Chapter 11
Stephen kept to a schedule, religiously. He woke early, shaved, and went down to breakfast as he had promised each morning.
And he kept his interactions with her proper and without argument. He nodded to Maria if she was already there, or stood when she entered if he was, and did his duty by civility, nothing more.
It was a simple way to conduct himself.
“Good morning,” he would say in the morning.
“Good morning,” she would answer.
“How do you find the breakfast?” he might add, eyes on a column about grain.
“Agreeable,” she would say, testing if he would look up.
“It should be.” And then he would read in silence.
He would eat quickly, thank no one, offend no one, and vanish into letters.
From ten until noon, he met the steward or the agent for the northern property.
After luncheon, if the weather allowed, he rode the south fields and let the miles run a temper down to something livable.
If it rained, he walked the galleries and did not see anything he passed.
He was not cruel. Rather, he was absent. Maria refused to be.
Rather, she wanted to take up some space.
On the first morning, she sent for the upholsterer and stood with him in the east corridor.
She chose none of the small, sad patterns that houses pick when they are afraid of color.
She chose a pale green for the corridor that faced the orchard and a softer blue for the morning room where light would treat it kindly.
The upholsterer blinked at the speed and said, “Very good, Your Grace,” and left counting under his breath in a way that suggested he had already penciled the sums twice.
On the second morning, she went through the pantry with the housekeeper and pointed at everything that made the household run and should not be silent.
The stove in the stillroom was cracked; she ordered a new one with a proper grate.
The hothouse glass had been patched with a mix of good intention and poor math; she sent for a glazier.
The pianoforte in the small drawing room was tuned a quarter-step off in the top octave; she sent to town for a tuner and a music master “for staff who wish it”.
The butler’s eyebrows rose at that, but Mrs. Walsh said briskly, “If they’re playing, they’ll have no hands for breaking”, and the butler nodded as if this had always been the plan.
On the third morning, she walked through the dairy, asked questions the dairyman had not expected a lady to ask, and then told him to stop stepping in the same place every time he lifted the cream.
“You are making a ditch you cannot see,” she said, and the dairyman, a man who considered himself married to both churn and habit, stared, then looked down and blushed and muttered, “Aye.”
She sent for a mason for the yard. She increased the milkmaids’ hours by sixpence and gave them half-days by rotation.
She told the cook to bother the fishmonger twice a week and wrote a note to a grocer in town who had lately sent inferior lemons.
She purchased not one coal scuttle but six, placed exactly where a footman would be saved ten steps and four muttered curses.
By afternoon, invoices arrived at Stephen’s desk. The butler placed them on the left corner. Stephen reached for them when the ink in his pen began to dry, not before. Maria noticed.
On the fourth morning, she walked the outer boundary with the head gardener, Mr. Pike, a man who spoke only when the weather, the calendar, and a lifetime of being right all agreed.
“There is no winter garden,” she said, after they had looked at brown earth and brave, exhausted rosemary and the carcasses of summer.
“There should be. It does not have to be grand, but it must be alive.”
Mr. Pike lifted his cap to scratch his head. “Hellebores. Box to hold the lines. Heath will take, if we mind the wind. The frost will do for half of it.”
“Then we plant double,” she said. “And learn something.”
Mr. Pike’s mouth went into a line that men use when they approve and do not yet feel safe admitting it. “Aye, Your Grace.”
She ordered shrubs. She signed for the box herself. She told the gardeners to keep the better soil in a separate heap, because planting into mud is a kind of prayer no one answers. When the cart arrived, she stood with them as they unloaded, sleeves rolled, cloak off, breath clouding into the cold.
Stephen saw none of it. Or rather, he allowed himself to see it only on paper. Invoice, Nurseryman R. Dilling, fifty shrubs, twenty boxes, ten heath. He signed it and then turned the page.
He read a note from his agent about a boundary dispute that had offended the world for twenty years. And in response, he wrote a reply that would offend no one for the next twenty years. He turned the next page and stood to ride.
It was a rather mechanical way of going about things, but it was a safe way to exist. If one busied himself with routines and habits, then one simply did not have the time to think about things that are of no use.
And practicality was an important consideration in Stephen’s life. Everything must be practical.
