Chapter 8
“Ipromise you,” Charlotte said.
Henry had been standing in the doorway long enough to feel the cold of the stone floor through his boots. He had not intended to watch. He simply had not found a reason to stop looking at the scene unfolding in the playroom.
Ian was pressed against Lady Charlotte’s side, his head heavy on her shoulder. She had one arm around him and the other occupied with a row of repaired soldiers she had propped against the skirting board. She was not speaking anymore. She did not need to.
Henry looked at his cousin’s son and tried to remember the last time he had seen the boy still.
He could not. Every account from the staff described Ian in motion—on rooftops, over walls, through gates, always somewhere he was not meant to be and never anywhere he could be reached.
And now he was here. Sitting with a near-stranger on a drafty playroom floor as though he had always done it.
Nathan, he thought. Eleanor. Please be all right.
It was not a prayer exactly. He was not certain he prayed. But the words formed themselves, low and insistent, and he let them.
“Can ye fix the rest of them?”
Ian had lifted his head. He was looking at the row of soldiers, and then at Charlotte, and there was something in his face that Henry had not seen since he arrived.
He was smiling.
It was a small, cautious thing, as though he had not entirely decided to commit to it. But it was there. Unmistakable.
“The rest of them?” Charlotte said.
“Aye.” Ian sat up a little. “I’ve broken rather a lot.”
“How many is rather a lot?”
Ian considered this with enormous seriousness. “Most of them.”
“Most—” Charlotte looked at the floor around them. Then she looked at Ian. “Did you break them all at once, or was it a systematic effort?”
“Both,” Ian said. “Mostly systematic.”
Charlotte pressed her lips together. Henry could see she was fighting to conceal a smile of her own. “I see,” she said. “Well. I can help you repair them. But first you must promise me something.”
“What?”
“That once they are mended, you will not break them again.”
Ian was quiet for a moment. “Even if I’m very cross?”
“Especially then.”
He thought about it. Henry waited. He was aware he was holding his breath, which was a thing he almost never did.
“All right,” Ian said. “I promise.”
“Solemnly?”
“Aye. Solemnly.”
Charlotte nodded, as though this settled a matter of considerable legal weight. “Then we have an agreement.”
Ian picked up a headless soldier and held it out to her. “This one first.”
And that was when Henry noticed the dress.
It was deep navy wool, something the one of the household staff had evidently found for her, well-fitted across the shoulders and neatly belted, and it was the first time since the carriage left London that he had seen her dressed as herself.
She had discarded the boy’s coat and the borrowed cap.
Lady Charlotte no longer carried the dust and discomfort of a week on the road.
She looked—he checked himself. She looked like herself, which was the only safe way to finish that observation.
He glanced at the door frame instead of continuing to peer at her.
It did not help. He was still aware of the navy dress in the way one is aware of a fire on the far side of a room.
He cleared his throat.
Charlotte’s head came up. Ian straightened. They both looked at him and for one moment the room went very still.
Lady Charlotte’s cheeks colored. It was a faint thing, quickly controlled, and he chose not to comment on it.
Ian looked at him with the particular blankness of a child deciding whether to remain where he was or remove himself. He did not move. He did not speak. But he did not leave, and that was more than Henry had managed in the kitchen garden, so he counted it as progress and he did not push for more.
“Forgive the interruption,” Henry said.
Charlotte rose, smoothing her skirts. “Not at all.” She looked down at Ian. “I shall be back shortly. Will you keep those soldiers safe for me?”
Ian glanced at the row of repaired figures. “Aye.”
“Thank you.” She touched his shoulder briefly, and he let her. Then she crossed the room, and Henry stepped back from the doorway to let her pass.
In the hallway, she pulled the door behind her. Not shut. Just enough.
“How is your ankle?” Henry said.
“I barely feel it now.”
“You were sitting on the floor.”
“The floor was perfectly adequate.” She folded her hands. “I wanted to speak with you about something.”
He waited.
“Ian,” she said. “He needs consistency. He needs someone who will be here when he wakes up and still be here at supper. Not a series of tutors who leave after a fortnight.” She met his eyes directly.
“I would like to stay on as his governess. For as long as you need. I have no immediate plans, and Scotland is considerably far from Bedfordshire.”
Henry said nothing.
“I am aware it is unconventional,” she said. “And I am aware that you already have reason to doubt my capacity for sensible decisions. But I can reach him. You saw it.”
He had. That was precisely the problem with dismissing this new proposal.
