Chapter 4
The morning Louisa came, Sophia had been in the garden since before the household had finished breakfast.
It was not a large garden, merely a walled rectangle behind the townhouse, London-sized, with a paved path and a central bed that had once been planted with intention and had since grown slightly beyond anyone’s control.
There was a bench along the south wall where the April sun reached properly by half past nine, warm enough to sit without discomfort if one had a shawl, which Sophia did, and a book, which she also had.
She had been reading for a solid hour when the morning’s difficulty began.
It started quietly. A thud sounded from somewhere above, followed immediately by William’s voice at full volume announcing that he had found something and the entire household needed to know of it at once.
Then Juliana. Then Sebastian. Then a longer quiet that was not resolution but negotiation, and then the crash, which was definitive, and then a brief silence before William commenced his account of events at the same volume as before. Sophia turned a page
She was three pages further on when Mrs. Peel appeared at the garden door.
“Miss Lockwood. A Miss Colville is at the door. Mrs. Blackwood is…” a pause, chosen with care “…engaged upstairs.”
“Send her out,” Sophia said.
Louisa came through the gate two minutes later and crossed the garden without hesitation. She sat down on the bench and looked at the central bed.
“What is that?”
“I have not been able to determine,” Sophia said. “It has been doing this since we arrived. I believe there was a plan for it at some point.”
From inside the house came Sebastian’s voice, brief and low, then William’s, and then quiet, proper quiet this time, and it held. Louisa did not look toward the house.
She leaned back against the sun-warmed stone. “I said I would call.”
“You said perhaps.”
“That was politeness.” She turned her face up toward the warmth without self-consciousness, eyes half-closing. “I wanted to see you again. You are the first person I have met this Season who has said anything that required me to think about it afterward.”
“What did I say that required thought?”
“The grammar.” She did not open her eyes. “I have been living inside that room for three Seasons and I had never found a word for the mechanism of it. You sat beside me for an hour and produced three.” A pause. “It was irritating. I mean that as a compliment.”
The garden held its good quiet, the noise of the street at one remove, a bird somewhere over the wall. The stone of the bench was warm through the wool of Sophia’s skirt and her tea had gone entirely cold and she had stopped caring about it.
“I have been told,” Sophia said, “that I have a habit of making things clinical that are not clinical. My sister Beatrice says I look at people the way she looks at fabric, to understand the construction rather than feel the effect.”
Louisa opened one eye. “Is she right?”
“Largely.”
“And does it trouble you?”
Sophia considered this honestly. “It has never troubled me before this Season. The county is small enough that I have always understood the construction without having to examine it. London is different. The construction is more…” she paused, searching for it.
“More resistant to the first reading than I expected.”
“There is hope for you,” Louisa said, and there was warmth in it that was not unkind.
She had come on foot; Sophia could tell from the hem of her dress, which had met the April pavements rather than carriage steps, and from the slight colour in her face from the walk.
She was in a deep blue wool, worn without fuss, her mind clearly elsewhere when she had dressed.
Her fair hair had been put up correctly and a pin had come loose at the left side, whether she had not noticed or had noticed and not cared, Sophia could not yet determine.
From above came the sound of Rose, not distressed, merely industrious in the pursuit of whatever currently occupied her, and then Jennings’ voice, and then quiet again.
“You have a full house,” Louisa observed.
“There are only two children,” Sophia said. “The effect suggests considerably more, though Juliana has always been able to make a house feel occupied.”
Louisa looked at her, direct as she had been at the ball. “You are fond of her.”
“She is my sister.”
“People are not always fond of their sisters.”
“No,” Sophia agreed. “I am aware of that.” She paused. “Are you fond of yours?”
“I have two brothers,” Louisa said. “Westbrook manages the estate and Roland manages the Season and I manage both of them, which is the arrangement nobody discusses but everyone understands.” A pause.
“And yes. I am fond of them. Though Roland makes it intermittently difficult.” She said it without complaint, plainly and without any attempt to soften or justify it.
Over the wall, London pressed on at a remove, wheels on stone, a vendor’s call, the rhythm of a city that never stopped but kept its noise at the edges here. The stone was warm and the tea was cold and Sophia had ceased to mind about either.
