Chapter 7
The first two days, Anna flinched anytime she heard a door close.
Not visibly; she had enough composure for that.
She found the sound of a door opening sharply, or footsteps coming fast down a corridor, or a voice raised in the distance, produced a held breath, before her mind caught up with her body.
By the third day, it was better, as she grew accustomed to the sounds of Rathbourne Hall. By the fourth, she felt safe.
That morning, the footsteps came briskly down the east corridor at half past seven. Anna knew it was Mrs. Hale on her morning round. The sound of the side door was the groundskeeper, reporting to someone. The rhythm of movement in the entrance hall around four o’clock was the post.
None of these required the held breath. She retrained herself, methodically, the way she had retrained herself through other things.
She walked with Rachel in the mornings. She enjoyed taking in the rose garden, the long path along the south field, and occasionally as far as the gate that marked the end of the home park and the beginning of Derbyshire proper.
She read in the library in the afternoons, which was the finest library she had encountered since her father’s long-sold collection.
She helped Rachel with her correspondence, which Rachel declared was such a relief because Rachel hated her own handwriting.
She did not see much of the Duke. He appeared at meals, precisely on time.
He was not quite silent, as he asked questions that were courteous.
And she gave answers that were equally courteous.
And then, he was gone again into the part of the house that contained his study, his estate papers, his attorney’s correspondence, or whatever else constituted his.
This is exactly as it should be. He is giving me an extraordinary courtesy. I do not require him to do it warmly.
On the fifth morning, Rachel appeared at the library door at half past ten with her hat already on.
“I need to go to the village,” she announced.
Anna looked up from The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, which she had found in the library and been working through with considerable enjoyment. “Is something wrong?”
“Yes. I am going to expire from pastoral tranquility if I do not see a street with shops on it within the next two hours.” Rachel came in and sat on the arm of the nearest chair, which was the way she sat when she was in motion rather than at rest. “We have been here five days. I love Rathbourne Hall. I love it deeply and sincerely. It is my family home…”
“And yet?”
“I need a new ribbon. And to see a face I haven’t already seen twelve times this week.”
“But His Grace has said we are to remain—”
“Frederick said to stay here, yes.” Rachel tilted her head. “He also says his cat is primarily a working animal and not a companion, and we have established how much weight that carries.” She leaned forward. “Anna. Come with me.”
Anna closed the book. “Rachel, if Birchall were to catch word…”
“Birchall is in London, or wherever his wretched estate is, and Frederick said this morning that no word has come out in London. No one in the village knows who you are!” She paused, and her eyes brightened. “And they needn’t. You can come as my maid!”
“As your—?”
“Think about it. If you dress plainly and stay close to me, anyone who glances at you will assume you’re my lady’s maid rather than a guest. No one would think twice.” Anna was warming to the idea the more Rachel spoke. “Yes… We borrow something from Mrs. Henderson. No one will ask questions.”
Anna looked at her. She thought about Rathbourne Hall, which was beautiful and entirely safe. But she had also been walking around it in careful circles for five days, like a very comfortable cage.
“If anyone asks me something,” she said, “I have no idea how to be a maid.”
“You do whatever I do, but with slightly less opinion about it,” Rachel said with a grin.
Anna wore a grey wool dress, borrowed from one of the maids, with a white collar and a plain cap.
Anna looked at herself in the mirror. “Well then,” she said.
“Perfect,” Rachel said from the doorway. “No one will look at you twice.”
This was accurate. They went out through the kitchen garden and across the path that ran behind the stables. Rachel was in a deep green pelisse and her best hat; Anna two steps behind her, carrying the empty basket that established the narrative.
No one who saw them paid Anna the slightest attention.
The village was twenty minutes on foot, a gentle descent from the park gates through a lane that was very old and very pretty in the autumn colors, and the first cold Anna felt stepping out beyond the grounds was extraordinary.
Above them was an open sky that felt, after five days inside park walls, enormous.
Anna breathed deeply. Rachel looked back and saw her face and smiled but said nothing, which was one of her best qualities.
