Chapter Nine #2
The exchange moved too easily. That was the danger. Words with most people required effort, defence, posture. With his aunt, each conversation was a campaign. With the children, every word dragged behind it a chain of failure and love. With society, every sentence was armour.
With Miss Winthrop, he answered before he remembered to guard himself.
A footman appeared at the half-open door with a tea tray balanced in both hands.
“Begging your pardon, Your Grace,” the man said. “Mrs Holroyd thought, with the rain and the hour, that tea might be wanted.”
Miss Winthrop took a step back. “I should go.”
“You need not flee from tea,” Edmund said, too quickly.
She looked at him. He heard the carelessness of it a moment after speaking.
“I did not mean to flee, Your Grace. I meant only that the report has been delivered, and the hour grows late.”
“Then remain long enough to explain the request regarding tomorrow. It is better done now than through Pritchard in the morning, when he will make it sound like an amendment to an Act of Parliament.”
She hesitated.
That hesitation should have warned him. It was not reluctance to stay. It was propriety taking measure of the room, the rain, the hour, the servant at the door, his absent scarf, her own position. If Edmund had possessed any sense, he would have let her leave.
Instead, he said, “The door is open. The footman is present. We are discussing my children. There can be no objection.”
It was a stupid thing to say because objections were rarely sensible enough to respect facts.
Miss Winthrop seemed to know it. Still, she nodded and moved towards the table. “Very well. Only for a few minutes.”
The footman set down the tray near the edge of the table, already cluttered with maps and letters.
Edmund reached to move a stack of papers aside.
At the same moment, thunder cracked close enough to rattle the windowpanes.
The footman started. The tray shifted. Edmund caught it by instinct, but the teapot slid against the raised rim, tipped, and sent a stream of hot tea across the table and over the front of Miss Winthrop’s gown.
She gasped.
The sound stripped every thought from him.
“Miss Winthrop!”
She stepped back, but the dark liquid had already soaked through the bodice and down the upper skirt, steaming faintly in the cool air. The cup toppled and shattered on the floor. The footman went white.
“Out,” Edmund said. “Fetch Mrs Holroyd. Now.”
The footman fled.
Miss Winthrop clutched at the wet fabric with both hands, then snatched her fingers away as the heat reached her skin. Her face had gone pale, not with modesty but pain.
“Do not touch it,” Edmund said, already crossing towards her. “The cloth will hold the heat.”
“I am quite aware of that, Your Grace.”
Her voice was strained enough to frighten him more than a cry would have done.
He seized the clean napkin from the tray, dipped it into the water jug, and held it out. “Press this against the worst of it.”
She took it, but the soaked fabric clung too closely for the water to reach the burn beneath.
“It is in the bodice,” she said, and then stopped because both of them understood what that meant.
The library had a folding screen near the fireplace, rarely used and half-hidden behind a chair. Edmund looked towards it, then back at her. The door remained open. The footman was gone. Mrs Holroyd would come, but not quickly enough if the heat was trapped against her skin.
“You must remove the gown,” he said.
Her eyes met his.
The words sat between them, scandalous and practical, indecent and necessary.
“I cannot,” she said.
“You must. The tea will burn if it remains against you.”
“Then send a maid.”
“I have sent for Mrs Holroyd. Until she arrives, you will stand behind the screen and unfasten whatever can be unfastened. I will turn my back.”
She looked towards the door, then the screen. Pain tightened her mouth again, and that decided her before propriety could mount a fuller argument.
“Very well,” she said.
Edmund moved the screen out from the wall with such force that one hinge protested. He placed it between her and the room, then turned his back and faced the far shelves.
“Tell me if you require assistance,” he said.
“I shall do no such thing.”
Under other circumstances, the answer might have drawn a grim smile from him. Now he could hear fabric dragging against wet fabric, her breath catching once as the heat pulled away from her skin, the small struggle of hooks and laces managed with shaking fingers.
He stared at the shelves and saw nothing.
“Is it off?” he asked.
“Nearly.”
A pause.
Then a sharper intake of breath.
He half-turned before stopping himself. “Miss Winthrop?”
“It is nothing. The fabric caught.”
“Do not pull burnt skin.”
“Your Grace, if you continue to give instructions to a woman undressing behind a screen, the situation will become even less dignified than it already is.”
The sentence was brave. Too brave. He heard the pain beneath it.
“Dignity can wait,” he said. “Skin cannot.”
There was a silence, then the heavy sound of wet fabric dropping over the back of the screen.
