Chapter 13 #3
"We have already lost it." Harrington said it without any particular concern.
"You recognized the man at his own gate three days ago, in a carriage with arms on the door, and you spoke to him yourself when you first visited Ashcombe.
He will have marked the carriage. From the way you describe him looking at you this morning, he marked it a good while ago.
" A pause. "It was a mistake to address him directly.
I do not blame you for it — you could not have known then what you were looking at, and I would likely have done the same. "
Somerset accepted that with better grace than he might have.
"Then what concerns you?"
"The daughter."
Somerset blinked. "Lady Amelia?"
"She sat at that table for three days and she was not impressed by either of us for one minute of it.
" Harrington's eyes had narrowed slightly.
"Her father was flattered. That is the ordinary response and I have relied on it my whole life.
She was not. And she asked me a question at tea on the first afternoon that a girl of five and twenty had no business framing so well.
" He turned the cane over. "She will be an obstacle, that one.
She has a quick tongue and she has already decided she does not care for me, and she is standing in exactly the wrong place to be either of those things. "
"Then what do we do about her?"
"Nothing." Harrington said it flatly. "We require her father's cooperation and we shall not get it by troubling his daughter. She is untouchable and she will remain untouchable, and I have no intention of pretending otherwise."
"So we are to sit on our hands."
"I did not say that."
Somerset waited.
"We do what we always do," Harrington said, "when a thing cannot be solved cleanly. We make it expensive for him to stay."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that in due course there will be difficulties in Ashcombe.
Small ones, at first. A great many of them.
" He said it in the voice he used for arranging travel.
"Nothing that can be laid at anybody's door.
Nothing that will bring an assize court into it.
Only that a village which was quiet and prosperous last spring will find itself, by autumn, a great deal less of both — and that the whole of that misfortune will have begun in the same season a stranger took up residence in a house that had been decently empty for twenty-three years. "
Somerset understood him then, and something in his face changed.
"They will make the connection themselves," he said.
"They will make it before we have finished suggesting it.
People always do. It is the easiest sum in the world and it costs them nothing to arrive at.
" Harrington sat back. "I cannot rely on the Baron's goodwill and I certainly cannot rely on his daughter's, so I shall not need either.
I would rather have six hundred villagers who have decided on their own account that the man is the cause of everything that has gone wrong in their lives.
That is a great deal more durable than a peer's opinion, and a great deal harder to argue with. "
"And then?"
"And then they will ask somebody to remove him." A thin smile. "And we shall be very sorry for their trouble, and we shall see what can be done."
The carriage rolled on. Neither man spoke for a while.
"You are certain, though," Somerset said at last. "Underneath all of it. You believe it is him."
Harrington did not answer for so long that Somerset thought he had let it go.
"I hope it is not," he said.
◆◆◆
Benjamin was still watching the road when the last of the carriage's dust settled, and he did not turn from it until the sound of it had gone entirely.
"I have a favor to ask of you," he said, to the men gathered near the entrance.
"Whatever you need, Captain." Jacob said it without hesitation.
"That is precisely the favor." Benjamin allowed himself a faint, rueful smile.
"I will be honest — I have grown rather fond of the rank.
It sits familiar on me, more familiar than my own name, most days.
But my connection to the army could bring unwanted trouble to this door, more than I would like, and it is better that fewer ears hear it spoken aloud than need to.
From this day, I would ask that you call me by my name. Simply Benjamin."
The men exchanged glances — not suspicious, only surprised, the way men are when a habit they have not thought twice about is suddenly asked to change.
Everyone waited to see whether a reason was coming.
None came.
Thomas was the first to break the silence.
"Shall we get straight to work, then, Master Benjamin?"
Something eased in Benjamin's shoulders.
"It is not perfect," he said, "but it will do the job well enough. Thank you for not asking more of it than that."
Thomas only nodded, already reaching for his tools, and the rest of the men followed his lead — no further questions, no lingering looks, only the ordinary business of the morning resuming around them as though nothing at all had shifted.
Benjamin picked up his own hammer and turned toward the scaffolding, and by the time the first nail was driven, the matter had already settled itself into the unremarkable rhythm of the day.