Chapter 1 #3
“My word is sufficient.”
“Then putting it on paper should not injure it.”
Thomas blotted the line and turned the sheet.
The clerk signed.
Margaret watched the formation of each letter. “Thank you. Mr. Bevan will witness.”
Thomas added his name in his fine, even hand.
The clerk glanced at the resident’s signature, then at Thomas himself, as if good penmanship had complicated an opinion he preferred simple.
Margaret folded the notice. “You may tell Sir Reginald that I shall send a written objection before the end of the day.”
“It will not suspend the order.”
“No. But it will prevent him saying no one found the error.”
The clerk left.
Cold air entered with him and remained after the door shut.
For a moment no one moved.
Then the east roof dripped into its bucket.
Joseph came forward. “Fourteen days.”
“At noon.”
“Does the old duchess’s deed truly say that?”
“It says whatever Sir Reginald can persuade it to say until someone with standing objects.”
“Who?”
Margaret looked at the sentence concerning the succession. “Apparently a duke whose right to object is already being discussed.”
Thomas’s hand closed over the copied invoices. “What sort of questions?”
“The useful sort.”
“For whom?”
“Sir Reginald.”
She slipped the notice into her pocket beside the workshop order. The paper made the pocket pull crookedly against her skirt. One delayed chair order, one closure notice. By weight, they differed very little.
“Joseph, continue the cabinet. Begin the desk frames. We shall not surrender paid work merely to make Sir Reginald’s figures true.”
“And the chairs?”
“Wait.”
“Food?”
“Unchanged.”
“The residents?”
Margaret looked toward the staircase. Men had begun appearing along the upper gallery, drawn not by the clerk but by the stillness he had left behind.
One carried a boot he had been mending. Another had shaving soap along one cheek.
They watched Margaret because the House had trained them to look for information where work was actually done.
“We tell them at noon,” she said. “All of it. Not before I have copied the notice and marked every false assumption.”
Joseph gave one nod.
A knock sounded at the front door.
Not the bell this time. Three firm blows, followed by the scrape of a carriage wheel in the street.
The housemaid looked at Margaret.
“If it is another trustee,” Joseph said, “charge admission.”
The maid opened the door.
Rain blew across the threshold. A footman stood upon the step, dark livery shining with water. Behind him, a tall gentleman in a black greatcoat crossed from the carriage without waiting for an umbrella.
He moved with a controlled unevenness. His left leg did not take the paving at the same pace as his right, though he allowed neither the rain nor the waiting servant to hurry him.
His hat shadowed his face. Water ran from the shoulders of a coat cut so well that even the weather seemed an intrusion requiring apology.
Thomas had gathered the invoices from the hall table. As he turned, the loose closure schedule caught against the edge of the blotter.
Paper slid across the marble.
Thomas reached too quickly. A cough seized him halfway down, bending his slight frame and scattering the remaining sheets from his hands.
The stranger was nearer than Margaret.
He stopped rather than touching Thomas.
“May I?”
Thomas, still coughing, gestured once.
The gentleman removed his wet gloves. He did not attempt to stoop in one smooth motion.
One hand went to the hall table; his weight shifted carefully before he lowered himself enough to retrieve the nearest sheets.
The movement cost him. Margaret saw it in the fixed line of his mouth and in the brief stillness after he reached the floor.
He did not make the cost Thomas’s concern.
“This one first?” he asked, holding up an invoice.
Thomas drew breath. “The cabinet account, sir.”
The stranger set it atop the stack.
“And this?”
“Writing desks.”
He collected each page in the order Thomas named, keeping them clear of the wet spreading from his coat. When one sheet had slid beneath the umbrella stand, he used the toe of his boot to draw it near rather than forcing his knee farther.
Margaret knew that kind of adjustment. Not the injury itself, but the discipline of making a limitation look like method.
Thomas straightened and accepted the papers. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome.”
The stranger rose with greater care than he had descended. Once upright, he rested his fingertips upon the hall table for the length of a single breath, then withdrew them before anyone could offer assistance.
The footman crossed the threshold behind him and looked from the gentleman to the assembled residents, servants, timber, cracked marble, and one candle burning in daylight.