“It is off,” she said.
He took up his coat from the chair without turning. “I am passing my coat around the side of the screen. Take it.”
“That is not necessary.”
“Miss Winthrop.”
The quiet severity in his voice silenced her refusal. He held the coat out, arm extended, gaze fixed upon a row of books whose titles he would never remember. After a moment, her hand appeared around the screen and took it.
He saw only her fingers, gloveless now, damp and trembling.
His guilt became something physical.
“Where are you burnt?”
“It is not so bad.”
“That is not an answer.”
“The upper chest and shoulder, I think. The gown took most of it.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “Have you cold water?”
“The napkin.”
“Use it.”
“I am.”
Footsteps hurried in the corridor. Mrs Holroyd entered without ceremony, followed by Annie, one of the housemaids, carrying a basin and towels. Both stopped at the sight of the library.
The tea tray sat crooked on the table. A broken cup lay on the carpet.
Miss Winthrop’s soaked gown hung over the screen, dark and steaming in places.
Edmund stood several yards away, without his coat or scarf, hair disordered, jaw scar visible, his whole body held with the rigid restraint of a man trying not to make a bad situation worse.
Behind the screen, Miss Winthrop spoke quickly. “Mrs Holroyd, the tea spilt. His Grace sent for you at once.”
The housekeeper’s eyes moved once to Edmund. She understood too much and judged none of it aloud.
“Annie, shut the door,” Mrs Holroyd said. “Not fully. Leave it on the latch. Then bring the basin here. Quickly, girl.”
Annie obeyed, but not before her gaze flicked to the gown, the Duke’s missing coat, and the shape of Miss Winthrop behind the screen. Her face turned crimson.
Edmund saw it.
So did Mrs Holroyd.
“Annie,” the housekeeper said, voice sharp enough to cut thread, “if you have time to stare, you have time to fetch the salve from my room.”
“Yes, Mrs Holroyd.”
The maid fled.
Edmund remained where he was. “Mrs Holroyd.”
“Your Grace, I will see to Miss Winthrop.”
“Is the physician needed?”
“I cannot say until I have seen the burn. If you would be so good as to wait there, or in the corridor, if you prefer, I shall call for him directly if there is cause.”
Miss Winthrop made a sound behind the screen.
Mrs Holroyd disappeared behind it. Her voice lowered. “Let me see, miss. There now. Keep the coat high. Annie will be back with the salve. Your Grace, if you could turn your face to the window.”
“I have not moved,” Edmund said.
“No, Your Grace.”
He turned towards the window.
Rain blurred the glass. His reflection stared back at him, beard untrimmed, hair loose, throat bare of its scarf, scar exposed, his expression black enough to frighten any servant who did not know the fear beneath it. He looked like exactly the sort of man gossip would make of him.
Behind him, Mrs Holroyd murmured practical instructions.
Miss Winthrop answered in a composed voice that only occasionally thinned.
Annie returned with the salve and was sent away again almost immediately.
Another maid was ordered to bring a dressing gown from Miss Winthrop’s chamber.
The door opened twice, each time admitting another pair of eyes, another startled breath, another fragment of a story that would never remain attached to the facts that made it innocent.
Edmund understood the danger with growing coldness.
A governess in his library after dinner. A spilt tea tray. A removed gown. His coat around her shoulders. His scarf absent. His face uncovered. Servants coming and going. A young maid blushing before she had enough sense to hide it.
Nothing improper had happened.
It scarcely mattered.
At last, Mrs Holroyd stepped out from behind the screen. “The burn is not deep, Your Grace, but it will pain her. I have put salve on it, and the skin must be kept cool. She should not dress again in that gown. It is ruined.”
“Then she will have another made.”
The words came too quickly.
Mrs Holroyd looked at him.
Behind the screen, Miss Winthrop said, “That is not necessary, Your Grace.”
“It is entirely necessary,” he said, still facing the window. “My household ruined it.”
“Your teapot ruined it. I am not sure household liability extends so far.”
“It does when I say it does.”
Mrs Holroyd’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Miss Winthrop will require rest more than debate. I will take her upstairs by the servants’ passage, where there are fewer stairs and fewer fools.”
“No,” Edmund said. “Not the servants’ passage.”
Mrs Holroyd understood at once.
If Miss Winthrop went half-dressed through the servants’ passage, even under cover, the story would grow teeth before morning.
“The east stair, then,” Mrs Holroyd said. “Pritchard can clear the corridor.”
“I will see it done.”