Chapter 10
“Quiet down, Biscuit,” Temperance shushed the canine, peering towards the door. The last thing she wanted was to be caught red-handed by the duke, doing something he had so sternly forbidden her from.
The dogs were not supposed to be in the house. The animals were to be housed in the stables, which the duke had state were ‘comfortable enough’ as they had been prepared with every reasonable consideration for the animals’ welfare. There was, as far as Harper was concerned, no argument to be made.
But Temperance felt as though there was always a compromise that could be reached.
Even if that meant that the duke would have to be kept unaware of it.
“When do you think he will be returning?” Albina replied, a knowing smile on her face. She was in on the job, and encouraged it.
“Oh, his usual time,” Temperance replied, petting Peabody who had now gathered at her feet.
“Trust me, Mother. I have his scheduled memorized at this point. In the mornings, he is away to review the estate or whatever it is that his work requires. In the evenings, sometimes he will stop to meet a friend and it is only in the very late evening or night that he returns.”
“That gives us a reasonable window to get away with it,” Albina laughed. Soot
The system was straightforward. When Harper was out, the dogs came in through the kitchen door. It was working very well this particular afternoon, and Temperance and Albina were in the sitting room with all three dogs and the cat.
Albina was doing something with embroidery and Temperance was reading.
“I think,” Albina said, holding her embroidery up and examining it, “that this is not going well.”
“You’ve been fighting that French knot for twenty minutes,” Temperance said, without looking up.
She wavered her hand dismissively at her daughter.
“Harper,” Albina said, in the tone she used when she was about to say something she had been thinking for a while, “is slowly becoming a more interesting man than I initially gave him credit for. But he is still wrong about the dogs.”
“Don’t tell him you think he’s interesting,” Temperance turned a page, “He’ll take it as permission to have opinions about more things.”
“He already has opinions about everything,” Albina smiled. “At least some of them are improving. Has he said anything more about the next…”
The sitting room door opened suddenly and Joseph stood in the doorway. He took in the room and his expression went through several rapid changes before arriving at something that was attempting to be disapproval.
“The dogs,” he said, “are supposed to be in the stables.”
“Yes,” Temperance said pleasantly, and turned a page. As long as it wasn’t the duke, Temperance knew that she had nothing to be afraid of. Joseph was just a child, and she could handle him.
Joseph looked at the dogs, and frowned.
“But that's what my father said, in fact he disallowed it expressly…”
“Your father is not here,” Albina said. “He went out this morning with Mr. Davies and he won’t be back until after four. It is currently half past two.”
“This is against the rules,” he said. “My father will be very displeased if he finds out.”
“It is,” Temperance agreed, “and I suppose, yes. I don’t expect him to be very happy about it, either.”
“I should…” He stopped. Midge had stood up and was now crossing the room toward him. She sat down at his feet, and looked up at him with an expression that could move the coldest of hearts.
Temperance could only smirk at the exchange, feeling a strange pride in her pet even though she had nothing to do with it. She could see that Joseph was beginning to change his mind.
“You could tell him, of course. You are free to do so,” Temperance said diplomatically, from behind her book. “Or you could sit down, which in my opinion would be the less boring option.”
Joseph took a moment to compose his thoughts before he sat down on the end of the settee, at the far end from Biscuit. His posture was straight as ever, and Temperance knew that it was going to take some time to him to settle in.
The boy had been trained as if he had been in the military, and he was not even eleven years old yet.
Midge immediately put her front paws on his knee, and then after another pause, Joseph put his hand on her head.
Midge’s tail began to wag immediately.
“She likes you,” Albina said.
“She likes everyone,” Joseph said, but he kept his hand where it was.
“She likes some people more than others,” Temperance said. “She liked you from the first night, in the hallway. I would take it as a compliment.”
She could see him blush, and found the sight rather endearing.
“Don’t you get tired of taking care of so many animals?” he asked after a moment. “I mean, it is quite the responsibility. Three dogs and a cat.”
“I don’t mind it,” Temperance shrugged her shoulders, but was secretly glad that he was taking an interest in her world. That was the first step in converting him, she thought to herself. “Besides, I’ve always been very fond of animals.”
“I can see that,” he sighed, and went back to petting Midge.
