Alexander Ashford
The library is quieter with Charlotte Ellis gone than it was before she arrived, which is not a thing I would have predicted.
I stand at the window watching her van pull through the gates, the Petals and Promises logo catching the last of the afternoon light, and I do not move until the taillights disappear around the corner of the square.
Her pencil marks are still on the brief.
I cross back to the table where we worked and pick up the document she revised in front of me, turning it so the margin notes catch the lamp.
Ranunculus, poor east light, try anemone.
The handwriting is quick and certain, the letters slanting forward as though they are in a hurry to arrive somewhere.
She wrote in my margins without asking permission.
She changed my document while I watched.
I have known Charlotte Ellis for approximately three hours. I should not be standing here cataloguing her handwriting.
Mrs. Hartley appears in the doorway with the particular expression she wears when she is managing me. "Shall I have the fire banked, my lord?"
"Alexander," I say, without looking up.
"Alexander." She says it the way she has said it for twenty years, as though she is humouring a child who insists on being called by his Christian name rather than his title. "The fire?"
"Leave it." I set the brief down. "And Mrs. Hartley. When Miss Ellis returns tomorrow, she is to have full access to the house. No questions, no escorts unless she requests one."
Mrs. Hartley's eyebrows rise precisely one millimetre. "Full access."
"She will be here for two weeks. I would rather she feel comfortable than managed."
"Very good." Mrs. Hartley withdraws, and I hear her footsteps retreat down the corridor toward the kitchen, where she will undoubtedly spend the next hour drawing conclusions I have not authorised.
I return to my desk and the correspondence I abandoned when Charlotte arrived. The fire crackles. The clock on the mantle marks the quarter hour. Everything is exactly as it was four hours ago, and nothing is the same at all.
My phone rings at six, as it always does on Wednesdays.
"How are the gala preparations progressing?" Oliver Pemberton asks, without preamble. Oliver has never seen the point of pleasantries. It is one of the things I have always appreciated about him.
"I have commissioned a floral designer." I lean back in my chair and watch the fire. "From Oxford."
There is a pause. Oliver has known me since we were thirteen. He can read my pauses, and apparently he can read my lack of them. "Oxford."
"Yes."
"Not one of the London houses your mother used."
"No."
Another pause, longer this time. I can practically hear Oliver building a theory on the other end of the line, assembling facts I have not given him into a structure I have not authorised. "What is her name?"
"Charlotte Ellis. She owns a shop called Petals and Promises."
"And how did you find Miss Ellis?"
"Lady Pemberton's foundation recommended her for the gala. She came for the consultation this afternoon."
"I see." Oliver's voice carries the particular warmth he uses when he believes he has discovered something I am not admitting. "And how was the consultation?"
I think of Charlotte standing at the library table with her pencil in hand, arguing with me about ranunculus.
I think of the way she looked at the ballroom chandelier and said, without hesitation, the arch needs to hang three feet lower than your estimate.
I think of the three inches of space between us when I handed her the signed commission, and the way neither of us stepped back.
"Productive," I say.
Oliver laughs. It is the laugh of a man who has known me too long to believe a single word I am saying. "Call me when you are ready to admit whatever it is you are not admitting."
He hangs up before I can respond, which is also very Oliver.
The evening post arrives at seven. Mrs. Hartley brings it on the silver tray she has used since my father's time, the correspondence sorted by category: personal, estate, legal.
I work through it methodically, setting aside the letters that require counsel, the invitations that require polite refusal, the bills that require nothing but a signature.
At the bottom of the stack is an envelope from Hawkins and Carr, Solicitors.
I know what it contains before I open it.
I have been expecting this letter for three weeks, since Richard Ames first mentioned that his counterparts at Hawkins and Carr had been making inquiries about the estate.
I pick up the envelope, feel the weight of it, and set it face down on my desk without breaking the seal.
Some things can wait until morning.
Some things should.
I pour myself a whisky from the decanter on the sideboard and return to the window. The square is quiet now, the street lamps casting pools of yellow light on the pavement. A couple walks past, arm in arm, laughing at something I cannot hear. I watch them until they turn the corner and disappear.
