Chapter 8 #2
Benjamin slowed as he came near, and something crossed his face — recognition, or the working-out of it — and then he lifted a hand, not quite a wave. Frederick, after a moment, gave him a short nod back. It cost him nothing to be civil. It did not commit him to anything else.
Benjamin stopped at the closed gate.
"Good evening. I believe we have not properly met — I am your neighbor at Russell Hall."
"I am aware of who you are."
"Then I shall not waste your time introducing myself twice.
" A faint, tired smile. "I only wished to say my thanks to Lady Amelia.
For the men — they approached me at the inn a little while ago, wanting the work, and I understand word has already gone round the village on her account.
I could not have managed it half so quickly on my own. "
"I will pass the message."
"I am obliged to you."
Frederick studied him a moment before he answered.
"I would advise you, young man, not to make a habit of approaching Lady Amelia. Whatever her father's opinion of you comes to be, it has not yet been formed, and it is not for either of us to shape it early by way of a garden gate, at this hour or any other."
Something flickered across Benjamin's face — not offence, which Frederick had half expected, but something closer to understanding.
"I shall take your advice under consideration," he said, and inclined his head, and went on up the drive toward the black bulk of his own house.
Frederick watched him the rest of the way to the door before he turned back toward the hall himself.
He had not gone far up the path before he heard her step behind him — quick, deliberately unhurried, which in his long experience of her meant the opposite.
"Frederick. What did he want?"
He did not pretend not to have expected the question.
"To pass his thanks along to you. For the men."
"That is all?"
"That is all he said to me." Frederick kept walking. "I told him not to make a habit of approaching you at the gate."
Amelia fell into step beside him, chin already lifting in the particular way that meant an argument was coming whether he wanted one or not.
"Frederick, he is our new neighbor. This whole town was once known for its hospitality. It was our greatest strength, before people started forgetting it."
"You had that argument ready before I finished the sentence."
"Naturally." A faint smile. "I saw the two of you from the balcony. I knew precisely what you would say to him, and precisely what I would say to you about it."
"Then I did my job well. I am meant to be predictable, my lady — where your safety is concerned."
"And until you and my father have conducted a thorough investigation, I am not permitted to say good morning to the man who lives across the lane."
"Something of that nature, yes."
She almost laughed. "Perhaps he committed some terrible crime as a boy. Stole apples. Pulled a girl's hair in church. That ought to be quite enough to ruin my reputation by association."
"You know it is not so simple as that, and you know precisely why I am cautious."
"Of course I do." Her voice softened, just slightly. "You see danger standing at every gate, Frederick. I do appreciate that it comes from caring. But he is harmless."
Frederick stopped walking.
"He does not strike me as harmless, my lady." He said it plainly, without any of the dryness he usually let creep into these exchanges. "And I would ask that you care about that a great deal more than you presently do."
Amelia looked at him for a moment, something in her face he could not entirely read.
"There is a difficulty," she said.
"There generally is."
"I actually met him before the incident with the boy.
" She said it plainly, without preamble, the way a person says a thing they have decided not to soften.
"Some days past. I was walking home along the lane, and I passed the gate — or where the gate would be, if it had ever had one — and I saw that half of what stood inside had been torn apart.
Nettles, briar, the old rose stock, all of it hauled out and left in heaps, and I did not know who had done it, or why, and I went in to see. "
"You went onto his land. Alone."
"I did not know it was his land, at that moment.
I only knew something had been destroyed that had taken twenty years to grow, and I was angry about it, and I said so aloud to nobody in particular.
" A faint, rueful curve touched her mouth.
"And then he came out from behind the house, and I discovered I had been saying it to somebody after all. "
"And he did not send you off."
"He apologized. He asked me to show him what he had done wrong, and when I told him, he listened. He agreed on the spot not to touch another blade of that ground without asking me first." She lifted her chin. "He was kind, Frederick. Not merely civil. Kind."
Frederick was quiet a long moment.
