Chapter 4
The Duke of Sedgewick was seated at the head of the table when she arrived at breakfast the next morning.
This was the first surprise.
The head of the table had been Albina’s since the day her husband died. It had not occurred to Temperance, in the vague mental preparation she had done for this morning, that Harper Crauford would simply sit down at the head of the table as though it had always been his.
She should, she reflected, have anticipated that.
He was dressed with the same impeccable precision as the night before and he was reading what appeared to be a letter, which he did not look up from as she entered.
Beside him was Joseph. The boy was also dressed impeccably. If not for the slight flicker of recognition in his eyes when she appeared in the doorway, she might have wondered if she had imagined the whole thing that happened yesterday for he looked like a changed boy.
On the table between them was a rack of toast, a pot of tea that had clearly just been poured, and two plates.
Temperance looked at all of this. Then she looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, which read twenty-nine minutes past nine.
“You are late,” Harper said, without looking up from his letter.
Temperance pulled out her chair and sat down.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Breakfast is at nine o’clock.”
“Breakfast,” Temperance said, accepting the cup that the footman materialized to pour for her, “has historically been whenever one arrives at the table and is hungry. Good morning, Joseph.”
“Good morning, Miss Hosmer,” Joseph said, very correctly. He was watching her carefully.
“The historical arrangements of this household,” Harper said, finally setting down his letter and looking at her, “are precisely what I am here to address. Nine o’clock, every morning.”
“I will take that under consideration,” Temperance said pleasantly, though she was irked greatly that he was already ordering her around.
Who does he think he is?
A silence fell between them. He looked at her as she buttered her toast with complete composure.
“It was not a suggestion, Miss Hosmer.”
“No, I gathered it wasn’t.”
She could feel his gaze on the side of her face. But before he could answer, the door opened again.
Albina swept in.
She was wearing a house robe of deep rose silk and was carrying Soot.
“Good morning, good morning,” she announced to the room at large, depositing Soot on the empty chair beside Temperance and settling into her own seat.
Her gaze swept the table, registered Harper at its head, registered Joseph beside him and landed back on Temperance with an expression that communicated, in the span of half a second, several things at once.
“You must be the heir,” she said to Harper, reaching for the teapot.
“The Duke of Sedgewick,” Harper said. His gaze moved from her silk robe to Soot, “Yes.”
“Albina Hosmer,” her mother said. “Dowager Viscountess. Though I expect you know that already.”
Of course she did. Temperance had already briefed her about everything.
Albina poured herself a cup of tea and looked at him over the rim as though she found him genuinely fascinating regardless.
“I would like to speak to you both,” the duke said. “As I have a great deal to address, I would ask that you allow me to do so without interruption.”
“Already?” Albina muttered. “But we have barely made introductions. I should like to know what my husband found so special about you that he decided to leave his fortunes to you.”
“There will be plenty of time for that later,” the duke replied, “I believe that first it's important to lay down some rules.”
“Rules?” Albina said, scoffing.
“The animals,” he said, “will not be in the breakfast room.”
“Soot is not on the table, she is on the chair,” Temperance said quickly.
“She is on a chair at the breakfast table, which is not…”
“She is not interrupting anything.”
“Miss Hosmer.” His voice was even, to a terrifying degree. “I asked not to be interrupted.”
Temperance picked up her teacup and he held her gaze for a moment longer, apparently concluded that she was not going to say anything further, and continued.
“I arrived last night to a house I have not yet fully assessed, but what I have seen thus far suggests that the management of this estate has been irregular, at best, for some time.” He said, as if stating an established fact, “The accounts I have reviewed from my solicitors indicate that several matters of maintenance have been deferred. The staff appear to be operating without clear direction on a number of points. And the household arrangements, from what I have already observed, are not what one would call structured.”
“We are very comfortable,” Albina said mildly. Which was fair. Things had been running just fine without him.
“I am sure you are, comfort is not the issue. The issue is order and reputation. The fact that my name, which is now also the name attached to this estate has the chance to appear in the scandal sheets with a frequency that I find, to put it plainly, unacceptable.”
Albina sipped her tea but no one said anything for a while.
“Which scandal sheets specifically?” she asked, with genuine interest. “Because the Mayfair Whisper has been covering me for simply ages, but I had a very nice mention in the Gentlemen’s Circular last spring that I thought was rather fair…”
“All of them,” Harper said. “Seven times in the Mayfair Whisper alone in the last four months. The trousers, Lady Wilmington.”
“They were very fine trousers.”
“They were the subject of three separate published accounts.”
“Four,” Albina corrected, and then appeared to consider whether this had been wise.
Harper turned to Temperance.
“And you,” he said. “The papers refer to you as the spinster at her side. The pair of you, it seems, make quite the subject for public entertainment. This household, Miss Hosmer, has become something the ton watches for amusement. That ends now.”
“I see,” she said. “And what, exactly, does ends now look like, in your estimation?”
“It looks like order,” he said. “A proper schedule. Lady Wilmington conducting herself with the discretion expected of a woman of her rank.” He moved on with the air of a man working through a list. “The animals will be housed appropriately. Outside, or in the stables.”
“And you,” Harper said, turning back to Temperance, “will marry.”
The word landed on the table between them like something dropped from a considerable height. Temperance heard her mother go very still across from her.
Then Albina let out a laugh and pressed her hand over her mouth. Temperance felt her own lips twitch, despite everything.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You will ensure my mother behaves, and that I will marry?”
“Yes.”
“Those are your intentions?”
“Those are the arrangements I intend to put in place, yes.”
Temperance looked at him for a long moment. Across the table, Albina had recovered herself and was now watching the exchange with great interest. Joseph, beside his father, had gone very still.