He raised his voice.
“His Grace, the Duke of Rothbury.”
The title moved through the hall more swiftly than the cold.
The kitchen maid in the rear arch bobbed a curtsy so abruptly that folded cloths slipped from her basket. The housemaid caught herself halfway into one. A man on the gallery removed his cap. Joseph did none of those things.
Thomas held the invoices against his chest.
The duke looked around the hall.
He had black hair touched with silver at the temples, a broad frame diminished but not erased by convalescence, and a scar crossing his left cheek. Rain had darkened the short side-whiskers beside his ears. His eyes were blue-gray and direct.
Margaret remembered those eyes above a military coat in a freezing depot room years ago. An officer had come to inspect stores. He had listened to three men explain transport and then asked Margaret why one ward had blankets and another did not.
Not whether blankets had been issued.
Why those men were cold.
Henry Blackwood had not been a duke then.
His gaze moved from Thomas to Joseph, from the men on the gallery to the timber passing toward the workshop. It came to Margaret only after he noticed that everyone else had already turned toward her.
“Mrs. Ellison?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“I had intended to send word.”
“It appears the word was delayed.”
“My visit was not.”
“No.”
The footman winced faintly.
The duke removed his hat. “May I enter?”
Margaret looked at the rain dripping from his coat onto the cracked marble.
“You have already improved the floor, Your Grace. Another three feet will do no additional harm.”
His gaze dropped to the water around his boots. “A fair distinction.”
He stepped fully inside.
“Does a duke customarily ask permission to enter property held under his family’s trust?” Margaret asked.
“A duke who arrives unannounced should ask permission to enter a kitchen, a sickroom, or any house in which other people live.”
“This is the front hall.”
“I judged it the proper place to begin learning the difference.”
The answer irritated her by being better than the question deserved.
His eyes returned to the invoices in Thomas’s arms. “You have active orders.”
“We had them five minutes ago,” Joseph said. “Sir Reginald may have closed the workshop since.”
The duke’s attention sharpened. “Closed?”
Margaret took the notice from her pocket.
“I believe Your Grace wished to see the accounts.”
“Yes.”
She held out the folded paper instead.
“This is the account that matters first.”
He looked at it but did not take it at once. “From Croft?”
“His clerk served it at half past nine. Thomas witnessed the hour.”
Only then did the duke accept the notice.
His bare fingers were cold-reddened from the rain. A scar disappeared beneath the right sleeve of his coat when he lifted the page. He read without moving farther into the house.
Margaret watched the order in which he absorbed it. The closure paragraphs drew no visible surprise. His mouth hardened at the deed clause. At the sentence concerning questions of succession, everything in him became still.
Not weak. Not wounded.
Contained.
“This schedule is false,” Margaret said.
His eyes lifted. “False in its entries?”
“In its selection. Sir Reginald has counted the whole winter’s coal, a complete roof replacement, and four months’ food against the cash presently in the account.
He excludes overdue subscriptions, contracted workshop payments, and deposits due upon approval.
The House is strained. It is not insolvent upon the figures he has omitted. ”
“How long have you managed the accounts?”
“Eleven months.”
“Alone?”
“With reports from Mrs. Pritchard, Mr. Hales, the tradesmen, and the residents responsible for each workshop order.”
“You sign the disbursements?”
“I prepare them. Sir Reginald authorizes those requiring trustee approval.”
“Can he refuse without written cause?”
“He can delay until refusal and delay become financially identical.”
The duke looked again at the notice.
Margaret said, “He claims the founding deed leaves him sole acting trustee until you appoint a resident duchess as co-trustee.”
“So it does.”
The words landed harder than denial would have done.
Joseph swore softly behind her.
Margaret kept her gaze upon the duke. “Then he has authority to close the House.”
“He has authority to initiate the process he describes. Whether he has fulfilled his duties in doing so is another matter.”
“And the final sentence?”
His thumb rested over the phrase concerning succession.
“A procedural precaution,” he said.
“Whose?”
“Croft’s.”
“That is not what I asked.”
His eyes met hers.