The village had one main street, a church, a posting inn with a painted sign, and a collection of small shops. A draper’s, an apothecary, a general goods store, and at the far end, a baker’s with something in the window that smelled of cinnamon at thirty paces. It made Anna’s mouth water.
Rachel went directly to the draper’s, where she was greeted by Mrs. Marling, the proprietress, with the warmth of an established patron.
“Lady Rachel!” Mrs. Marling came forward from behind her counter, which was a long table of folded bolts. “We didn’t expect you here during the Season, my lady!”
“I came up with my brother.” Rachel began looking at ribbons. “We fancied some country air.”
“His Grace arrived Tuesday, didn’t he? We heard the carriage.
” Mrs. Marling glanced at Anna as a woman clocking staff often did, and then returned immediately to her actual guest. “We’re glad of it.
He spoke to Mr. Harrow about the south field drainage, and we’ve had word a contractor’s coming next month.
Three farms have been waiting on that work! ”
“Has he?” Rachel said, without looking up from the ribbons.
“He always sees to things, His Grace.” Mrs. Marling said with a smile.
“Quick about it, too. My husband had a matter with the eastern boundary, some dispute with a neighboring tenant, very unpleasant. His Grace had it resolved inside a fortnight. Didn’t make a fuss about it.
Just sorted it all out.” She made a gesture that conveyed the sorting of things.
“He’s fair, His Grace. He expects things done properly. But fair.”
“The farms do well, then?” Rachel asked, selecting a blue ribbon and holding it toward the light.
“Well as they’ve ever been, no disrespect to your late father of course.
Better than most in the county, I’d say.
” Mrs. Marling moved to help her with the ribbon, and Anna shifted slightly along the counter.
She was looking at a display of small brass buttons without any real purpose, just playing her part.
“His Grace manages it himself, which not all do. Some lords leave it entirely to the steward and then wonder why things go sideways. He’s out in the fields.
Speaks to the tenants direct.” She paused.
“He’s not… he’s not a warm man, as such.
Not one for a long conversation. But you know where you stand. There’s a comfort in that.”
“There is,” Rachel agreed, and smiled then. “I’ll take these, please,” she said warmly, handing over a stack of ribbons.
They went to the baker’s next, because the smell of cinnamon had literally pulled them there. The baker’s wife offered a variety of sweet options.
“Very grateful, we were,” she told them, handing over a twist of pastry warm from the oven, as she spoke of her son.
“The lad had tried in two other places and been turned away. His Grace’s man spoke to him and said if he worked hard, he’d be treated fair, and he has been.
” She nodded firmly. “Good as his word, His Grace.”
“It sounds like you are all very fond of him here in the village,” Rachel said, pleasantly. “I had no idea.”
“Fond might be…” The baker’s wife considered. “Respect is the word. We respect him. He respects us back, which is the part you don’t always get from the big house.” She looked at Rachel. “You look like him, a little, my lady, around the eyes.”
Rachel looked pleased. “People do say so. My brother would not consider it a compliment in either direction.”
The baker’s wife laughed with the ease of someone who could picture it exactly.
Anna ate her pastry in two careful bites, standing slightly behind Rachel.
She found her thoughts drifting, despite the cinnamon, to a man who came out into the fields, dealt with boundary disputes, and was out by five o’clock to check on the drainage work.
Not a warm man, as such. But you know where you stand.
They were on the main street soon after, heading back toward the lane, Rachel with a ribbon and Anna with a small packet of soap Rachel had bought her from the apothecary.
She heard the horse before she saw it, and for one contracted second she forgot to breathe out. Luckily, it was a single horse, unhurried, moving at an easy trot, and when she looked up it was a bay she recognized from the Rathbourne stables.
And the man on it was the Duke. He saw them at the same moment, and the horse came to a stop.
Rachel looked at her, then up at her brother, and then arranged her face into the expression of a woman who considered herself entirely reasonable.
“Frederick,” she said, pleasantly. “What a surprise to see you here!”
