Chapter Eleven
“You are holding the reins as though apologising to the pony,” Elias said.
“He does not require an apology. He requires to be told, kindly but firmly, where the two of you are going. Sit up. Shorten your left rein. There. Now he believes you, which is most of horsemanship and a good deal of everything else.”
“You know a lot about it,” Sophy replied from Bishop’s small, sturdy back. The pony ambled along the paddock with the serene indifference of a creature that had heard such instruction before.
“I know a tolerable amount,” Elias said.
“The difficulty lies in persuading a pony that any of it applies to him.” He walked at the pony’s shoulder, one hand near the bridle but not upon it.
“There. You have gone the whole length without my help. Do not look down to make certain. Look where you mean to go.”
“Papa never taught me anything,” Sophy said matter-of-factly. “He said I would only forget it.”
Elias walked several more steps before answering. When he did, his voice had not altered, and Victoria understood that this was his kindness: he would not let the child see where the words had struck.
“Then he was mistaken,” he said. “You remembered every instruction I gave you, and it has scarcely been a minute. You have a better memory than he supposed.”
“Ruth thinks I should be allowed to gallop.”
“Ruth is a menace who will have the pair of you in the hedge. I say so with the greatest respect for her judgment in the matter of names.”
Victoria watched from the fence, her arms resting along the upper rail. She no longer troubled to pretend that the warmth spreading through her chest was anything other than what it was.
For a fortnight after the ball, she had declined to name it.
The feeling had grown without requiring her permission, quietly and by degrees, like the primroses renewed upon Sophy’s sill without anyone mentioning the hand responsible.
There was a word for what the three of them made in that paddock, arguing with a pony about the wisdom of galloping.
It was not a word Victoria had expected to be permitted again.
Yet she could think of it now without the old recoil that had once followed every wish.
“Mama, I went the whole length.”
“I saw,” Victoria said. “You did very well.”
“Lord Harwood says I am not required to be elegant, only not to break.”
“Lord Harwood is right about that, and about very little else, so you must treasure the occasion.”
“I heard you,” Elias said without turning. “I keep an account of your slanders. It grows daily.”
“You keep an account of everything. It is your worst habit.”
“I have several worse ones. You have simply not discovered them all.”
He lifted Sophy down, keeping a hand at her back until her feet were steady in the straw.
“Go and thank Bishop. He is quite vain and thrives upon praise.”
Sophy went to perform the ceremony. Elias came to rest his forearms upon the fence beside Victoria, leaving between them the small distance he had observed from the beginning.
“You have been looking at me,” he said.
“Have I?”
“Across various tables, rooms, and fences for the past fortnight. I have pretended not to notice out of unusually good manners, but the effort has become tiring, and I am not a young man.”
“You are six-and-thirty.”
“An advanced age at which to learn that one may be looked upon kindly. I had grown accustomed to the other sort.”
Victoria kept her eyes upon Sophy. “And what do you imagine my look says?”
He was quiet a moment, watching the child murmur secrets to the pony.
“That I might be worth remaining near when there is no danger to prevent and nothing to be bought or frightened away.”
The directness of it caught her unprepared.
“You need not answer,” he added. “I have begun thinking aloud, which is an unfortunate habit in a man of my years.”
“Elias.”
He turned slightly towards her.
“When this is over,” Victoria said. She kept her gaze upon her daughter because it was the only way she could continue. “When Sophy is safe and Roland can trouble us no further, I should like to discover what remains of this marriage when there is nothing left to fight.”
He gave no immediate answer.
“I do not know how,” she continued. “I have spent too long defending myself to know what comes afterwards. But I should like to learn, if you are willing to be patient with me.”
When she risked looking at him, she found him staring across the paddock with the stillness of a man unwilling to move beneath the weight of something fragile.
“I can be patient in this,” Elias said at last. “Whatever the evidence may suggest in other matters.”
Her mouth almost curved.
“I have been waiting for you to say something of the kind,” he admitted. “Though I had intended to continue denying that I was waiting.”
“And if I had taken longer?”
“I should have waited longer.”
“That is a great claim from a man who seldom speaks well of his own patience.”
“I prefer not to advertise virtues I may fail to possess. In this case, however, I am prepared to risk the charge.”
He straightened from the fence.
“When it is over, then.”
“When it is over,” she agreed.
It was Cole who interrupted the morning, crossing the yard with his hat in his hand. The unusual attention to courtesy was warning enough before he spoke.
“Sir Roland has withdrawn his petition.”
For a moment, neither of them answered.
“Withdrawn,” Victoria repeated too quickly. “Then he has given up.”
“No, my lady.” Cole turned the hat once between his hands. “I have come directly because I did not wish you to mistake retreat for surrender. Hemsworth no longer believes the proceedings will serve him. That does not necessarily mean he has abandoned his object.”
“You think he intends another course,” Elias said.
“I think he has lost the advantage of acting openly. After the scene at Ashcombe, further inquiry into your household is more likely to expose him than assist him. Withdrawal prevents the court from looking too closely at his own conduct.”
Cole glanced towards Sophy, who remained occupied with the pony beyond easy hearing.
“There is more.”
“Go on,” Elias said.
“Crayle cannot be found. He is not at his rooms, his club, or any of the houses where he commonly seeks credit. His debts remain uncalled, which suggests that whoever controls them has not finished making use of him.”
“You believe Roland still has some purpose for him.”
“I believe a ruined man under another man’s financial control is dangerous, particularly when he has vanished immediately after failing publicly.”
