Chapter 5
“Sit down,” Alethea said. “I’ll have tea sent up.”
Temperance had rushed over to her friends estate at the first opportunity.
“I don’t need tea, what I do need is you fill you lot in with what has happened.”
She had written earlier urgently requesting her friends to come in. Charity arrived just after her.
“Tell us,” she said.
“Oh, I don’t even know where to begin. The heir arrived, as I mentioned and he’s already taken to make our lives very difficult.”
She told them about the breakfast room, and the ridiculous rules he had set out for them.
“And the worst of it all, is that he expects me to marry. And notes that it is not my choice.”
“He said that?” Charity asked.
“In those exact words, as though it were the most reasonable thing in the world.”
Charity looked at Alethea, pressing her lips together.
“He sounds,” Charity began carefully, “very sure of himself.”
“He is extraordinarily sure of himself. He is so sure of himself that I suspect the concept of doubt is simply not something he has ever needed to develop. He arrived yesterday evening and by this morning he had already decided what everything was going to be and how everyone was going to behave and set about informing us of it as though we ought to be grateful for the clarity.”
“And your mother?” Alethea asked. “I suspect that she would not take kindly to him ordering you both around like this.”
“My mother watched the whole thing, and I think that she is either completely unbothered or she is planning something. With her it is occasionally difficult to tell the difference.”
“What do you know about him?” Charity asked. “Before yesterday, I mean. The Duke of Sedgewick… had you heard anything?”
“Very little. I knew the name from the solicitors’ letters, but I had never expected him to show. Beyond that…” Temperance shook her head. “He was an abstraction, and I assumed he was older.”
“He is not that much older,” Charity said, “Duncan knows of him. Not well…they have mutual acquaintances rather than a direct friendship… but enough.” She settled forward slightly.
“And what can you tell me of him?” At this point, Temperance felt that she needed all the information that she could gather.
“His reputation is apparently immaculate, quite genuinely. Duncan says he has never once heard a word against him, which he considers almost suspicious in itself.”
“Impeccable manners,” Alethea added, and Temperance turned to look at her. “Oliver mentioned him once, some time ago and said similar things. Very proper in his conduct.”
“That does not surprise me,” Temperance rolled her eyes.
“Very well regarded. Conscientious landlord, by all accounts. His estate at Sedgewick is apparently run to a standard that other men hold up as an example, which,” Alethea said, “does not make him easier to argue with, I imagine.”
“It does not,” Temperance agreed.
“And the late duchess,” Charity said, in a slightly different tone.
Temperance looked at her, suddenly even more curious, though she could explain why.
“What about her?”
“That is rather the thing.” Charity turned her teacup in her hands.
“Nobody seems to know anything about her. Duncan asked around a little, after I told him, and what he found was essentially… nothing. She married Sedgewick perhaps twelve or thirteen years ago. There was a child and then at some point she simply disappeared. No death notice in the papers. Duncan says that when people have tried to raise the subject in Sedgewick’s presence he becomes… very still.”
The room was quiet for a moment, and Temperance felt her mind being pulled into a myriad different directions.
“That could mean a great many things,” Alethea said gently.
“It could,” Charity agreed. “Though the particular way Duncan described the stillness suggests it is not a subject the duke has any intention of discussing. He was, for many years after her disappearance, considered the most sought-after bachelor in three counties.”
“And?” Temperance said.
“And nothing. He never showed the slightest interest in any of them.” Charity spread her hands. “Pursued by everyone but interested in no one.” She paused. “Until he apparently decided to arrive in your house and tell you that you are going to marry someone.”
“The irony,” Temperance said, “is not lost on me.”
“He is very handsome,” she said. “By all accounts.”
“Is he,” Temperance said.
“Duncan said so, and Duncan is not in the habit of making that observation about other men without cause.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Temperance said, though she had noticed it immediately. Of course, it was not something that she would ever admit openly.
Charity shot her a look, as if to call her out on her bluff.
“What? I hadn’t,” she said.
“Of course,” Charity said.
“I was considerably more focused on what he was saying than on…” She stopped. The image presented itself, unhelpfully and without invitation, dark blue eyes and the particular way he had looked at her across the breakfast table with that settled patience. “It is entirely irrelevant.”
“Surely..”
“I am not interested in the man, but I am interested in making sure he does not dismantle the life my mother and I have built, which is a considerably more pressing concern than…” Temperance gestured vaguely.
“How handsome he is?”
“Can we please discuss something that is actually useful,” Temperance groaned.
“Well, did he have someone in mind for your marriage?”
“I am the least bit interested,” Temperance rolled her eyes. “And I suspect that he will let the matter go eventually. Surely, he must.”
“I don’t know,” Charity went on. “From the sounds of it, he does not seem like the type to relent easily.”
“Well, then he does not know me,” Temperance said, “and I suspect he’s going to have a hard time understanding.”
The visit to her friends had helped calm Temperance down considerably. On her way back home, she heard Joseph before she saw him.
She had come in through the side entrance, her mind still turning over the conversation at Alethea’s, when a voice behind her said, “Your posture is crooked.”
Temperance stopped walking and turned around.
Joseph was standing behind her, hands clasped behind his back, wearing an expression of helpful observation.
