Chapter 2
“I cannot decide whether Mrs. Harbury meant to persuade the room or frighten it into surrender,” Adelaide Talbot said to her lady’s maid as the carriage turned between the stone pillars of Talbot Park, its wheels jolting lightly over the damp ruts left by last night’s rain.
“She meant to do both,” her lady’s maid replied.
“Oh, come now Violet, tell me what you are really feeling,” Adelaide urged, still holding the folded pamphlet against her knee as if it were something far more precious than cheaply printed paper.
“Well…” the lady’s maid lowered her voice and leaned forward. “I admire her for it, my lady.”
“Oh, so do I!” Adelaide nearly shouted with glee. “Half the gentlemen in the county might conduct Parliament with less sense and twice the noise!”
Violet made a strangled sound that was almost a laugh and glanced toward the coachman’s back, though the partition and the road noise made discretion unnecessary. “My lady, if anyone overheard you say that, there would be letters written by supper.”
“There are letters written about me whether I speak or swallow my tongue. I prefer to earn them.”
The corner of Violet’s mouth lifted, but she looked out through the carriage window as Talbot Park came into view.
The house sat broad and golden-gray beneath the cloud-heavy sky, ivy clinging to one wing and smoke rising from the chimneys in a steady plume. It was not grand enough to impress London and not modest enough to be ignored by the county.
To Adelaide, it was merely home, with its uneven gravel, its old elms, its draft in the east passage, and the rose garden her father insisted would recover each spring despite all contrary evidence.
The carriage had scarcely stopped before the front door flew open.
“Oh, Elise,” Violet said quickly, almost ashamed by the intrusion, as a small figure in a blue wool frock darted down the steps with one ribbon slipping loose from her dark curls.
Adelaide had the door open before the footman could manage it properly.
She stepped down with one hand gripping the carriage frame and the other gathering her skirts clear of the mud, but Elise reached her before dignity could be preserved.
The child flung herself against Adelaide’s knees with all the force of five years and absolute confidence.
“You were gone forever!”
“We were gone three hours,” Adelaide said, bending to catch her beneath the arms. “That is hardly forever, unless you have taken up a more dramatic system of counting in my absence.”
Elise considered this seriously while Adelaide lifted her, settling the child against her hip. “It was forever after luncheon.”
“Ah, well. That is different.”
Violet descended more carefully, her expression softening in a way Adelaide had seen a thousand times and never ceased to notice.
There had been a time, two years ago, when Violet had stood in this same hall with a valise in one hand and Elise clinging shyly to her skirts, explaining in a voice too composed to be natural that no respectable household wanted a lady’s maid who came with a child.
Adelaide had been twenty-two then, old enough to understand the impropriety and too well raised by her father to care for it.
He had listened to Violet’s references, watched Elise hide behind a chair, then asked whether the child liked books, which had settled the matter more thoroughly than any recommendation.
“What did you do while we were gone, my sweet?” Violet asked, touching Elise’s loosened ribbon with the back of one finger.
“Lord Talbot showed me the red account book,” Elise announced with grave importance. “Not the one with wages. The one with the sheep.”
Adelaide looked toward the doorway, expecting to see her father’s tall figure behind them, but only Bailey, the butler, waited just inside with his usual solemn patience.
“The sheep accounts,” Adelaide said, carrying Elise up the steps. “He must be very fond of you. He only shows those to persons of exceptional character.”
Adelaide carried Elise into the entrance hall, where the scent of beeswax polish and coal smoke wrapped around them with familiar warmth. “Where is my father just now?” Adelaide asked Bailey, though her attention remained on Elise’s flushed face.
“In the morning room, my lady. His lordship wished for tea to be brought there upon your return.”
Elise’s arms tightened around Adelaide’s neck. “He was coughing a lot again.”
Adelaide shifted the child’s weight, “How badly?”
Elise’s small face grew solemn with the pleasure and burden of being believed. “Very badly. He put his handkerchief here.” She pressed a palm to her own chest. “And Mrs. Bailey said he ought to rest, but Lord Talbot said resting was for men with no imagination.”
“That sounds very like him,” Adelaide said, though the words came more slowly than she wished.
Bailey’s gaze lowered, but not before she caught the unease there. “He is comfortable now, my lady.”