From the lane, he could see the south beds, and the sight made a mark he ignored, the way a man will ignore a stone in his boot if the road is too long to stop every time. The stone became a pain; the pain became a rhythm. He kept going.
That night, in the library, he saw a smear of soil on the window latch where someone had opened it with hands that had been in the earth.
He told himself it was the under-gardener and that the staff were under instruction to change nothing without asking.
He told himself many exculpatory things and did not wipe the latch.
On the fifth morning, the wind turned from bad to mean. Mr. Pike told his lads to keep their caps down and their opinions to themselves.
He was just getting himself adjusted to things. Routine, habits, and not letting himself feel anything if it came at the cost of the loss of practicality.
Maria opened her window. The cold hit her cheeks like wakefulness.
Ah. Another morning.
She tied her shawl and then untied it.
“Your Grace,” Mrs. Walsh said, appearing with a basket of practicality: muffler, another pair of gloves, a flask. “The bed will be there after tea.”
“The frost will have gone deeper after tea,” Maria said. “We’ll be setting ice, not shrubs.”
“It will still be there tomorrow,” Mrs. Walsh said.
“So will my temper,” Maria said, and left with a smile that told the housekeeper this was not rebellion, only stubbornness.
Outside, the cold was clean. It cut lines around everything and made even bad ideas look sharp. The shrubs waited like good soldiers. Mr. Pike had set out boards, bless him, but the soil between was hard as old bread.
“We’ll lay a box to hold the edge,” Maria said, crouching. “Heath’s in the drift. The hellebores in pockets where the wind is less officious.”
“The wind is very officious,” Mr. Pike said, grave.
“I outrank it,” she said.
She pushed her hand into the soil with the trowel’s help.
It was not so much earth as intention. The first hole took more effort than pride likes to admit.
The second was worse, but the third was easier.
The glove went in her pocket and stayed there.
Her fingers burned, then didn’t, but she went on.
“Your Grace,” said the under-gardener after a while, “you’ll chill.”
“I’m working,” she said.
Stephen noticed Mr. Pike hunched over something and decided to cut his ride short. He brought the animal in through the east gate for once, led it past the stable boy with a pat.
When he arrived closer, what he saw instead was his wife on her knees in the bed behind the south hedge, her hair pinned out of her way by war rather than ornament, her hands in the ground, the hem of her dress already dark with wet.
Mr. Pike had set boards, and she had avoided them to get closer to the work.
He stopped, and the weather seemed to have stopped with him. Under the white sky, he took a closer look at what she was doing and then found himself getting angry immediately.
He walked straight to her.
“Up,” it was not a request in the slightest.
Maria fitted the last of the small box into the hole and pressed the earth around it with her bare fingers. “I am busy, Your Grace.”
“It’s too cold. Stand up,” he said to her in an annoyed tone.
“It is cold,” she agreed. “Which is why the holes stay holes. If we are quick, the frost will hold the shape and we can mulch before it sulks.”
“Up,” he said again. “Now.”
She put the trowel down and looked at him. Her cheeks were bright with cold; her lips were the wrong color; her eyes were the correct kind of alive. “If you have come to scold me for the money…”
“I don’t care about the money.”
She blinked, once. “I beg your pardon?”
“I don’t care about the money,” he said and then held out his hand. “Your gloves. Where are they?”
“They’re in my pocket,” she shrugged out a response. It infuriated Stephen just how cavalier she seemed to be about the entire thing.
“And why are they not on your hands?”
“I need to feel the roots,” she replied as though it was a perfectly reasonable explanation.
It was moments like this that he came to the realization that the two of them approached and looked at life so differently.
“You need to feel your fingers,” he snapped. “Name them, quickly.”
“What?” Her brows drew together. “You are asking me to name my fingers?”
“Name them,” he repeated, furious. “If you can’t name them in order, you can’t feel them, and you’re done.”
She scowled at him, then at her hand. “Thumb. First. Middle. Fourth. Little.” She held his gaze. “Satisfied?”
“No.” He caught her hand anyway. The skin across her knuckles was roughened and pale; the color would return like needles. He resisted the urge to rub them to make them warm again. “Get inside, it is for your own good.”
“No,” she replied stubbornly.
“Maria, I am not requesting. You must go inside.”