“My mother,” Temperance said, “is a grown woman. She is forty-six years old. She has survived thirty years of marriage to a man who….” She stopped as she had not intended to go there in front of a stranger and a child, and she pulled herself back.
“She does not require anyone to ensure she behaves, instead she requires to be left in peace.”
“What she requires,” Harper said, “is guidance. The scandal sheets are not…”
“The scandal sheets,” Temperance said, “are written by people with nothing better to do than reduce a woman to two column inches. My mother wore trousers to a ball. She did not hurt anyone, nor did she did not do anything that warranted…”
“It is not about what she deserves,” he said, and there was something in his tone now that reminded her of a door closing.
“It is about what is. The world is as it is, Miss Hosmer. And the practical consequence of Lady Wilmington’s behavior is that this family’s reputation suffers, and that affects this estate, and this title, and my name. Which I intend to protect.”
Temperance looked at him, annoyed.
He looked back at her, and she had the infuriating sense that he considered the matter settled, since he had explained his position clearly and reasonably and was now simply waiting for her to arrive at the same conclusion he had reached, as though it were only a matter of time.
“And me,” she said. “Marrying?”
“You are twenty-five years old and unmarried,” he said. “That, too, affects…”
“I am perfectly content,” she said.
“Nevertheless….”
“I don’t want a husband.” She said it clearly. “I have never wanted a husband. It is my choice, and it has always been my choice, and I see no reason why…”
He cut her off again, and she realized that he seemed to have made a habit of doing that.
“It is no longer your choice,” he said.
Temperance looked at the Duke of Sedgewick, appalled at the audacity.
His tone had brought back some unwanted memories for her.
She thought of the nunnery. Of being told, every day, in a hundred different ways large and small, what she was permitted to do and who she was permitted to be and how far she was permitted to go.
“I beg your pardon?” she said, now suddenly calm but her anger was simmering inside of her.
“You are a young woman of no independent income, living in a house that belongs to my estate,” he said.
“A suitable marriage would provide you with security, with independence, and with a household of your own. It would also resolve the question of your future without placing it indefinitely at the mercy of my generosity, which is, I imagine, not an arrangement that appeals to you.”
She stared at him.
As annoying as he was being, she could not deny that he was right.
That was the worst of it and she hated it.
“The animals,” she said, after a moment, “are staying in the house.”
“They are not and I am not interested in negotiating with you.”
“They have lived in this house for two years.”
“Miss Hosmer, the animals will be housed in the stables. That is not a negotiation.”
“You cannot simply arrive in someone’s home after two years of absence and begin rearranging it according to your preferences,” she said, letting some of her anger show finally.
“This is not someone’s home,” he said. “It is my estate. And I have not been absent. Mind you. I have been managing the affairs of my title and preparing for the considerable task of bringing this estate into order.” He looked at her steadily.
“I understand this is an adjustment and I am prepared to be patient. But I will not be argued out of what is necessary.”
Temperance could hardly believe what she was hearing.
She had always expected an heir to arrive, but never had she assumed that he would be this demanding.
She looked at Joseph, who caught her eye and looked away immediately, in the manner of a child who had been very well taught that it was not his place to be caught looking.
She thought of the boy in the garden the night before, and how different those two versions of the same child were, and something in her chest contracted quietly.
She looked back at Harper, as though she was suddenly privy to some important fact of his personality.
“You are very certain,” she said, “that you know what is necessary.”
“In matters of this kind,” he said, “yes.”
“In matters of this kind,” she repeated. “Huh.”
“Order and reputation, and more important, the proper management of a household and the people in it. Yes, Miss Hosmer, I am.”
Temperance picked up her toast and took a bite.
“I will also need a full accounting of the household expenses for the past two years,” he said, after a moment. “And the guest rooms in the east wing should be prepared. I will be reviewing the staff schedules this week.” He glanced at Albina.
“Lady Wilmington. I trust you understand my meaning.”
“Every word,” Albina said pleasantly. “You have very clear diction.”
His gaze rested on her for a moment. Then it moved to Soot, who was still on the chair.
And then on his son.
“Joseph, sit up.”
Joseph, whose posture was already so correct that sitting up further would have required structural modifications, sat up.
Temperance looked at the boy, and watched the interaction unfold with great curiosity.
“Joseph,” she said. “Would you like more toast?”
His eyes moved to his father, who was looking at his letter again, and then back to Temperance.
“I have had sufficient, thank you,” he said, very correctly.
Temperance looked at his plate. He had had, by her count, one piece. She pushed the toast rack toward him anyway.
Harper, without looking up from his letter, said, “Sit up, Joseph.”
The breakfast room settled into a quiet that was not quite comfortable and Albina, who could read a room better than anyone Temperance had ever known, chose this moment to reach over and retrieve Soot from the chair beside Temperance, settling the cat into her lap.
Soot immediately began to purr and the sound was very loud in the quiet room.
Harper looked up and Albina smiled at him over her teacup with the serenity of a woman who had survived thirty years of a man telling her what to do and had emerged on the other side fundamentally unchanged.
Something moved across Harper’s expression that Temperance could not quite read.
He looked from Albina to Temperance and back, and she had the sense he was revising something.
Some prior estimate of the situation he had constructed before arriving and found, now that he was here, to be not entirely accurate.
He returned to his letter with a sigh.
“Nine o’clock tomorrow,” he said. “Both of you.”
Albina looked at her daughter, grinning.
“Of course,” Temperance said.
She said it in the pleasant, even tone she had been using all morning. But she knew that things had suddenly changed.
Perhaps for the worse.