“You said it was irritating,” Sophia said. “The grammar. What I said at the ball.”
“I said I meant it as a compliment.”
“I know. I am asking what made it irritating specifically.”
Louisa was quiet for a moment, not from hesitation but because she appeared to think questions deserved proper consideration before they were answered.
“I have been in those rooms for three Seasons,” she said.
“I have watched the same things happen in the same ways and I have found them uncomfortable and I have not found a word for why. You sat beside me for one evening and produced three words.” She turned her head to look at Sophia directly.
“When someone articulates a thing you have been trying to articulate for three years it is useful and it is irritating, and those are not mutually exclusive.”
“No,” Sophia said. “They are not.”
The garden door opened and Juliana appeared. She had Rose on her hip and a damp patch on her shoulder she had long since stopped noticing, and she paused briefly when she saw Louisa, the transition from household to company passing over her so quickly that almost nothing of it showed.
“Miss Colville. Forgive me. Mrs. Peel ought to have told me you were here.”
“She offered the drawing room,” Louisa said. “I preferred the garden.”
Juliana looked at the bench, at Sophia, at Louisa, and took in the state of the morning without comment. “Are you staying?” she asked Louisa, the question open rather than merely polite.
“I thought, if Miss Lockwood is not otherwise engaged…” Louisa glanced at Sophia. “A walk.”
“I am not engaged,” Sophia said.
“Then go,” Juliana said. “The park is ten minutes. Take the grey shawl. The wind comes off the water.” She shifted Rose to her other hip and looked at Louisa warmly; she had already decided to like her, and Juliana did not waste time on indirection once she had decided.
“You are Westbrook Colville’s sister. Sebastian has been trying to meet your brother in person for a month and they keep arriving at events the other has just left. ”
“I know,” Louisa said. “Westbrook finds it mildly comic. I imagine Mr. Blackwood finds it less so.”
“Sebastian finds it precisely as comic,” Juliana said, “and tells no one.”
The corner of Louisa’s mouth moved. It was the first time Sophia had seen her surprised into something unguarded, and it lasted only a moment.
Sophia had already retrieved the grey shawl from the bench and was standing. “Shall we?”
Louisa rose. She looked once more at Rose, who regarded her with unwavering seriousness, then at the central bed where the roses, or whatever they were, had begun to crowd thickly against one another behind the wall, and finally followed Sophia through the garden door and out into the morning.
* * *
The park was ten minutes on foot and considerably better for walking than the pavements that preceded it.
Sophia’s thin-soled morning shoes found every uneven stone between the townhouse and the gate, and by the time the gravel gave way to grass she had a thorough understanding of London’s indifference to pedestrian comfort.
Louisa walked beside her at a natural pace and they did not speak until the noise of the street had settled behind them.
The path curved along the edge of the water.
The trees were in full April leaf, their new green startling against the pale London sky, sharp and vivid enough to seem almost out of place in the city and entirely right there all the same.
The park was still quiet at this hour, a few nurses with their charges, an older gentleman taking his prescribed exercise without enthusiasm, two ducks pursuing a disagreement near the bank.
“How long have you been in the country?” Louisa asked. Not the country as opposed to town, but as a place. Fields, quiet, the absence of London.
“All my life,” Sophia said. “Until March.”
Louisa looked at her with something that was not quite envy. “I have spent almost every Season here since I was seventeen. Two months in the summer at our estate in Wiltshire, and the rest of the year in town.” She paused. “I find I cannot picture it properly. The country all the time.”
“Quieter than this,” Sophia said. “You can hear individual sounds rather than the aggregate of them. A cart. A single bird. The wind in a specific tree.” She considered. “The sky is much larger.”
“My mother says the same thing and she grew up in Shropshire.” Louisa looked at the water. “She has been in London thirty years and she still remarks on the sky when we go to Wiltshire, as though it were a personal achievement.” A pause. “Do you miss it?”
Sophia considered this honestly. “I miss the library,” she said. “And my father. And a silence that does not exist here.” She paused. “But I find I am less certain than I expected to be that I want to go back immediately.”