Chapter Ten
“Do not tell me she is resting comfortably, Mrs Holroyd, unless it is true.”
Lady Maria Fenwick’s voice travelled up the east stair with the peculiar clarity of a woman who had never relied upon volume when authority would serve.
Petalia, seated near the fire in her chamber with a shawl around her shoulders and a salved dressing beneath the neckline of her night rail, looked up from the cup of weak tea cooling in her hands.
Mrs Holroyd’s reply came more quietly, too low to distinguish through the door.
“I did not ask whether she was in danger,” Lady Maria said. “I asked whether she was in pain, whether anyone saw enough to talk, and whether my nephew has had the sense to be useful instead of merely guilty.”
Petalia closed her eyes.
The day had begun badly, which was to say it had begun at all.
She had slept in pieces, waking whenever the dressing pulled against the burn near her shoulder.
The injury was not grave. Mrs Holroyd had said so three times, each time with the brisk insistence of a woman accustomed to forcing fear back into proportion.
The tea had scalded, but the gown had taken much of the heat.
Her skin was red, tender, and painfully alive, not blistered in the worst places, though one patch near the collarbone had required salve and linen. She had survived. The wound would heal.
The scandal, unfortunately, had no such tidy prognosis.
By breakfast, the house had grown silent in the particular way that told her speech was occurring everywhere except in front of her.
Annie had brought the tray with eyes fixed so determinedly on the carpet that she nearly walked into the bedpost. Another maid had delivered fresh water and turned crimson when Petalia thanked her.
Mrs Holroyd had come herself to change the dressing and had spoken of the burn, the weather, the fire, and the correct steeping of tea with such determined practicality that Petalia had wanted, absurdly, to weep into the woman’s apron.
Nothing improper had happened.
The sentence had become useless through repetition.
Nothing improper had happened, and yet her gown had been removed in the Duke’s library after dinner.
Nothing improper had happened, and yet she had stood behind a screen in her stays while His Grace, uncoated and unscarved, faced the window as if honour could be preserved by staring hard enough at the rain.
Nothing improper had happened, and yet Annie had seen the gown, the coat, the screen, the broken teacup, the Duke’s exposed scar and disordered hair. She had seen the room in disarray, the shape of disaster before anyone had gathered the words to tame it.
Petalia had been a governess long enough to understand that truth was often less important than the version repeated first.
Footsteps approached. The knock that followed was brisk, though not quite impatient.
“Come in,” Petalia said.
The door opened, and Lady Maria entered first, still in her travelling dress, bonnet askew by half an inch in a manner that suggested either haste or fury had disturbed it.
Mrs Holroyd followed with the expression of a woman who had escorted a controlled explosion up two flights of stairs and was now prepared to tend the wounded.
Lady Maria stopped two paces inside the room.
“Miss Winthrop.”
Her gaze swept over the shawl, Petalia’s pallor, and the careful way she held herself.
“How bad is it?”
Petalia set the cup on the small table beside her chair. “Less bad than it might have been, my lady. More painful than Mrs Holroyd would like me to admit.”
Mrs Holroyd folded her hands. “I should prefer it not to be worsened by unnecessary agitation, my lady.”
“Then we shall be necessary and calm.” Lady Maria removed her gloves and sat opposite Petalia. “Mrs Holroyd, stay, if Miss Winthrop has no objection.”
“Please stay,” Petalia said.
Mrs Holroyd remained near the door.
Lady Maria placed her gloves on her lap. “Now. I am going to ask plainly. Did anything occur last night beyond the accident Mrs Holroyd described to me?”
“No, my lady. I delivered my report. His Grace allowed me to explain a request for the next day’s lessons.
Tea was brought. Thunder startled the footman, and the tray tipped.
The tea spilt over my gown. His Grace sent for Mrs Holroyd at once.
He moved the screen and turned his back while I removed the gown because it was burning against my skin.
He gave me his coat without looking at me.
Mrs Holroyd came. Annie came. That is everything. ”
Lady Maria watched her steadily. “You are certain he turned his back?”
“Entirely.”
“And he did not touch you?”
“No, my lady.”
Lady Maria nodded once. “I believe you.”
The words steadied Petalia for a moment. Then the steadiness failed. “But belief is not enough,” she said.
“No,” Lady Maria replied. “It is not.”
Mrs Holroyd spoke quietly. “The servants have been instructed not to speak of it, my lady.”