Adelaide gave Elise a little bounce on her hip and forced lightness back into her voice. “Then we shall go make him uncomfortable with company, which is far better for his constitution.”
The morning room overlooked the south lawn, where mist still gathered in the hollows and the wet grass shone beneath a reluctant break in the clouds.
Her father sat near the hearth with a shawl over his knees and an open book untouched beside him.
He had always been lean, but illness had begun making an argument of his bones.
“There is my stern daughter returned,” Lord Talbot said, holding out a hand for Elise before looking to his daughter. “Did you reform the nation this afternoon, my dear?”
“Only Hampshire,” Adelaide replied, removing her gloves as she crossed the room. “We thought it best to begin modestly.”
“A wise tactic. The nation may not survive you all at once.”
Violet moved to the tea table, but Adelaide reached it first and lifted the pot before her friend could touch it. She poured one cup for her father, one for Violet with the amount of milk she preferred, and one for herself.
Her father chuckled, and then turned his face into his handkerchief, shoulders drawn inward until the fit passed, and for several seconds the room held only the ugly little rasp of breath fighting itself. Elise slipped from his side and came back to Adelaide without being told.
When her father lowered the handkerchief, his smile returned too quickly. “There now. A very poor performance but brief.”
“That was not brief, Father,” Adelaide said, settling into the chair beside him while Elise climbed into her lap with the confidence of long habit.
Violet balanced her cup carefully in both hands. She wore the gray gown Adelaide had helped alter herself, plain enough for service, well made enough for dignity.
In another household, she would have remained standing behind Adelaide’s chair, silent unless addressed, her child hidden away in some attic nursery if tolerated at all.
But here, Elise sat curled against Adelaide’s bodice, examining the pamphlet with the seriousness of a scholar presented with ancient law.
“What does it say?” Elise asked, tapping the title with one finger.
“It says,” Adelaide began, unfolding the pages across the child’s knees, “that girls ought to be educated with the same seriousness as boys because ignorance is not a virtue merely because it is wearing a muslin gown.”
Elise leaned closer to the page. “Does it say I may learn Latin?”
“It implies it very strongly.”
Adelaide tucked Elise more securely against her and began reading a passage aloud, altering a few words when the printed argument grew too dense for a child’s ear.
Elise listened in complete absorption, her cheek pressed to Adelaide’s shoulder, one small hand curled around a fold of her sleeve. Across the hearth, Violet watched them with an expression that might have been contentment if it had not carried the ache of knowing too well how rare such peace was.
Adelaide felt it too.
Adelaide glanced from her father to Violet, then to Elise, who had somehow managed to stain one cuff with jam despite never leaving her lap. There were households where such a picture would have invited scandal before supper. Here it was simply Tuesday.
Adelaide turned another page and read quietly and heard her father from the corner. “I think our scholar has had enough reform for one afternoon.”
His voice sounded thinner than it had even an hour earlier.
Elise blinked up from the pamphlet, clearly prepared to argue otherwise, but a yawn overtook her halfway through the effort. Violet smiled as she rose from her chair, smoothing her skirts before crossing the room.
“I believe His Lordship has won this debate.”
Elise sighed with theatrical resignation before allowing her mother to take her hand. “Will you read the rest tomorrow?”
“If you promise to remember today’s lesson.”
Her father started to chuckle, but the sound broke apart almost immediately. The cough came harder this time.
He turned sharply away, one hand braced against the arm of his chair while the other pressed a handkerchief to his mouth. His shoulders shook with each breath he struggled to reclaim, the fit stretching longer than any before it. By the time it eased, the color had drained from his face.
Violet’s smile disappeared. “My lord…”
He waved the concern aside with an effort that looked exhausting. “I am only tired.”
Violet looked from him to Adelaide and back again before she stood and excused herself and took Elise upstairs.
Lord Talbot mumbled something about needing to find something, and excused himself for his study, and she let him go.
For nearly an hour Adelaide tried reading, then attempted to review the estate accounts, but neither held her attention.
“I’ll only see whether he requires anything,” she murmured, though no one remained in the room to hear the excuse.
The corridor outside his study lay in gathering twilight. Rain had begun again, tapping softly against the tall windows overlooking the gardens. She reached the door and knocked lightly.
