Chapter Eight
Petalia had not intended to make a habit of requesting things from the Duke of Ashbourne.
In the abstract, she preferred employers who issued clear instructions, paid wages promptly, and remained at a civil distance unless lessons, illness, or small fires required consultation.
In practice, Wrenfield refused to run along any line so convenient.
The children improved, but each improvement created another practical difficulty.
Outdoor lessons required storage. Storage required furniture.
Furniture required rooms. Rooms, at Wrenfield, were never merely rooms.
By the end of the second week, the small oak table from the west morning room had become inadequate.
Leaves curled before they could be pressed.
Stones were being kept in a hatbox that belonged to no one willing to admit ownership.
Mary had begun calling the specimens “our evidence,” which made Mrs Holroyd anxious whenever the child entered the kitchen with a jar.
Declan had taken to making careful lists, then hiding the lists beneath geography books as if documentation itself were contraband.
Petalia needed access to the old estate maps in the library and, if fortune could be persuaded to exert itself, the use of the unused morning room rather than the already overcrowded schoolroom.
Mrs Holroyd heard the request, looked at Petalia for a long moment, and said, “That is a matter for His Grace.”
The words had the same tone one might use for thunder, plague, or divine judgment.
“The room is not used,” Petalia said carefully.
“No, miss.”
“And the maps are not, I imagine, fragile beyond handling?”
“Some are old, but not so old as His Grace’s temper when certain rooms are discussed.”
Petalia folded the list she had made. “Does the west morning room have particular significance?”
Mrs Holroyd’s face closed at once. “That is also a matter for His Grace.”
“I see.”
That was how Petalia came to stand once more outside the Duke’s study at a quarter after eleven, holding a list of educational requirements that suddenly seemed less like a list and more like a collection of offences.
Pritchard announced her. The reply from within was too low for her to hear, but the door opened almost immediately.
The Duke was not behind his desk.
He stood near a tall cabinet with a drawer pulled open, wearing a dark coat that had been put on carelessly and a waistcoat lacking one button near the middle.
His hair was wild, as if he had pushed both hands through it more than once and resented the failure of the gesture to solve whatever troubled him.
His beard, already too full for fashion, seemed more ungoverned than usual, and the scarf at his throat had been tied in haste rather than armour.
In the grey light from the window, the scar along his jaw showed in broken glimpses when he turned his head.
He looked rough, forbidding, and entirely unsuitable for the polished portrait of dukedom society preferred to imagine.
Petalia found, to her private alarm, that the wildness did not diminish him.
It made him difficult to look away from.
“Miss Winthrop,” he said, closing the drawer with more force than necessary. “Has Lady Mary declared war upon the alphabet, or has my son discovered a navigational error in the county maps?”
“Neither, Your Grace, though both remain possible before luncheon.”
He gestured towards a chair. “Sit, if this requires a full account.”
“Thank you.” Petalia sat, arranging her list in her lap. “I have come to request access to the older estate maps and, if it may be managed without inconvenience, permission to use the west morning room for part of the children’s lessons.”
His expression altered so quickly that she knew, before he spoke, that Mrs Holroyd had been right.
“No.”
Petalia breathed in. “To the maps, the room, or both?”
“Both.”
“May I ask why?”
“You may ask.”
When he said nothing more, she looked down at her list, smoothed one corner, and reminded herself that men who gave refusals without reasons often considered reasons a form of surrender.
“Your Grace,” she said, choosing each word with care, “the schoolroom is becoming too crowded for the lessons that have proved useful. The children are responding well to practical work, but practical work requires surfaces, storage, and air. The west morning room is near enough to the schoolroom to be supervised, and the maps would allow Lord Declan to connect his drawings to the actual estate rather than imaginary coastlines. Lady Mary, for her part, may be persuaded to measure, count, and write if she believes the exercise concerns territory rather than punishment.”
“You make conquest sound like arithmetic.”
“For Lady Mary, it may be the only respectable route into arithmetic.”
