Chapter 5 #2
"I hoped you might." Edward looked pleased. "I have found that most difficulties between people come of nobody being willing to say plainly what he expects."
"You have been very plain."
"I have," he agreed. "I consider it a courtesy."
By the end of breakfast, Edward had droned on about bloodlines, his fencing skills, and the superiority of London society. When they finally rose from the table, Amelia could hardly contain her relief.
The moment the door clicked shut behind their departing guests, Amelia turned to her father.
"I liked him," she said. "For the better part of an hour. I want you to know that, because it is the longest I have managed with any of them, and I would like credit for the attempt."
"And now?"
"And now he is totally insufferable."
The Baron's jaw tightened. "You are very harsh on him."
"Harsh?" Amelia's voice climbed. "Did you see how he spoke to the people in this house?
To the maid, moving that toast rack with his fingers on her wrist as though she were a piece of furniture that had wandered too near the table.
Did you hear his father, telling me a woman wants an occupation the way a dog wants a bone thrown to it?
And Edward agreeing — not cruelly, Father, that is the worst of it, he agreed kindly.
As though he were doing me a courtesy." She drew a sharp breath.
"They do not think the people who serve them are people at all.
They think they are born to it. Furniture that happens to walk. "
"He was raised to think so." The Baron said it evenly, as though that settled something. "Do not lay it at the young man's door. He has known nothing else since the cradle. It is not his fault what he was taught."
"Then whose fault is it, if not his? He is a grown man. He is perfectly capable of looking at a maid working and seeing a person rather than a hand that brings the toast."
"You barely gave him a chance."
"I gave him an entire breakfast." Amelia's eyes flared. "That is more than he deserved, and considerably more than the maid got."
Baron Whitfield's expression hardened. "He is the best offer you will have, Amelia, and I will not stand here and hear him picked apart over a servant's wrist."
"He wants to appear the best offer. That is not the same thing. He would tell his friends his wife is a clever woman, and he would say it with real pride." She turned. "And in ten years there would be nothing left of me."
"You think this is a game?" His voice rose now, all patience gone out of it.
"You are not the only one with responsibilities in this house.
I have spent years protecting this estate — negotiating with peers, keeping us from falling behind while half the county waits to see us stumble — and you would throw the whole of it away over a few sharp words at breakfast."
"Because I will not smile and nod at cruelty dressed up as good manners?"
"No." His voice dropped to a quiet, dangerous edge. "Because I raised you too softly, and you believe you have the luxury of refusing every man I bring to this table. That ends today. Things will change, Amelia. I will see to it."
He left the room without another word.
Amelia stood frozen a moment, fury and helplessness mingling beneath her skin. She turned toward the tall windows that overlooked the gardens. Beyond the hedgerows and the trees, Russell Hall stood shrouded in ivy against the sky.
A half-smile tugged at her lips.
"Perhaps hiding in a cursed estate is not such a terrible idea after all."
◆◆◆
Outside, the Somerset carriage rolled along the lane that bordered the Russell estate, the horses moving at an easy trot in the morning sun. Edward glanced through the window as the drive came into view — two stone piers, and beyond them the long unkempt sweep of what had once been a gate.
"There is someone up there," he said, mild with disinterest. "Stacking branches, by the look of it. Probably some beggar making a camp of the ruin."
The Earl leaned toward the glass and narrowed his eyes.
"That is not a beggar."
"No? A groundsman, then. Some fool who bought the place cheap."
"Look at him properly." The Earl's voice had gone tight with attention. "Clean-shaven. Hair recently cut. And watch how he moves — not the way a laboring man moves. Measured. Controlled."
Edward shrugged, unconvinced.
"That," the Earl said, sitting back, "looks more like a soldier than a groundsman."
The carriage came up level with the piers, and just as the horses' heads drew even with the gap where the gate had once hung, a man stepped into the road in front of them.
"You are trespassing on private property," he said, in a voice that did not need to be raised to carry. "I would ask you not to proceed further, and to state your business."
The horses shied, tossing their heads, and the driver hauled at the reins with a startled oath — because the man had not been in the road a moment before, and now he was standing close enough to the leading horse to touch it, and neither the driver nor anyone in the carriage had seen him cross the ground between.
Benjamin murmured something low to the horse and laid a hand flat against its neck, and it settled almost at once, ears going back to listening rather than alarm.
The curtain at the carriage window was drawn back.
"Good morning to you," the Earl said, recovering his composure with practiced ease. "I do apologize for the intrusion. We had understood the place to be abandoned. May I ask who I am addressing?"
Benjamin looked at him for a moment before answering.
"You ask for my name," he said, "but you have not offered your own first. I had understood courtesy was still a weapon the aristocracy kept sharpened."
The Earl's brows rose, and then, to his credit, he laughed.
"You are quite right." He inclined his head. "Earl Somerset, at your service." He turned and drew his son slightly into view by the shoulder, not unkindly. "My son, Edward."
"An honor," Edward said, with rather less certainty than the phrase usually carried.
"But tell me," the Earl went on, "how did you know to expect a title at all? Not every man reads a crest at fifty paces."
"The arms on your carriage door." Benjamin's gaze did not waver.
"I have seen enough of them to know what they represent, if not which family carries which.
I do not know your name from your crest, my lord.
I know only that a crest means I am speaking to somebody who expects to be addressed as such. "
"Fair enough." The Earl studied him a moment longer. "Then, since we have exchanged that much — might I ask what you are doing on this land, and who you are?"
"I am the new owner of Russell Hall." Benjamin said it plainly, without hurry.
"It came into my hands through a distant connection to the family — there was no one left to claim it, and a great many people assumed there never would be.
I saw an opportunity where others saw only a ruin.
I intend to restore it, and in time, to see it earn its keep again. "
It was not quite a lie, and it was a good deal short of the truth, and Benjamin delivered it in the tone of a man who had said it before and expected to say it again many times before the year was out.
"Well," the Earl said, after a pause just slightly too long. "A worthy undertaking. I wish you good fortune with it."
"Thank you."
The Earl withdrew into the carriage and rapped once on the roof, and the driver, still faintly unsettled, urged the horses on. Benjamin stood where he was as the wheels turned past the piers, and did not move again until the carriage had gone some way down the lane.
Inside, Edward waited until they had cleared the bend before he spoke.
"Who was that?"
The Earl did not answer at once. He was looking back through the rear window at the small figure receding behind them, already turned back to his stone path.
"I do not know his name," he said finally. "But I know what he is. That man has been trained, Edward — trained hard, and by someone who knew what he was doing. And he has settled himself in the one place in Ashcombe that ought never to have an owner again."
"You think it signifies?"
"I think," the Earl said, "that Earl Harrington would give a great deal to know that Russell Hall has stopped being empty."
Edward considered this, turning his hat in his hands.
"And will you tell him for nothing?"
"For nothing?" His father smiled thinly.
"Certainly not. I owe Harrington a courtesy from some years back, and he is not a man who forgets who has paid their debts and who has not.
A piece of information like this, delivered as a gift rather than sold — that is worth a great deal more to us than any fee he might offer for it.
" He settled back against the cushions, entirely satisfied with the morning.
"Our host the Baron imagines himself a modest player in this county.
He has no notion what his neighbor is about to make of him. "
Edward said nothing, but he was smiling too, by the time the carriage reached the London road.