“Papa?”
No answer.
Adelaide tried again before easing the door open. The room smelled of old leather, extinguished candles, and damp wool. Papers lay neatly stacked across the great mahogany desk, exactly as he preferred them.
Her father was no longer sitting behind it but had collapsed beside the hearth.
“Papa!”
She reached him in an instant, dropping to her knees on the carpet. His eyes fluttered open at the sound of her voice, unfocused for a moment before settling on her face.
“Papa, I’m here,” she whispered, one hand already searching for his pulse. “Stay with me.”
His skin felt frighteningly cool, and she looked toward the hallway. “Bailey!”
The butler appeared almost immediately. His eyes flashing from her to the earl and back again.
“Fetch Dr. Pembroke!”
He needed no further instruction.
Within minutes, the household had burst into motion.
Footmen hurried to the stables. Abigail brought blankets without being asked.
Violet descended with Elise in her arms before Bailey quietly intercepted them, steering the child toward the nursery with gentle assurances that Lord Talbot merely needed to sleep.
Dr. Pembroke arrived still wearing his riding coat, rainwater clinging to its shoulders. He examined the earl thoroughly while Adelaide stood beside the window, clasping her hands so tightly her fingers ached.
At length, the physician removed his spectacles and sighed. “I wish I could offer certainty, my lady.”
She searched his face. “You cannot?”
“I cannot. His lungs are greatly irritated, though whether by lingering infection or some deeper complaint, I cannot yet say.”
“So, what do you advise?”
“Rest. Absolutely no estate business.” He glanced toward the study shelves as though expecting the earl to object despite lying unconscious only a few feet away. “Fresh country air whenever his strength allows it. Good food. Quiet.”
“And if that is not enough?”
The physician hesitated only briefly. “Then we continue searching for answers.”
She thanked Dr. Pembroke, and after he departed, the servants withdrew one by one until only Adelaide remained beside the bed where her father now rested. She reached for his hand.
He stirred. “Adelaide, my dear.”
“I am here, Father.”
His fingers closed weakly around hers. “I have been trying…” His voice caught before he found enough breath to continue. “Trying to decide how long I might delay this conversation.”
She leaned forward. “There is nothing we cannot discuss after you’ve recovered.”
A tired smile crossed his face. “You’ve always been optimistic on my behalf.”
‘Someone must be.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “I am afraid that I made you the most independent woman I knew how to make.”
“You made me capable.”
“I hoped they would become the same thing.” His gaze drifted toward the rain-streaked windows. “You have managed this estate better than many men born expecting to inherit one. Every tenant knows your name. Every account bears your judgment. I could not be prouder.”
She swallowed against the tightness rising in her throat. “Then recover and continue telling me so for another thirty years.”
He smiled again, but there was sorrow in it now. “When I am gone… none of it will matter.”
“You will always matter to me, Papa.”
His voice remained gentle. “But my title passes elsewhere, and the estate passes with it.”
She already knew the law. The title and the estate would pass to a far-off distant cousin whom she had never met. “He will not value what you have built.”
“He will value ownership.” The earl paused, gathering another careful breath. “But he will not protect you.”
She stared at him. “What are you saying?”
His thumb brushed faintly across the back of her hand. “I have done the only thing left within my power.” A silence settled between them that seemed to stretch beyond the room itself. “I have arranged a marriage.”
For a heartbeat she thought she’d misheard him. Marriage? The word arrived a moment later, heavy enough that she could only stare. “For…me?”
“His father was my dearest friend.”
She searched his face for some sign that fever had carried him into confusion. “Papa…”
“I have already written.”
Adelaide realized she had been gripping her father’s hand so tightly that her knuckles had begun to ache. She loosened her fingers at once, ashamed that he should comfort her when it ought to have been the reverse.
“And he has agreed.”
Adelaide lowered her eyes to their joined hands. Every sensible argument she’d made over the past six years rose at once, crowding together so quickly she could scarcely separate one from another. None of them mattered while her father lay before her looking smaller than she’d ever known him.
When she finally spoke, her voice was scarcely above a whisper. “If this truly eases your mind…” She lifted her head again, tears threatening despite every effort to contain them. “…then I will do it. For you, Papa.”