"That was unwise, my lady."
"It was. I have not pretended otherwise, even to myself.
" She looked at him directly. "But I had just watched twenty years of growing things pulled up by a man who did not know one green thing from another, and I could not walk past it and say nothing.
I am not certain I would do differently if it came again tomorrow. "
"I gave him my word." She went on before Frederick could answer that.
"Not a pleasantry. A bargain, made plainly, with terms on both sides.
He is not to put a blade to that ground without asking me first, and in exchange I am to see it planted properly.
I said it, and he agreed to it, and we shook on nothing but neither of us was in any doubt about what had passed.
" She lifted her chin. "You have told me since I was a child that this family keeps its word.
So has my father. I have heard it at that table more times than I could count. "
"You have."
"Then I do not see how you can stand in this path and tell me to break it."
Frederick did not answer at once. He looked down the lane, in the direction the man had gone, and then back at her.
"It is true," he said. "We have told you that.
Repeatedly, and we meant it." He shifted his weight, the way he did when his back was troubling him and he had no intention of mentioning it.
"But I hope we told you the other half as well.
Be careful when you give your word, my lady, and be careful to whom.
Precisely because you will then be obliged to keep it.
A promise is not a kindness you hand out at a gate.
It is a debt you take on, and you had better know who is holding the other end of it before you sign. "
"I knew perfectly well who was holding it."
"You knew his face. You had known it a quarter of an hour."
That landed, and Amelia disliked it for landing.
"Then you agree I have to keep my word."
"I agree you have bound yourself." Frederick's voice stayed level.
"Those are not the same thing, though I grant you they feel it.
And I will tell you plainly, since you have asked me plainly — you cannot go up to that house.
Not to plant, not to advise, not to stand in the ground and point at things.
Not while you are unmarried and he is unknown and the whole of this county has nothing better to occupy it than the question of what the Baron's daughter does with her afternoons. "
"So I am to break it."
"I did not say that either."
"Then what am I to do, Frederick?" Her voice had risen, and somewhere a dog barked once and fell silent.
"Tell me. Because from where I am standing you are telling me to be a woman of her word, provided her word costs nothing, and to be honorable, provided honor requires nothing of me but staying indoors. "
Frederick let the silence sit a moment before he filled it.
"I am telling you," he said, "that it is not my position to give you permission, nor to withhold it. That has never been my role and I do not propose to take it up now."
"That is a very convenient thing to remember at this particular moment."
"It is a true thing, whatever else it is.
" He shifted his weight again. "But I would advise you to think of another way.
As you did with the workers." He glanced at her.
"You did not go about the village yourself, knocking on doors and asking men to come.
You found somebody who could go where you could not, and you sent the thing you had to send, and the men came all the same.
I do not imagine you need me to draw the rest of it for you. "
Amelia was quiet.
"So you propose a compromise," she said.
"I propose nothing at all. I have advised. There is a difference and I intend to keep hold of it."
She looked past him, up at the dark shape of her own balcony against the night sky, and then east, over the hedge, to where the ridge sat black and silent, one small light still moving somewhere behind its trees.
"Fine," she said at last. "I will do my best with what I am allowed to do."
"As you always do, my lady."
They walked a little further before she spoke again, and when she did her voice had changed.
"I would ask you not to tell my father about any of this. Not yet."
"As you wish, my lady." Frederick said it without hesitation, and then, more carefully: "I will not mention the agreement, nor how you came to meet him.
I will tell him only that you met him and helped find men for the work, as half the village already knows.
But if I sense any danger to you — any at all — I will go to him that same hour, and I will tell him everything I know. You must understand that I—"
"I know."
She had not meant it to come out so quickly, or so flatly.
Something went out of his face. Not offence — she would almost have preferred offence. It was older than that, and heavier, and it made him look every one of his sixty-eight years for the first time she could remember.
Amelia stopped walking.
"I am sorry," she said. "Frederick. That was not — this is not your fault. None of it is your fault."