“And they may obey,” Lady Maria said. “But households leak. They leak through errands, cousins, posting inns, laundry women, grooms with sweethearts, and maids who do not mean harm until curiosity flatters them into answering. This is precisely the sort of story that grows in the telling.”
Petalia looked down at her hands.
“A governess in a duke’s library after dinner,” Lady Maria continued. “A gown removed. His coat. A screen. Servants coming in and out. His Grace without his scarf, looking as though he had quarrelled with every mirror in England. The truth is innocent. The appearance is not.”
Petalia’s mouth tightened. “I know.”
“I do not say this to frighten you. I say it because pretending otherwise would be an insult. Edmund will survive gossip. Men generally do. Dukes almost always do. You have far less protection.”
The bluntness hurt less than pity would have done.
“Then I should leave,” Petalia said. “If I go before the story grows, perhaps it will die here.”
“No,” Lady Maria said. “Not hastily.”
Petalia looked up. “My lady—”
“If you leave at once, people will ask why. Sudden departures are rarely quieter than unfortunate accidents.”
“His Grace did nothing dishonourable.”
“I am glad to hear it. I did not think he had.” Lady Maria folded her gloves in her lap. “But appearances need not be true to become troublesome.”
Petalia looked towards the fire. The dressing beneath her night rail throbbed with heat.
“What am I to do?”
“For now? Recover. Say very little. Allow Mrs Holroyd and me to learn how much has actually been seen and repeated. If the matter remains contained, we treat it as an accident and let it fade.”
“And if it does not?”
“Then we consider the least damaging course. References, a respectable explanation for any departure, perhaps a temporary visit elsewhere under my protection. We shall not decide in panic.”
Petalia closed her eyes.
There it was. Not ruin. Not rescue. Only uncertainty, which was almost worse.
A knock sounded at the door.
Mrs Holroyd opened it a hand’s breadth, listened, and looked back. “His Grace is asking after Miss Winthrop.”
Lady Maria rose. “Has he come up?”
“No, my lady. He is below.”
“Good. Miss Winthrop, are you able to speak with him?”
Petalia opened her eyes. “Not here.”
“No. Not here,” Lady Maria agreed. “Mrs Holroyd, is the small sitting room at the end of the corridor suitable?”
“It is, my lady.”
“And can Miss Winthrop be made decent without troubling the dressing?”
“If we use the loose morning gown, yes.”
“Then we shall do that. Edmund may come no farther than that room, and the door will remain open. If the household requires propriety, we shall give it more than enough.”
Petalia almost smiled at the certainty with which Lady Maria arranged both people and circumstances, but thought better of it before the burn could remind her of its existence.
***
It took fifteen minutes to dress. The morning gown was plain, loose, and high enough at the throat to cover the edge of the dressing. Mrs Holroyd arranged a shawl over Petalia’s shoulders in a way that concealed both the injury and the fact that concealment was necessary.
The small sitting room at the end of the corridor had a view of the east lawn and a fire that smoked slightly.
Petalia sat in the chair nearest the hearth because standing would have looked braver than she felt.
Lady Maria remained beside the mantel. Mrs Holroyd stood near the door as witness, chaperone, and warning.
When Edmund entered, he stopped just inside the room.
He looked worse than he had the night before.
Not ill. Not disordered in any careless sense.
He had dressed properly, but propriety sat badly on a man who had clearly not slept.
His beard remained untrimmed, lending his face that wild, forbidding look society would have called beastly from a safer distance.
His hair had been combed and then defeated by his own hand.
The scarf at his throat was tied high, but not high enough to conceal the full line of the scar when he turned.
His eyes went first to Petalia’s face, then to the shawl, then away, as if looking too closely might be another trespass.
“Miss Winthrop,” he said. “Mrs Holroyd tells me the burn is not deep.”
“Mrs Holroyd is correct.”
“Does it pain you?”
“Yes.”
He took that in with visible difficulty. “I am sorry. For the accident, and for the distress it has caused you.”
Lady Maria, standing by the mantel, did not interrupt. Mrs Holroyd lingered near the door.
“It was an accident,” Petalia said.
“One that occurred in my house, after I had asked you to remain in a room where you ought not to have been left exposed to speculation.”
Petalia’s fingers tightened in her lap. “Nothing improper occurred.”
“No,” he said. “But that may not be enough.”
The honesty steadied her more than reassurance would have done.