“I think they’re growing on you, as well.”
“Me?” Joseph’s eyes widened as if she had said something preposterous.
“At least it seems like that,” Temperance replied, not wanting to push the topic.
“Did you have animals? At Sedgewick?” Albina chimed in.
Joseph looked up.
“No,” he said. “My father doesn’t…he prefers things to be orderly.”
“Mmm,” Albina said, “And before Sedgewick? When you were very small?”
“We were always at Sedgewick,” Joseph said. “You see, my mother didn’t like to travel.”
Albina made a small sound of acknowledgment and returned to her embroidery, and the conversation might have ended there, but Joseph had more to say on the topic.
“She didn’t like a great many things,” he continued.
Temperance kept her eyes on her book, but her curiosity had been piqued.
Albina set down her embroidery and looked at the boy with the careful, unhurried attention she brought to people she was listening to properly.
“No?” she said.
“She was…” Joseph looked down at his lap for a moment, “She was not well. For a long time, I think. Before I was old enough to understand it. I don’t remember her very well, I was young when things changed.”
“That’s all right,” Albina said gently. “You don’t have to remember.”
“I remember some things,” Joseph said. He seemed to want to say it, but was full of reservations. “She used to scratch her hands. When she was upset, which was often, she would scratch until… well, until she saw blood.”
He stopped for moment, and suddenly the room felt heavier.
“My father kept me away from her after a while. I didn’t understand why then,” he paused. “I think I understand better now.”
“I..” Albina shot her daughter a look. Both of them were unsure of what to say. But Joseph did not seem to care. In fact, it looked like he wanted to keep talking till his heart desired, almost as if he had not been given the chance to speak about this before.
“And then one day,” Joseph said, “she was simply gone. My father told me she had gone away and didn’t bother to say where.” He looked up, briefly, and then back down at Midge. “He still doesn’t say but I think..”
He stopped again, and something moved in his face, “I think it was not somewhere good.”
Temperance looked at him over the top of her book but did not say anything.
Instead, she thought of a woman alone in a room somewhere, with hands that had turned against themselves, and a husband who had kept his son away with the particular, painful care of a man trying to protect something he could not fix.
She thought, oh. That is what that is.
“My father doesn’t talk about her,” Joseph said. “I don’t think he was… well, I don’t think they were very happy together. But he keeps the good memories for me and tells me the good ones.”
Albina looked at the boy for a moment with the expression she wore when something had moved her and reached over to pat his head gently.
“He sounds,” she said, “like a man doing his best.”
Joseph looked at her. Something in his face relaxed, slightly, as though the sentence had settled something that had been unsettled for a while.
“Yes,” he said. “I think so.”
The afternoon went on around them, and Temperance returned to her book and read the same paragraph four times and retained none of it.
She was thinking about Harper, and about what she had taken for coldness and what she now suspected was something considerably more complicated than coldness, and about a boy who remembered his mother scratching her hands until they bled, and a father who had kept only the good ones for him.
She was thinking that people were, very often, not what they appeared to be at breakfast.
“So,” Nicholas said, pulling his horse alongside Harper’s as they came around the second bend, “how is domestic life?”
Nicholas Ashby, Earl of Heron, had known Harper for twelve years and had spent approximately eleven of them saying whatever came into his head in Harper’s presence and suffering no significant consequences, which had given him a confidence in the practice that was occasionally misplaced.
The park was quiet at this hour, which was the point. Harper had always preferred it before the fashionable crowd arrived. He had come there to ride with his friends, Edmund and Nicholas.
“Fine,” Harper said, knowing that it would be a difficult conversation to avoid.
“Fine,” Nicholas repeated with amused suspicion, “You have been living in a house with a woman who wore trousers to the Hargrove ball and her daughter who was raised by nuns, and your assessment is fine?”
“My assessment is fine,” Harper kept his response curt. The last thing that he wished to do was fuel the fire.
“Edmund,” Nicholas said, looking across Harper to where Edmund was riding on his other side, “he says fine.”
“I heard,” Edmund said, laughing.
“What do you make of that?”
“I make of it,” Edmund said, “that he is being Harper about it, which means something considerably more than fine has occurred. We are going to have to work for it.”