Chapter 7 #3
Margaret ran the household. The servants answered to Margaret.
For all Alistair knew, even the solicitors answered to Margaret.
And once he left for London, as he must, as the Hollingford contract demanded of him, the old woman would have weeks, perhaps months, in which to claw back every inch of ground he had gained in three short days.
If Josephine had a son, he would have no power to help them and the old dragon would have full control until the boy came of age.
What he needed was a structure, some framework sturdy enough to hold even when he was not there to hold it himself.
Beckwith could manage the estate proper, but Beckwith held no authority over Margaret’s own household staff.
Those servants wanted replacing, but replacing them took time he did not have, and in the meantime, the old guard would carry every movement, every word, every minute act of rebellion straight back to the woman with the walking stick, the milky eyes, and the unshakable conviction that control was hers by right of birth.
There was a solution. It carried the obvious, unwelcome clarity of a conclusion he had been avoiding, because accepting it meant accepting everything bundled in with it. The nearness of it. The complication. The devastating possibility that—
“Your Grace?”
Genevieve had appeared before him, a slim volume clutched to her chest with both hands, her eyes enormous. “Might I have this one? It costs only two shillings.”
He looked at the book. The Old English Baron. Clara Reeve, of course.
“You may have three,” he told her, and the smile that broke across her face was so bright and so completely unguarded that it split straight through the defenses he had spent the whole morning rebuilding.
He left the women at the modiste’s, where Seraphina and Arabella were being fitted with an enthusiasm suggesting Mrs. Pruett, the proprietress, had not had ducal custom through her doors in years and meant to make the very most of this unexpected visit.
Josephine stayed behind to oversee it all, and Alistair caught her eye on his way toward the door.
“I have an errand,” he said. “I shall return within the hour.”
She did not ask where. She only nodded, as though she had no doubt he would return. Her trust warmed him, though he could not help wondering whether he had earned it.
St. Elinor’s sat at the top of the high street, its square Norman tower a dark shape against the pewter sky.
Alistair climbed the steps, pushed through the heavy oak door, and the interior welcomed him with the familiar hush of a building that had absorbed eight hundred years of human trouble without ever once commenting on it.
He found the vicar in the vestry, a mild, spectacled man he had known for years, along with the whole of his family.
The conversation ran twenty minutes. By the time Alistair stepped back outside, the first drops of rain had already begun striking the cobblestones of Merchant Row, fat and deliberate, scouts sent ahead of something far heavier to come.
He gathered the women from the modiste’s with the brisk speed of long practice, understanding that the gap between a damp ride home and a thoroughly soaked one often came down to a matter of minutes.
Parcels went in, girls followed, tucked into the carriage along with their gingerbread crumbs and new gloves and books, and the coachman had the horses moving just as the sky finally gave way in earnest, rain hammering the carriage roof.
Genevieve had her nose in a book already.
Juliet leaned into her twin’s shoulder, watching rain streak down the glass.
Seraphina sat with her new gloves across her lap, running a thumb over the leather in a gesture so tender it bordered on a caress.
And Arabella held her card of embroidery silks against her knees, thumb tracing the wrapping’s edge with a subtle contentment she probably believed went unnoticed.
Josephine sat beside him, her shoulder not quite brushing his, hands folded, face turned to the window.
She had barely spoken since they left Merchant Row.
He wondered if her thoughts had drifted to Hertfordshire, to her aging father and the mother and sister who might one day have nowhere left to go.
He wondered if she was thinking of the library instead. Or the bakery.
He was thinking of all of it at once. And of how much more the woman beside him deserved than what life had thus far handed her.
She had married a stranger to save her family.
Endured a year of cruelty to shelter his cousins.
Offered herself to a man she scarcely knew, because it was the only currency she had to spend.
The rain kept up its drumming. The carriage climbed the hill toward Fortunestone Hall, its towers rising out of the mist. Alistair studied the house he had inherited and never wanted, turned the vicar’s words over once more in his mind, and understood, with the same calm certainty a lifetime of decisions and their consequences had taught him, that the next decision he made would change absolutely everything.