Chapter Three #2
“He loves them,” Lady Maria said near dusk, when the carriage had grown quieter, and Petalia thought the older woman might be speaking as much to herself as to anyone. “The children, I mean. Edmund loves them.”
Petalia waited, because the rest of the sentence had not been spoken.
Lady Maria looked out at the road. “But love is not always sufficient when the beloved are children and require evidence.”
The first night, they stopped at a coaching inn in Somerset.
Petalia expected a small room, plain and draughty, the sort of chamber given to governesses and unmarried poor relations.
Instead, the innkeeper bobbed nervously and led her to a clean room with a good fire, a proper ewer of hot water, and sheets that smelled of lavender.
“There must be some mistake,” Petalia said, pausing in the doorway.
The innkeeper clasped her hands. “No mistake, miss. His Grace was particular.”
“His Grace?”
“Very particular,” the woman repeated, as if that explained both the room and the wisdom of leaving the subject alone.
Petalia thanked her and turned back towards the corridor.
As she did, a door down the passage stood half open.
In the private parlour beyond it, Edmund sat at a table with a glass beside his hand and a plate untouched before him.
The scarf was loosened at his throat. Lamplight caught the edge of the scar along his jaw before he turned his face away.
He saw her. She knew he saw her.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Petalia curtsied because the corridor gave her nothing else to do. “Your Grace.”
He inclined his head. “Miss Winthrop. I trust the room is adequate.”
“More than adequate. I understand I have you to thank for it.”
His hand closed around the stem of the glass. “You have the innkeeper to thank. She keeps a clean house.”
“Then I shall thank her.”
“Do.”
It was a dismissal, though not quite a rude one.
Petalia went to her room, shut the door, and told herself that a man might arrange hot bricks, blankets, food, and a proper chamber without wishing to be thanked for any of it.
Indeed, in Ashbourne’s case, he seemed to have arranged them chiefly so he could resent her for noticing.
***
The next day carried them deeper into the west. Lady Maria slept for much of the morning, her chin tucked into her mantle, leaving Petalia to watch the country change through the carriage window.
The hedgerows grew thicker. The sky lowered.
Villages came farther apart, and the road took on the lonely, folded look of country that did not hurry itself for travellers.
By late afternoon on the third day, Wrenfield appeared beyond a crooked gatepost and a sweep of drive bordered by neglected laurels.
The house was imposing, grey-stoned, and handsome in the bones, but visibly under-loved.
Ivy climbed where it should have been trimmed.
One shutter hung slightly uneven. The gravel near the steps had not been raked clean after the last rain.
Petalia looked at it and understood, before anyone told her, that grief had settled here not as a visitor but as a tenant.
Mrs Holroyd met them at the door. She was a tall woman with a pale, severe face and her right hand bandaged from wrist to thumb.
She curtsied correctly to Lady Maria and then to Petalia, though her eyes held the guarded expression of a woman who had watched too many hopeful arrivals become departures.
“Mrs Holroyd,” Lady Maria said, “this is Miss Winthrop, the children’s new governess.”
“Miss Winthrop,” Mrs Holroyd said. “I hope your journey was tolerable.”
“It was, thank you. I hope your hand is healing well.”
The housekeeper’s gaze dropped involuntarily to the bandage. “It is of no consequence.”
“A hand is almost always of consequence, particularly when one has only two.”
Mrs Holroyd’s mouth moved by the smallest degree. It was not a smile, but it was the first thaw Petalia had seen. “It is healing, miss. Thank you for asking.”
“His Grace?” Lady Maria asked.
“Gone upstairs, my lady. He left word that Miss Winthrop is to be shown to the east room and then to the schoolroom when she is ready.”
“Of course he did,” Lady Maria murmured. “Cowardice in a clean coat.”
Mrs Holroyd wisely made no reply.
Petalia was shown to a room in the east wing, warmer and more comfortable than she had expected.
A fire had been lit. Her small bag had already been placed near the bed.
She removed her bonnet, smoothed her hair, and allowed herself precisely one minute to stand before the fire and feel the warmth reach her hands. Then Mrs Holroyd returned.
“The children are in the schoolroom, miss.”
“Do they know I have arrived?”
A sound reached them faintly through the corridor beyond, a girl’s furious voice followed by a lower answer so quiet Petalia could not make out the words.
Mrs Holroyd’s face returned to its guarded state. “They do now.”
They walked together through a passage that smelled faintly of dust, beeswax, and old smoke. As they neared the schoolroom corridor, the girl’s voice rose again.
“I will not do another sum if the King himself commands it!”
The quieter voice answered, “It is not a sum. It is a map.”
Petalia stopped with her hand on the knob.
A map, at least, was a beginning.