Chapter 19 #2
"I see." The Baron's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "And what, precisely, do you want of me, Mr. Maddox? I have already done what was asked of me in this affair. I would prefer not to be drawn any further into it."
"We want nothing of you, my lord. Only that you know help has arrived, and that Ashcombe's citizens need not trouble themselves any further with the matter.
" Maddox inclined his head, unhurried, entirely at ease.
"Should anything arise that concerns your household directly, I will come and speak with you myself. "
Amelia felt something cold settle low in her chest, though she kept her voice light.
"And how long do you intend to stay with us, Mr. Maddox?"
Maddox turned his full attention to her then, and for the first time something behind his eyes moved — not warmth, nothing so simple as that, but a kind of patient, professional certainty, the look of a man who had asked and answered this same question a great many times before, in a great many houses much like this one.
"Until Ashcombe is clean again, my lady."
Nobody spoke for a moment. Behind him, the ten men stood exactly as they had before — silent, unhurried, entirely willing to wait as long as waiting was required of them.
Then Maddox inclined his head once more, turned, and led his men back down the drive without another word, leaving the three of them standing in the open doorway with the morning air gone suddenly and entirely cold.
◆◆◆
The night was colder than she had expected, and the fence, when Amelia reached it, was not the gap she remembered.
Half of it had been mended — new posts driven in, fresh rail nailed across the old, the wood pale and raw against the weathered grey of what remained standing.
Where there had once been an easy, sideways slip through ivy and shadow, there was now a narrower opening, higher off the ground, the kind that wanted a boot braced against a post and a hand finding purchase on wood that had not yet been worn smooth by use.
She tried anyway. Her fingers found the rail, her boot found the post, and she was halfway up when a voice came out of the dark behind her.
"My lady. Do you require assistance?"
Amelia froze entirely, one hand still gripping the fence, her heart slamming against her ribs.
"Who is there?" Her voice came out sharper than she intended, half fear and half fury at having been caught so completely unaware. "Where are you? Where is Benjamin?"
A figure stepped from the shadow of the treeline, unhurried, hands visible and open.
"My name is Oliver." He came close enough for her to make out his face in the moonlight — the same man she had glimpsed weeks ago at the front gate, cloaked and unrecognized. "I consider myself Benjamin's brother. All but in blood."
Something in her chest loosened all at once.
"Thank God," she breathed. "Can you take me to him? I must speak with him."
"I think you had better send him a letter, my lady. He is training, this hour — but come. I will help you over."
He offered his hand, steady and sure, and helped her the rest of the way across the broken fence line, then led her through the dark garden toward the sound of movement — Benjamin, working through a drill alone in the moonlight, sweat dark at his collar, entirely unaware of them until Oliver spoke.
"Captain."
Benjamin turned, and the moment he saw her his whole face shifted — confusion first, and then something closer to alarm.
"Amelia. What are you—" He looked past her to Oliver. "Thank you. Good work."
"I will keep to the perimeter." Oliver inclined his head and melted back into the dark without another word, leaving the two of them alone.
"Men came to my house this morning," Amelia said, before he could ask. "To Ashcombe. For you."
"I saw them pass the estate earlier." Something had already gone tight in his jaw. "What did they want with you?"
"They came to introduce themselves. To let my father know they had arrived." She made herself say it plainly, though her voice shook slightly on the words. "They called themselves Ashgrove and Sons. They said Earl Harrington and Earl Somerset had hired them."
Benjamin went utterly still.
"Ashgrove," he said, very quietly.
"You know the name."
"I know precisely what the name means." His voice had gone flat, controlled in the particular way she had learned meant he was holding something enormous behind his own composure.
"I expected Harrington to hire men. I did not expect him to hire them.
Whatever I believed I was prepared for — this is a great deal worse. "
"Why?" Amelia's own fear was climbing now, feeding off his. "Benjamin, why?"
"Ashgrove and Sons is not a company of hired thugs, Amelia.
It is a private enterprise with real ties into the army itself — soldiers who leave the ranks for higher pay, trained men who know precisely what they are doing and have done it a hundred times before, for a hundred different clients who could afford their fee.
" His hands had gone into fists at his sides, and he made himself unclench them, one finger at a time.
"They exist to do the aristocracy's dirty work quietly, thoroughly, and without ever once being caught doing it. "
Amelia felt the cold of the night settle fully into her bones.
"Listen to me." He took her by the shoulders, his grip firm but not rough, his eyes holding hers with an intensity that frightened her nearly as much as anything he had just said.
"You must not come here again. No more sympathy for me, spoken publicly or otherwise.
Nothing at all that connects the two of us in front of anyone — not until these men are gone from Ashcombe entirely. "
"Benjamin—"
"Please." The word cracked slightly on its way out of him, the first genuine break in his composure she had ever heard.
"I cannot protect you from men like this the way I could protect you from Harrington's letters and his careful little visits.
This is different. This is dangerous in a way I have actually seen before, and I will not have you anywhere near it. "
She nodded, slowly, though everything in her rebelled against the distance he was asking for.
He walked her back to the fence himself, helped her over it in silence, and stood watching until she had disappeared into the dark toward Whitfield Hall.
Then he turned back toward Russell Hall alone, and did not go back to his training.
He simply stood in the moonlit garden for a long while, utterly still, his mind already working through every possibility of what was coming — and finding, for the first time since he had returned to Ashcombe, that he did not much like any of the answers he could see.