“The west morning room is not a schoolroom.”
“At present, Your Grace, it is not anything.”
The sentence was mild. It still landed badly.
He turned from her and walked to the window.
The movement drew attention to the breadth of his shoulders and the restless energy beneath his stillness.
Petalia wished she had not noticed either.
He rested one hand on the window frame, his head slightly bowed, and for a moment, the beastly reputation seemed not like temper but like a man standing guard over a wound no one was permitted to name.
“That room is not to be disturbed,” he said.
“Then I shall withdraw the request.”
He turned his head. “That quickly?”
“You refused clearly. I do not wish to trespass where I have been told not to step.”
“Most people, having come with a list, would argue through it.”
“I can argue, Your Grace. I prefer to know whether I am arguing with a reason or a boundary.”
His eyes settled on her. “And if it is a boundary?”
“Then I respect it, unless it harms the children.”
“And if it is a reason?”
“Then I test whether the reason is sound.”
Something like reluctant approval passed across his face and vanished behind irritation. “You are very sure of your methods.”
“No,” she said. “I am sure only that children suffer when adults turn ghosts into rules and then refuse to explain the rules.”
He went still.
Petalia regretted the sentence immediately. It had come from instinct, and instinct was not always courteous. She lowered her gaze. “Forgive me. That was too forward.”
“Yes,” he said. “It was.”
Silence followed. He did not dismiss her. Petalia did not rise. Outside, rain began in a thin silver sheet against the glass.
At last, he said, “My wife used that room.”
Petalia’s hands tightened around the list in her lap, but she kept her voice even. “Then I understand the refusal.”
“Do you?”
“Perhaps not fully. But enough not to press.”
He looked back towards the garden, and when he spoke again, the words sounded dragged from somewhere unwilling.
“Eleanor wrote letters there. She planned the rose beds there. She kept seed catalogues in the lower drawer of the cabinet and pretended she did not order twice as much as the gardeners advised. She said the room had the best morning light in the house and that even I looked less severe in it, which was both insulting and probably accurate.”
Petalia did not answer at once. The room had changed again, not into comfort, but into something more dangerous because it was honest.
“She sounds as though she had a talent for surviving your severity,” she said gently.
His mouth twisted. “She had a talent for ignoring it, which is a colder gift than survival.”
“Perhaps. Ignoring severity may be a form of survival.”
“Do you ignore mine?”
The question came too directly.
Petalia met it because looking away would have made too much of it. “No, Your Grace. But I try to remember it may not be the whole of the matter.”
The silence altered. His expression shifted, reluctant and unwilling, and she saw for the first time how he might have looked before grief, before scar, before beard and scarf and all the architecture of refusal.
“And what is the whole of the matter?”
“I would not presume to know.”
“But you have formed an opinion.”
She lowered her eyes briefly to the list in her hands. “Only that severity and care are not always so far apart as they appear.”
His amusement disappeared. “You overstep again.”
“Yes,” she said, and rose. “I seem to do so often in this room. I shall trouble you no further about the west morning room. If the maps are also unavailable, I will devise another method.”
She reached the door before he spoke.
“The maps are in the library.”
She turned back slowly.
He had not moved from the window. “The older estate maps are kept in the long drawers beneath the east shelves. Pritchard will not know which are useful. Mrs Holroyd will pretend she does not know because she dislikes paper dust. I will show you.”
He looked at her, and the near-smile returned for a fraction of a second. Then he crossed the room, took a key from the ring on his desk, and opened the door.
***
The library was in the older part of the house, reached through a passage lined with portraits whose painted eyes had the usual ancestral habit of disapproving of everyone.
Edmund walked ahead, not quickly, but with long enough strides that Petalia had to pay attention.
He slowed after the first turning, so slightly that it might have been accidental.
It was not accidental. She had already learnt that His Grace’s kindnesses disliked witnesses, even when the witness was the recipient.
As they passed a closed door at the end of the corridor, his step changed.