Victoria’s hand tightened upon the fence.
“There is one thing more,” Cole went on, “Two members of your household were approached separately this week. A footman and one of the kitchen maids. Each was offered money for information.”
Elias’s face became very still. “What information?”
“The child’s habits. When she is taken to the park, who accompanies her, and whether she ever leaves the house in the care of a servant alone.”
The paddock seemed suddenly too open.
Victoria looked towards Sophy. She was stroking Bishop’s nose and speaking earnestly into one grey ear, unaware that the three adults by the fence had ceased to breathe easily.
“Did either servant answer?” Victoria asked.
“No. Both reported the approach to Mrs Whitlock. She sent word to me before coming to you because she wished the inquiries made discreetly.”
“And were they?” Elias asked.
“As far as possible. The men who made the approaches have not yet been identified.”
Victoria turned fully towards Cole. “You believe they mean to take her.”
“I believe someone is paying to learn when she may be reached,” Cole replied. “A man does not purchase the particulars of a child’s movements without intending some use for them.”
Across the paddock, Sophy was still praising Bishop in a voice that carried thin and bright across the yard.
Until that moment, Roland’s danger had remained something Victoria could arrange among other facts and keep at a distance.
Now it had taken a shape: a stranger with coins in his hand, patiently asking after the hours of a five-year-old.
They sent Sophy upstairs with Pruett, full of the triumph of having ridden the length of the paddock unaided. Then Victoria, Elias, and Cole withdrew to the small morning room and shut the door.
The room caught the eastern light and lost it by noon. Victoria’s workbasket occupied one chair, and Sophy’s picture books stood along the sill. It had become hers without any formal decision and was entirely unsuited to the fear they brought into it.
“He would not harm her,” Victoria said. “Even Roland. She is a child. His own kinswoman.”
“He may not mean her physical harm,” Cole replied. “Though I cannot claim to know Sir Roland’s intentions with any certainty. I know only that someone is paying to learn the child’s movements, and that is reason enough for caution.”
Victoria looked at Elias.
“We proceed as though the danger is real,” he said. “If we are mistaken, we shall have endured a few weeks of unnecessary caution. I prefer that error to the other.”
“What do you propose?”
“Nothing without your agreement.” He came nearer to the table but remained across it from her.
“For the present, Sophy does not leave the house or grounds except with one of us. Mrs Whitlock warns the servants that no alteration to the child’s arrangements is to be accepted, however plausible the message or familiar the name attached to it.
Cole makes discreet inquiries into Crayle’s whereabouts and arranges for the house to be watched. ”
Cole nodded. “That is sensible.”
“You are always prepared for the worst,” Victoria said to Elias.
“I find the worst less useful when permitted to arrive as a surprise.”
There was no flourish in the answer. That made it harder to dismiss.
Cole left them shortly afterwards to question the servants himself and trace the men who had approached them. When the door closed, the room seemed smaller.
Victoria looked towards the window.
“She was so pleased with the pony.”
“She will remain pleased with him,” Elias said. “We need not turn the house into a prison merely because someone has begun measuring its doors.”
“You make it sound manageable.”
“It must be managed. That is not quite the same thing.”
He hesitated before continuing.
“I cannot promise that no one will attempt to reach her. I can promise that you will know every precaution taken and every decision made.”
Victoria pressed her fingertips against the edge of the table.
“You have no obligation to her beyond the one you accepted by marrying me.”
“I know.”
“And yet you speak as though this were as much your fear as mine.”
“It has become so.”
The simplicity of it undid something in her.
Elias looked towards the closed door.
“I did not expect it,” he said. “I expected to provide a name, a house, and sufficient legal weight to keep Hemsworth at a distance. Somewhere in the ordinary business of primroses, ponies, and being instructed by a wax doll, the arrangement altered.”
Victoria’s throat tightened.
“She is not yours to claim.”
“No.” His answer came without hesitation. “She is yours. But I care what becomes of her, and I shall act accordingly for as long as you permit me.”
It was precisely the distinction she had needed and had not known how to ask for.
She crossed the room before caution could recover its voice and put her arms around him.
Elias went still.
For a moment, he did not touch her. Then his arms came around her slowly, leaving her every opportunity to withdraw. When she remained, his hold settled more securely, one hand between her shoulder blades and the other light at her waist.
It was not a graceful embrace. It was too careful at first and too astonished afterwards. Victoria pressed her face to his coat and let herself be held without wondering what the gesture would cost her later.
“I did not know I was allowed this,” he said, low, into her hair.
“You were not. It is a new clause. I am amending the treaty as of today.”
“Without a solicitor present,” he said. “Cole will be scandalised. He so dislikes an unwitnessed agreement.”
“Then let him be scandalised. This one I mean to keep out of the record entirely.”
His breath moved faintly through her hair, almost a laugh.
They remained so for a little while, without improving the moment by explaining it.
“When this is over,” Victoria said at last.
“When it is over,” he agreed.
She drew back only far enough to look at him.
“And until then?”
“Until then, we keep her safe. We listen to Cole. We distrust convenient messages. And we do not allow fear to deprive Sophy of Bishop before Roland has managed to deprive her of anything at all.”
That steadied her more than any vow would have done.
Outside, the yard had fallen quiet. Somewhere above them, a door closed and footsteps crossed the floor, ordinary and unhurried.
The danger had not lessened. Crayle remained missing, Roland remained patient, and someone had begun to learn the pattern of the child’s days.
But Victoria did not stand alone inside the knowledge.
For the moment, that was enough.