Winston stared at the coal’s blue fringe. He heard the echo of his own argument to Adeline in the vicarage.
We choose the ground. I meant it. I mean it even more now.
A knock at the door spared him an answer. Louisa’s head appeared around it, hair crooked, cheeks bright from kitchen heat.
“Mrs. Hardcastle says if you don’t come now, she’ll eat your pie herself,” she announced. “And Grandmama says she’ll help her.”
“Sacrilege,” Oswald said, straightening.
“Tell Cook we value our lives,” Winston said gravely. “We’re coming.”
Louisa vanished. Oswald looked at Winston. “You could do worse than allow your mother to judge this woman.”
“I have allowed it,” Winston said. “And she has judged. It’s my turn.”
They went to the dining room, where Cordelia wielded her knife like a general’s baton and guarded the pie as if it had a title. Adeline sat beside Louisa, hair loosened by the journey, color better than it had been in London. She looked up when Winston entered, and something in him steadied because it always did when she looked at him that way, as if the room made more sense for his standing in it.
Oswald kept his country manners and spoke of roads. Winston ate and said very little. He watched Adeline laugh at some nonsense of Louisa’s and thought of the letters Oswald had found and the men who had folded them and hidden them in drawers and said nothing. He thought of Harston’s face at the vicarage and the way the man had spoken Adeline’s name as if he owned the letters of it.
When the plates had been cleared and Cordelia had dismissed Louisa to bed with a promise of a story later, Winston rose.
“Oswald,” he said. “You’ll want a bath and a bed. There’s a room in the west corridor. Mrs. Dale will have a tray sent. Sleep and be unromantic in it. I’ll have work for you in the morning.”
Oswald raised two fingers in a lazy salute. “As Your Grace commands.”
He left them with a bow to Cordelia and a courteous nod to Adeline that said without words that he’d noticed her and not judged her. When the door closed, the room felt too large for three. Cordelia studied her son’s face for a beat that was almost maternal pity, then rose.
“I’m old,” she said, with unnecessary dignity. “Old women sleep early so they can wake and meddle effectively. Good night.”
She kissed Winston’s cheek, touched Adeline’s shoulder lightly, and sailed out.
The room was silent for a breath. Adeline looked at the tablecloth, then at him. “Bad news?”
“News,” he said.
“About my father.”
“And about men who think money is a cure for all their ills.” He drew a breath. “Oswald’s found enough to fill a small ledger. It doesn’t change what I mean to do. It makes it more necessary.”
She held his gaze. “To face him.”
“To face him,” he said. “On our ground. With our time. With our facts.”
She nodded slowly, and the tension in his chest eased a step. “I’ll answer anything you ask me,” she said. “I won’t run again.”
He crossed the room and stopped close enough to see the thin pale line at the base of her throat where fear had left its own necklace. He didn’t touch her. Not yet.
“There’s a new risk,” he said. “Oswald believes Harston has been approaching men. Inventing an invisible daughter. Taking money in the promise of settlements and such. He thinks I may be the next trick. That you…” He stopped. “No. I won’t say it like that. That my house might be the stage for his last card.”
Color rose in her cheeks. It wasn’t shame, but something else entirely. “You’re asking if I knew.”
“I’m telling you what men will say,” he replied. “And telling you I don’t accept the easy version of anything anymore.”
She stepped closer. “I didn’t know. I swear it. If he’s done any of that, it was without me. I’ve never written a line to him since the day I left. I’ve never taken a penny that came from his hand.”
He believed her before she finished the second sentence and caught himself doing it without resistance. He let the relief show and didn’t fear what it meant.
“Good,” he said, and heard the roughness in it.
