Chapter 9 #2
“Your father… He was raised to believe that authority must be absolute, that discipline is the highest form of love, because anything less is indulgence, and indulgence leads to weakness.” She paused.
“It is not the only way to raise children. But it is the way he knows. And he is trying, in his fashion, to prepare you for a world that he believes will not forgive weakness.”
“Does he love us at all?” Charlie asked.
The question sent what felt like a rock to the pit of her stomach. Freddie had gone very still on the window seat, holding his breath.
“Of course he loves you.” Alice leaned forward.
“He loves you with every fiber of his being. He would tear this castle apart brick by brick if either of you were in danger. He works from dawn until midnight to ensure that you have every advantage, every security, every opportunity that his position can provide.” She reached for Charlie’s hand across the desk.
“The difficulty is not that he doesn’t love you.
The difficulty is that he has never learned how to show it in the way you need to see it. ”
Freddie sat up. “He shows it by taking away riding? By locking us in the nursery for a fortnight? That’s not love.”
“He shows it,” Alice said, “by doing hard work. By providing a roof, food, education, and the absolute certainty that whatever happens, you will never want for the essentials of survival. That may not feel like love now, but it is the foundation upon which all other forms of love are built.”
The silence that followed was thoughtful rather than sullen.
Freddie had picked up his second scone and was turning it over in his hands, studying it as though it contained some message hidden in the currants. Charlie’s finger had resumed its path down the primer’s page, as if he were using mathematics as an anchor.
“Well, in any case, I came here to ask for your help,” Alice added.
Both heads snapped up.
“As a duchess, I have certain responsibilities. One of them is overseeing the autumn fair for the tenant families. I’m told there are games, food, and a small market where the tenants sell their crafts and produce.
” She reached into the pocket of her gown and withdrew a folded paper.
“Cook has provided a list of the food required. The head gardener has notes on the games and the layout. What I lack is someone to help me sort the invitations. There are thirty families on the estate, each with children of various ages, and the invitations need to be tailored accordingly. Some families have infants who will require seating near the shade. Others have older children who might enjoy the archery contest. It’s…
rather a lot of detail to go over alone. ”
She unfolded the paper and spread it on the low table.
The list was extensive: names, ages, dietary preferences noted in Cook’s cramped handwriting, preferences for games or quiet activities annotated in the margin by the head gardener, who apparently knew every child on the estate by name and temperament.
Freddie glanced at the paper. His expression suggested he had been offered administrative duty as a consolation prize and found the offering underwhelming.
“Invitations,” he said flatly. “You want us to help with invitations?”
“I want you to help me ensure that every child at the fair has something to enjoy,” Alice corrected.
“That requires knowing who they are. What they like. Whether they prefer lemon cakes to gingerbread, or whether the archery contest will terrify the younger ones. It’s not just paper and ink.
It’s making certain that thirty families feel welcome on your father’s land. That matters.”
Charlie had left his desk. He stood beside the low table now, his eyes moving down the list.
“I could help,” he said. The offer was quiet, almost reluctant. “I know some of the tenant children. The Miller boys. Eliza from the north farm. They come to the kitchen sometimes when their mothers deliver eggs.”
Freddie looked at his brother. Then he sighed.
“Fine,” he relented, dropping onto the floor beside the table and reaching for the paper.
“But I’m categorizing by mischief potential.
The Miller boys are definitely to be kept away from archery; they tried to build a catapult last Michaelmas and nearly took out the dairy window.
They should be nowhere near the infants. ”
Alice smiled. “An excellent system. Mischief potential it is.”
She pulled the second chair from the desk and positioned it at the table.
For the next hour, the nursery was filled with the sound of pencils on paper, of Freddie’s voice rising and falling as he elaborated on the relative menace of various tenant children, of Charlie’s quieter interjections that invariably contained some detail about a child’s favorite sweet or fear of dogs that refined Freddie’s more theatrical assessments.
Alice watched them work.
They were so different, these two boys. So unmistakably themselves. And in this moment, bent over a task she had invented for no reason other than the need to give them something to hold onto, they were undeniably hers.
Not by blood. Not by law, not really. But by the quieter, more durable bond of a woman who had chosen to see them, and two children who had, against all odds, chosen to let her.
She picked up a pencil and began to write.