“Stephen, I am not arguing with you about this. I am fine here.”
“You will not kneel on ice to prove that you can plant a hedge,” he said.
“It is a winter bed,” she had the gall to correct him. “Not a hedge.”
“Inside,” he said through his teeth. “Why are you not listening to me?”
“I am not fragile,” Maria replied. “It would be useful for you to not look at me like that.”
“I did not say fragile,” he returned. “I said mortal. Surely, you are not immune to frost.”
Mr. Pike coughed into his scarf, and the under-gardener pretended to be busy and removed himself. They had sensed that the tension between them was brewing more and more.
It was clear to Maria that Stephen was not going to leave her alone. She had tried her hardest to rid herself of him, but he was proving to be more stubborn than even she was.
She finally stood, and her wet hem slapped against her boot. The cold was really unbearable now, but she refused to shiver in front of him.
“If you wished to speak to me, you could have done so at breakfast,” she said, “You could have spoken to me when you signed the bills, but you chose not to. If you are here because you object to the cost….”
“I. Don’t. Care. About. The. Cost,” he said in a dangerous voice. “Do not make this about something which it is not.”
“Then what precisely do you care about?” she asked.
“That you don’t destroy your hands and your lungs to get my attention,” he said. “I do not wish for you to punish yourself like this just so I can speak to you.”
She went still. So he had figured it out. Only her chest moved for a few moments as she tried to arrange her thoughts in an orderly manner.
“So we are back to that,” she said. “I am trying to be seen, and you have elected to see me only when I do something foolish.”
“I have elected,” he said, “No. I have failed to ignore a thing that will harm you. That is the extent of my heroics. Now you are to come inside. We have already spoken about this more than needed.”
“Mr. Pike,” she called out to him, where he stood at a distance, but her eyes did not leave Stephen’s, “two more boxes in that line and leave the rest. Mulch if you can. If not, cover the holes and we will try at midday tomorrow.”
“Aye, Your Grace,” Mr. Pike said, wisely agreeing to everything. It would be foolish for him to take a side.
“Mrs. Walsh,” Stephen said in a louder voice than before. Moments later, the housekeeper appeared on the terrace as if compelled by a string. “Cloak and blankets now, please. I need you to be quick.”
“Please don’t….” Maria began.
“This is not for argument,” he said.
Mrs. Walsh hurried down the steps.
“Your Grace,” she said to Maria softly, “if you stand still, a person with a blanket can accomplish a great deal. We do not wish for you to be cold.”
Maria pressed her lips together. The housekeeper swung the heavy cloak around her shoulders and fastened it under her chin.
“I’m working,” Maria said to no one in particular. “And I do not understand why everyone needs to bother me. If I were cold, I would have realized it on my own and taken whatever measures needed to protect myself.”
“You are cold,” Stephen said. “And you are kneeling on ground that would prefer to be left alone now. You are merely just extending the argument for its own sake now.”
“I am not done,” she said, stubbornly. Between the two of them, she could not see their argument ending any time soon.
“You are done,” he said.
Something in his tone had changed now. She turned to look at him, and it seemed that he could not stand one more exchange that would satisfy neither of them.
“I am not going to let you argue yourself into a fever,” he admitted out loud. “It is time that I take matters into my own hands, which I should have done a long time ago.”
Somehow, the manner in which he said it made her shiver. It was so full of certainty that she would not know what to say in return.
He stepped forward, caught her behind the knees with one arm and behind the shoulders with the other, and lifted her. Her breath left her in a scandalized sound that would have been a laugh any other day.
“Your Grace! Put me down.”
“No,” he said, and shifted her higher until her balance was over his shoulder and his hand could keep her from sliding. “Stop kicking.”
“I will not be carried like….” she said, breathless. “Like this.”
“Then you should have walked,” he said, already taking the slope.
“Everyone is looking,” she said into his shoulder.
“Good,” he said. “Perhaps they will take the lesson, and not let you freeze out like this for so long without an intervention.”
She was blushing now, profusely. “What lesson…excuse me….what lesson is that?”
He declined to answer, and she could almost hear a rumble of a laugh in her throat. It was infuriating to her how easy it was for him to pick her up, as though she weighed nothing at all.
“Door.”