“You have no formal training as a governess,” he said.
“No. But I read extensively, I speak French tolerably, I know enough arithmetic to make it useful, and I have just spent an hour convincing a six-year-old to make a solemn vow over wooden soldiers. I am not entirely without qualification.”
Henry considered it. He did not do so for long, because the picture assembled itself quickly and the logic was difficult to argue.
Ian had allowed her in. Ian had smiled. If she remained—if there was a consistent presence, someone familiar who did not carry the weight of a guardian’s authority—it would give the household time to stabilize.
It would give Henry time to manage the estate properly without Ian’s situation consuming every other obligation.
This new arrangement solved matters that were beyond Henry’s control. Several things at once. He did not like how much it rearranged them, because the reasons it solved them were beginning to exceed the reasonable.
He opened his mouth.
“Your Grace.”
The butler, Mr. Evans, appeared at the far end of the hallway. He stopped a respectful distance away. “I beg your pardon. Mr. Dunmore has arrived. One of the estate solicitors. He says he has documents that require your attention directly.”
Henry looked at Lady Charlotte.
“Go,” she said.
“I will give your suggestion consideration,” he said. “Serious consideration.”
“That is all I am asking.”
He held her gaze a moment longer than was necessary, then turned toward the solicitor.
Nathan’s study was a room that had not been touched since he left. Henry was sure of this because papers were in an ordered stack, a half-finished letter pushed to one side, the pen still resting in the inkwell as though its owner had stepped away for a moment and was expected back.
Henry did not look at the letter. He sat in the chair across from the desk rather than behind it, because sitting in Nathan’s chair felt like a presumption he was not prepared to make.
The solicitor was a spare, methodical man who had been managing the Drummond estate’s legal affairs for twelve years. He set his document case on the desk, opened it, and laid out three folded papers in a careful row.
“I am obliged to you for seeing me promptly, Your Grace.”
“I understand the matter is pressing,” Henry said.
“I have been considering a practical arrangement for the household. There is a young woman in residence who has some ability with the boy. I am of a mind to engage her formally as his governess. It would provide continuity and free me to address the estate’s other needs. ”
The solicitor set down the paper he had been unfolding and regarded Henry.
“I understand the instinct, Your Grace,” he said. “And I do not doubt it would benefit the boy in the short term.” A pause. “However, I am afraid the question of a governess is, in the current circumstances, a secondary matter.”
Henry looked at the papers. “Explain.”
The solicitor picked up the first folded document and held it across the desk.
“Mr. Drummond came to me eleven months ago. He wished to formalize certain arrangements regarding his son, in the event that he and Mrs. Drummond were both—incapacitated.” He chose the word carefully.
“The document is a deed of guardianship. Signed, witnessed, and lodged with Chancery in October of last year.”
Henry took it.
He read it once. Then again.
Nathan’s handwriting was there at the bottom, clear and unhesitating, above the solicitor’s seal and a date in October.
The document was brief. The language was straightforward.
It named Henry Kingswell, Duke of Sappherton, as legal guardian of Ian Nathaniel Drummond in the event of the parents’ confirmed death or incapacitation.
It also contained a clause he had not expected.
“The residence provision,” the solicitor said, as though he had been watching Henry reach the relevant paragraph.
“Mr. Drummond was very particular about it. He felt that in such an event, the child’s continuity of care would best be served by the guardian’s primary household.
” He folded his hands on the desk. “The document is legally binding, Your Grace. In the event that Mr. and Mrs. Drummond cannot be confirmed alive and well within a reasonable period, the terms are clear.”
Henry set the document down on the desk. He did not set it down hard. He set it down the way he set down a dispatch that required careful reading before any response was given.
“Ian must return to London with me,” he said.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Henry looked at Nathan’s unfinished letter on the corner of the desk.
Nathan, what have you done? Why make such a plan without consulting me first?
Henry had come north to stabilize the household. To find a solution and perhaps learn what had become of his cousin. To make a practical arrangement and return south with the situation under control.
Nathan, apparently, had made a different arrangement entirely.
“Leave the documents with me,” Henry said.
“Of course.” The solicitor rose, gathered the remaining papers, and set them in a neat stack. “I am sorry to bring this in such circumstances.”
Henry did not answer. He was still looking at Nathan’s letter.
The solicitor showed himself out, and he sat for a long moment. Ian could not stay in Scotland.
And Charlotte, whom he had been on the point of engaging as the boy’s governess, could not remain here either.
This presented a problem he had not anticipated.