He dismounted carefully, with control and without haste. He led the horse by the rein, and time seemed to stand still.
“Come,” he said. That was all. He turned toward the lane.
He waited until they were through the park gate, out of the lane and the earshot of anyone, before he turned to face them. The horse stood patient at his shoulder, and the autumn light came sideways through the trees.
“You took her to the village.” He looked at Anna. “In a maid’s cap.”
“It worked,” Anna said, which was factually true—and, she was aware, was not the point.
“It worked,” he repeated. “Birchall does not know your face well, you have met twice. But your cousin does. There are any number of people who might have—”
“There was no one,” Rachel said. “We were careful, brother.”
“You were lucky.” He looked at her directly. “There is a considerable difference, Rachel, and I need you to understand it.”
“What I understand,” Rachel said, “is that Anna has been inside those walls for five days. She is not a captive. She is our guest.” She stepped forward slightly.
“She has done nothing wrong. She has been frightened out of a carriage, dragged to an altar, and hidden in in to Derbyshire, and she has managed all of it without a single word of complaint! She needed one afternoon of fresh air in a village where no one knows her name.” Her eyes were very bright.
“I will not apologize for giving her that.”
“I am not asking for an apology.” The temperature in Frederick’s voice had not changed. “I am asking you to think.”
“I did think. I thought that my friend deserved to be treated like a person and not a problem that needs to be solved.”
“Rachel—”
“Don’t.” She shook her head. “I know you are trying to protect her. I know that is what you do. What you have always done! But there is a way of protecting someone that…that…” She stopped, frustrated, gestured.
Suddenly, Anna wasn’t sure she was talking about her.
“That makes them feel like a very well-organized difficulty. And she is not that.” She looked at him for a moment longer, then turned. “I’m going inside.”
She went. Not running, as Rachel did not run from arguments. She exited them with dignity, but with the decisiveness of a closing door. The park was quiet; the birds had gone still.
The Duke looked at his sister, and then turned back to Anna. Anna looked at him.
“She’s not wrong,” Anna said. She said it carefully, without Rachel’s fire. “About the solving.”
“I’m aware you think so.”
“I am grateful. I want to be clear about that, because I don’t want this conversation to seem…
I know what you’ve done and what it costs you.
I know you are trying to keep me safe.” She held his gaze.
“But being kept safe and being spoken at, there is a difference. And I am not…” She stopped.
“I am not used to having no say in my own movements. I know the irony of saying that, given the week I’ve had.
But today was air. A street and a baker’s and a draper’s. It was an hour.”
“An hour in which you could have been recognized.”
“By whom? My cousin is in London. Birchall is in Wiltshire, most likely. I was in a maid’s cap in a village where the primary news is the drainage work you’ve commissioned for the south field.
” She felt the edge coming into her voice and measured it.
“I am not reckless. I thought about it before I went. I weighed the risk against five days of waiting for something I can’t even name yet, and I made a choice. ”
“You made a choice,” he said, “that was not yours to make alone. Not while you are here. Not while my family is implicated. You are under my care.”
“Then tell me what is mine,” Anna said. Her voice was still quiet, but the thread in it had pulled taut.
“Tell me what I am permitted, and I will work within it. I would rather know than guess. I would rather be told you may walk in the garden and the library and no further than believe I have some freedom and discover I was wrong.”
She had stepped toward him at some point, or he had.
She felt the tension of an exchange accumulated, gravity of a particular kind pulling two people together without either of them choosing it.
They were closer than they had been, even in the carriage ride.
Close enough that she could see the amber in his eyes precisely.
She wished she could trace the line of his bearded jaw. He was looking at her. She was looking back.
Something in the air had shifted, as if he could hear her thoughts. She stepped back, like after touching a hot stove.
“I should check on Rachel,” she said, which was true but not the reason.
“Miss Cartwell.”
She paused without turning.
“An hour,” he said, behind her. “In the future, if you want an hour… Just ask me.”
She considered this. She considered what it meant that he had said in the future, which presupposed one with her in it. She smiled.
“All right,” she said.