He was dressed, as he had been at breakfast, with the kind of precision that suggested his morning had involved at least one person reviewing his appearance before he was considered presentable for the day.
“Good afternoon, Joseph,” she said.
“Good afternoon.” He fell into step beside her as she turned back toward the stairs. “Your left shoulder is lower than your right.”
“Is it?” she raised an eyebrow. He seemed a bit too perceptive for a child his age, and that was not something that came naturally, surely.
“My tutor says that uneven shoulders suggest an imbalance in one’s daily habits. Do you carry things on one side?”
“Occasionally,” she said.
“That would explain it.” He appeared to consider this a resolved matter. “Also your pace is quite fast for a lady. Miss Fairweather… she was my governess before she left… said that a lady’s walk should be measured. Yours is well, purposeful.”
“How alarming,” Temperance said, laughing.
“I only mention it because…”
“Joseph.” She stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked at him. “Why are you following me?”
“I am not following you. It is only a coincidence that I am walking in the same direction.”
Temperance looked at him for a moment. Then she turned and continued up the stairs. He followed, at a distance that was clearly intended to look like not-following.
She reached the landing and turned toward her room.
“Your hem is uneven on the left side,” Joseph said, from behind her.
She stopped walking.
“The stitching, I mean. It dips slightly in the back. Miss Fairweather said that an uneven hem is most improper.”
“Joseph,” Temperance said, without turning around, “are you quite finished?”
“I am only telling you.”
“I have had a long morning, and I am very fond of this dress, and if you say one more thing about the hem I will not be responsible for what comes next.”
She turned around at the exact moment that Joseph took one step forward, and his foot came down squarely on the back of her skirt.
There was a sound, that of the stitching giving way in a neat, irreversible line along the back seam, from the hem upward for approximately six inches.
They both looked down at the torn seam.
“That,” he said, after a moment, “was an accident.”
“I know it was an accident,” Temperance said, with enormous restraint.
“I didn’t mean to….”
“I know you didn’t mean to.”
“The floor is somewhat…”
“Joseph.” She took a breath. “Please simply say you are sorry.”
Something crossed his face and then his chin came up in a way that was so precisely like his father that she almost laughed despite everything.
Like father, like son.
“I was walking perfectly correctly,” he said. “If you had not turned around without warning…. then the incident would not have…”
“You stepped on my dress.”
“No, you turned into my path.”
Temperance stared at him.
“I could,” she said thoughtfully, “rip your jacket.”
“You wouldn’t,” Joseph’s eyes dropped to his jacket.
“It seems only equitable.”
“That is not equitable, that is…” He took a small step back. “Miss Hosmer.”
“Or,” she said, tilting her head, “I could dye all your clothes green. You seem like someone who would find green very difficult to manage.”
His eyes widened.
“I have access to the laundry, Joseph. I know Mrs. Potts quite well. One word from me and every shirt you own becomes green.”
“That is completely unreasonable.” He took another step back. His composure had cracked slightly at the edges, and beneath it was something she recognized, which was the look of a child who was trying very hard not to find something funny. “My father would not stand for it.”
“Your father,” Temperance said, advancing one step, “is not here.”
Joseph turned and ran, and she ran after him.
It was not her most dignified moment. She was twenty-five years old and she was chasing a ten-year-old boy down a landing with a torn seam flapping behind her and absolutely no plan beyond the principle of the thing.
But he had started running and something about the particular quality of his laugh made stopping feel like the wrong thing to do.
“The wardrobe!” she called, gaining on him as he rounded the corner. “Everything in it! I’ll throw the whole lot in the garden!”
“You wouldn’t dare!” He was laughing properly now, the composure entirely gone, pelting down the corridor with his perfectly combed hair.
“The mud by the rose bed is particularly good this time of year!”
“Miss Hosmer!”
“One word to Biscuit and he’ll have your boots before breakfast. Ha!”
Joseph let out a shout of laughter and ducked around the corner, and Temperance rounded it after him to find him pressed against the wall with his hands over his mouth, shoulders shaking, attempting to muffle the noise and failing entirely.
She stopped in front of him, slightly out of breath, and they regarded each other for a moment.
“Say you’re sorry,” she said, between breaths.
He shook his head, still laughing.
“Joseph.”
“It was an accident.”
“It was an accident that requires an apology.”
“Miss Fairweather,” He pressed his lips together, trying to recover himself. “She said a gentleman never apologizes for accidents because an apology implies culpability.”
“Miss Fairweather,” Temperance said, “sounds exhausting.”
She leaned against the opposite wall and looked at him and something settled warmly in the middle of her chest.
“I’ll tell you what. You apologies for the dress, and I will apologies for threatening your wardrobe.”
He considered this. “You’ll leave the clothes alone?”
“All of them.”
He almost smiled.
“Sorry about the dress,” he said, and it came out without the chin-up stiffness. This time it was genuine.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry about the wardrobe.”
He nodded, once and they stood together in silence for a few moments.
“Your posture is actually fine,” Joseph said, after a while.
“Was it ever not?”
“No,” he admitted.
She laughed. It surprised him, as though the sound was something he had not entirely expected.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s see if there’s anything left from luncheon.”
He fell into step beside her, and this time neither of them pretended it was a coincidence.