The Cromwell biography is still on the table where I left it this afternoon, spine cracked, pages splayed.
I was reading it when Charlotte arrived.
I had been reading it for the better part of three hours, not because it was particularly engaging but because it was something to do with my hands while I waited for a meeting I was not certain I wanted to take.
I am not certain what I wanted from this afternoon. A competent florist, I suppose. Someone who could execute Lady Pemberton's vision without requiring my involvement beyond the initial brief.
What I got was a woman who told me I was wrong about the light in my own corridor.
My phone buzzes. Sebastian.
I consider letting it go to voicemail. Sebastian does not text when he wants something minor. Sebastian calls, because Sebastian likes to hear my voice when he asks his questions, likes to read whatever I am not saying in the spaces between my words.
I answer. "Sebastian."
"Alexander." His voice is warm, as always. Sebastian has the warmest voice of anyone I know. It is one of his most dangerous qualities. "I heard you are having the gala prepared by someone local."
"Yes."
"From Oxford?"
"Yes."
There is a pause. I can hear something in the background, music perhaps, or voices. A restaurant. A club. Sebastian moves through London's social spaces with an ease I have never managed and have never particularly wanted. "Anyone I would know?"
"Charlotte Ellis. She owns a floral design business. Lady Pemberton recommended her."
"Charlotte Ellis." Sebastian repeats the name slowly, as though tasting it. "I do not believe I have heard of her."
"No. I would not expect you to have."
Another pause, longer this time. I know what Sebastian is doing. He is waiting for me to volunteer more information, to fill the silence with details he has not requested. It is a technique he learned from our father, though he would never admit it.
I do not fill the silence.
"Well," Sebastian says finally, "I look forward to meeting her. I assume I will see her at the gala?"
"She is the designer. Yes."
"Excellent." The warmth in Sebastian's voice shifts, becomes something with an edge I cannot quite identify. "I do hope she knows what she is getting into. Ashford House can be overwhelming for someone who is not accustomed to it."
"She seemed to manage perfectly well today."
"Did she." It is not a question. "Well. I will let you get back to your evening. Give my best to Mrs. Hartley."
He hangs up before I can respond.
I set the phone down on my desk and look at the Hawkins and Carr envelope. The fire has burned low while I was talking, the flames reduced to embers that glow orange against the grate. The room is darker now, the corners full of shadows.
I pick up the envelope. Turn it over. Read my name in the precise copperplate of a solicitor's clerk.
I open it.
The letter is two pages, single-spaced, the language careful and formal in the way all legal correspondence is careful and formal. I read it once, quickly, to get the shape of it. Then I read it again, more slowly, to understand what it is actually saying beneath the surface.
Sebastian has engaged a property developer named Fairfax Holdings in preliminary conversations about Bodington Estate.
The procedural inheritance question our father left in his will is the open door he intends to use.
I set the letter down on my desk and pick up my whisky. The glass is cold in my hand, the liquid warm in my throat. I drink until the glass is empty, then pour another, and drink that too.
After a while, I return to the library table and pick up the brief with Charlotte's margin notes. I read them again, trace the slant of her handwriting with my thumb.
She has no idea what she has walked into.
The clock strikes midnight. I put the brief in the file with the Hawkins and Carr letter and the Fairfax correspondence and the other documents I have been collecting for three months. Then I bank the fire myself, because I do not want to summon Mrs. Hartley, and I climb the stairs to my room.
I do not sleep well.
In the morning, I will call Richard Ames and ask him what our options are.
In the morning, I will review the Fairfax prospectus that someone slid under my solicitor's door last week and try to determine exactly how far Sebastian has gone.
In the morning, I will begin the work of protecting what my father left me from the brother who believes it should have been his.
But tonight, I lie in the dark and think about a woman with red hair and quick hands who revised my documents without permission and told me I was wrong about light.
Charlotte Ellis has no idea what she has walked into.
I am not certain I do either.