Petalia noticed but did not look at the door.
He noticed her not looking.
“You are unusually incurious,” he said. The tone was sharper than the words required.
“No, Your Grace. Only disciplined.”
“There is a difference?”
“A considerable one. Curiosity asks questions because it wants to be fed. Discipline waits until the answer can survive being spoken.”
He stopped outside the library door with the key in his hand. “You have a maxim for every trespass.”
“Not every trespass. Some I commit without preparation.”
He unlocked the door and pushed it open. The library smelled of leather, dust, and cold ashes. It was larger than Petalia expected, with tall shelves, a faded Turkey carpet, and long map drawers built beneath the eastern wall. Edmund crossed to them and pulled one open.
“These are surveys of the estate,” he said. “Older ones at the bottom. Do not let Mary near the inked boundary copies. She will redraw the parish if given motive.”
“She may argue that the parish requires improvement.”
“The parish has survived worse than her opinion.”
“Has it survived yours?”
He paused with one hand on the drawer and looked at her.
Petalia felt warmth rise in her face. “That was not educationally relevant.”
“No,” he said. “It was not.”
But he did not sound angry.
They sorted through the maps together. At first, he explained only what was necessary: the lower park, the kitchen garden, the south wall, the stream beyond it, the old orchard, the disused dovecote. Gradually, because maps carried memory whether one wished it or not, his explanations lengthened.
The old orchard had been his mother’s favourite walk.
The dovecote had been struck by lightning when he was fourteen.
The lower meadow flooded when the drainage ditches were neglected, which they had been because the previous steward had been dishonest and the current duke had been occupied with other failures.
He did not phrase it so, but Petalia heard it.
At one point, she leant over a map to trace the safest route from the schoolroom entrance to the kitchen garden. Edmund reached across to hold down the curling edge. Their hands nearly touched. They both noticed. Neither spoke of it.
“This path,” Petalia said after a moment, keeping her finger on the parchment. “If the children begin here, pass the old pear tree, and avoid the rose beds, we can reach the kitchen garden without crossing the wet lower ground.”
“Mary will want the wet lower ground as soon as she is told to avoid it.”
“Then I shall tell her it is reserved for advanced pupils.”
“She will demand advancement.”
“And I shall require evidence. It is a useful word with her. She enjoys evidence.”
“Because she intends to use it in prosecution.”
“A formidable future awaits the courts.”
Edmund’s hand still held the edge of the map. Petalia became aware, with increasing discomfort, of his nearness. He was not touching her. He was not even looking at her. Yet the space between them had narrowed around the map and the shared attention of it, until the library seemed too quiet.
He looked down at the route she had chosen. “You see a great deal, Miss Winthrop.”
“It is part of my profession.”
“No. Some governesses see lessons, timetables, faults, and wages. You see rooms, habits, servants, children, the direction in which a house is leaning.”
She looked up at him then. “I hope that is not a fault, Your Grace.”
“I have not decided.”
“I shall wait for your verdict, then.”
His gaze moved over her face, not quickly enough to be impersonal.
Petalia felt the fact of it and stood very still.
She knew what she must look like, a plain gown, ink on one cuff, hair pinned neatly but not fashionably, no ornament beyond necessity.
He looked at her as if none of that had settled the matter.
Then he withdrew his hand from the map and stepped back.
“Take these two,” he said. “Return them to the library when you have finished.”
“I will.”
He selected a smaller key from his ring, hesitated, then placed it in her palm. The metal was cool. His fingers brushed her glove once, briefly, and were gone.
“For the library,” he said. “Not the west morning room.”
Petalia closed her fingers around the key. “I understand.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. You have trusted me with one room, Your Grace. I shall not presume upon another.”
He turned away as if she had said too much again, though this time she did not think he was angry. Not entirely.
“Good day, Miss Winthrop.”
“Good day, Your Grace.”
She left the library with two maps, one key, and the uncomfortable awareness that the room was not the only thing in Wrenfield that had been opened.