Chapter 3 #2
“I don’t want a husband.” She said it clearly. “I have never wanted a husband. It is my choice, and it has always been my choice, and I see no reason why…”
He cut her off again, and she realized that he seemed to have made a habit of doing that.
“It is no longer your choice,” he said.
Temperance looked at the Duke of Sedgewick, appalled at the audacity. His tone had brought back some unwanted memories for her.
She thought of the nunnery. Of being told, every day, in a hundred different ways, large and small, what she was permitted to do and who she was permitted to be and how far she was permitted to go.
“I beg your pardon?” she said, now suddenly calm, but her anger was simmering inside of her.
“You are a young woman of no independent income, living in a house that belongs to my estate,” he said.
“A suitable marriage would provide you with security, with independence, and with a household of your own. It would also resolve the question of your future without placing it indefinitely at the mercy of my generosity, which is, I imagine, not an arrangement that appeals to you.”
She stared at him. As annoying as he was being, she could not deny that he was right.
That was the worst of it, and she hated it.
“The animals,” she said, after a moment, “are staying in the house.”
“They are not and I am not interested in negotiating with you.”
“They have lived in this house for two years.”
“Miss Hosmer, the animals will be housed in the stables. That is not a negotiation.”
“You cannot simply arrive in someone’s home after two years of absence and begin rearranging it according to your preferences,” she said, letting some of her anger show finally.
“This is not someone’s home,” he said. “It is my estate. And I have not been absent. Mind you. I have been managing the affairs of my title and preparing for the considerable task of bringing this estate into order.” He looked at her steadily.
“I understand this is an adjustment and I am prepared to be patient. But I will not be argued out of what is necessary.”
Temperance could hardly believe what she was hearing.
She had always expected an heir to arrive, but never had she assumed that he would be this demanding.
She looked at Joseph, who caught her eye and looked away immediately, in the manner of a child who had been very well taught that it was not his place to be caught looking.
She thought of the boy in the garden the night before, and how different those two versions of the same child were, and something in her chest contracted quietly.
She looked back at Harper, as though she was suddenly privy to some important fact of his personality.
“You are very certain,” she said, “that you know what is necessary.”
“In matters of this kind,” he said, “yes.”
“In matters of this kind,” she repeated. “Huh.”
“Order and reputation, and more important, the proper management of a household and the people in it. Yes, Miss Hosmer, I am.”
Temperance picked up her toast and took a bite.
“I will also need a full accounting of the household expenses for the past two years,” he said, after a moment. “And the guest rooms in the east wing should be prepared. I will be reviewing the staff schedules this week.” He glanced at Albina.
“Lady Wilmington. I trust you understand my meaning.”
“Every word,” Albina said pleasantly. “You have very clear diction.”
His gaze rested on her for a moment. Then it moved to Soot, who was still on the chair.
And then on his son.
“Joseph, sit up.”
Joseph, whose posture was already so correct that sitting up further would have required structural modifications, sat up.
Temperance looked at the boy and watched the interaction unfold with great curiosity.
“Joseph,” she said. “Would you like more toast?”
His eyes moved to his father, who was looking at his letter again, and then back to Temperance.
“I have had sufficient, thank you,” he said, very correctly.
Temperance looked at his plate. He had had, by her count, one piece. She pushed the toast rack toward him anyway.
Harper, without looking up from his letter, said, “Sit up, Joseph.”
The breakfast room settled into a quiet that was not quite comfortable, and Albina, who could read a room better than anyone Temperance had ever known, chose this moment to reach over and retrieve Soot from the chair beside Temperance, settling the cat into her lap.
Soot immediately began to purr, and the sound was very loud in the quiet room.
Harper looked up, and Albina smiled at him over her teacup with the serenity of a woman who had survived thirty years of a man telling her what to do and had emerged on the other side fundamentally unchanged.
Something moved across Harper’s expression that Temperance could not quite read.
He looked from Albina to Temperance and back, and she had the sense he was revising something.
Some prior estimate of the situation he had constructed before arriving and found, now that he was here, to be not entirely accurate.
He returned to his letter with a sigh.
“Nine o’clock tomorrow,” he said. “Both of you.”
Albina looked at her daughter, grinning.
“Of course,” Temperance said.
She said it in the pleasant, even tone she had been using all morning. But she knew that things had suddenly changed.
Perhaps for the worse.