to the young lady’s company, she had told herself there was no just cause for it.
Miss Galbraith had done nothing truly wrong, and though she and her mother had shown a want of wisdom on occasion, Viola did not think there was real malice in it.
All the same, she let out a slow breath as she watched Miss Galbraith descend, her face wreathed in smiles.
She rang for the maid, sent word to Hannah, and asked for a tea tray, then returned to her seat as the afternoon sun stretched across the floor.
The room still felt alien to her; even the thought of moving an ornament felt a sin.
This is my home now, she told herself, smoothing her skirts and lifting her chin. I have no reason to feel ill at ease.
The door opened, and Viola rose, fixing a smile in place. “Miss Galbraith. Good afternoon.”
Miss Galbraith dipped a quick curtsy, her eyes bright. “Oh, Miss Trent. I am so very glad to see you.”
“Oh?” Viola gestured her to a seat, her eyes flicking to the door, wondering where Lady Henderson was.
“After our meeting in the park, I felt an apology was owed.” The lady flushed as Viola frowned. “My mother made it quite clear, once we were home, that I had spoken foolishly. I do hope you took no offence. I meant you no harm. It was only an idle wondering as to what might become of the house.”
Viola accepted the apology without question.
“That is good to hear, Miss Galbraith, and I thank you for it.” She was relieved when the tea came in, though she still did not know where Lady Henderson or her sister had gone.
“To be clear, though, I have no intention of giving up Stoneleigh House. Lady Warrington gave it to me, and I mean to do exactly as she asked in caring for it. Indeed, my father is to see it for himself before long, I hope. I have written, begging him to join us in London.”
“I did hear she was very fond of it.” Miss Galbraith’s voice softened as she looked about the room.
“We did not know her well, of course. But we all expected this house to go to Lord Carrington, as had always been thought. It seems strange to see it in other hands, even hands as careful as your own.”
Viola said nothing, and rose to pour the tea.
“I am sure you will prove a worthy steward,” Miss Galbraith went on as Viola handed her a cup. “Lord Carrington seems to have accepted it now, has he not?”
“He has. Though,” Viola added, recalling what he had said of his brother, “I am sure you know it was Lord Brookmire who was most troubled by my having the house. He will have spoken to you of it, I am sure.”
Miss Galbraith neither denied it nor confirmed it. She held Viola’s gaze a long moment, something flickering there that Viola could not read.
“Lord Brookmire is an excellent gentleman,” she said at last, her tone flat. “He is not, however, a Marquess.”
The words hung in the air. Viola took them up one at a time.
“Lord Carrington has always had such a deep intimacy with this house,” the lady continued.
“He understood its history, its significance. Lord Brookmire’s concern was for his brother and for the legacy of the house.
He still is concerned, I understand, but he will follow his brother in everything.
If Lord Carrington is content, so shall Lord Brookmire be.
It is Lord Carrington who holds the power, Miss Trent. ”
A cold understanding gripped Viola and spread through her chest. This was not about the house, nor Lady Warrington’s will. It was about Lord Carrington himself. “I — I suppose that may be true, though I had not seen it so.”
Miss Galbraith lifted her chin, a flash of steel in her eyes. “I have noticed you often in his company of late, Miss Trent. One might wonder whether — ”
Footsteps and low, masculine voices interrupted her.
The butler rapped and, at Viola’s call, opened the door to admit not only Lord Carrington but his brother, both unmistakable in their shared dark hair and broad shoulders.
Lord Carrington bowed first, though Viola caught the flash of surprise at Miss Galbraith’s presence.
Lord Brookmire did the same, his expression lighting the moment he saw the lady.
Viola rose. “Lord Brookmire, Lord Carrington. Good afternoon.”
“You were not expecting us,” Lord Brookmire said, his eyes still on Miss Galbraith. “Forgive our unexpected arrival.”
“You are both very welcome.” Viola went to ring the bell.
“Lady Henderson and my sister are in the house, but must have been caught up in conversation; they shall join us soon.” She watched Lord Carrington cross the room, her heart quickening as his gaze never left her.
There was a connection between them she could not deny, and no doubt it was that very thing Miss Galbraith had marked.
“I was just telling Miss Galbraith that I have written to my father, asking him to join us in London. I am hopeful he will come.”
“And I was speaking to Miss Trent of how well Stoneleigh House suits her,” Miss Galbraith said, with exaggerated warmth. “Have you decided what you will do with Glenbrae, Lord Carrington? Will you keep the tenant, or remove him and set some of your own family there?”
Lord Carrington gave a light shrug as the door opened on Lady Henderson and Hannah, still deep in talk. “I have no intention of making great changes yet.”
The conversation grew from there, and Viola, though she longed for a private word with Lord Carrington, found relief in having more than only Miss Galbraith to speak with.
Miss Galbraith, for her part, now ignored Viola openly, addressing herself to Lord Brookmire, and to Lord Carrington whenever she could draw him in.
“Miss Trent?”
She looked up to find the butler at her elbow, a note in his hand, left at the door, he murmured, by a boy who had not waited.
She took it without thinking and broke the seal — wax with nothing pressed into it.
Her breath caught as she read the few carefully scripted lines, her stomach twisting, heat burning behind her eyes.
Not again.