Cecily stood to the side and watched him stand in front of them—Mr. Prentiss, Ellen, Mrs. Beam, the kitchen maids, the footmen, the maids—with the same look he had worn at eight o’clock every morning this past week, reading documents at his desk.
“You’ll have noticed certain changes in the past weeks,” he began. “I want to address them plainly, which is how this household will now be run.”
He looked at each of them in turn, unhurried.
“The estate accounts have been reorganized and will be audited directly by me on a monthly basis. The tenant arrangements are being reviewed. If any of you have observations about the way things have been managed that have not previously been welcome, I am asking you to bring them to Prentiss now. There will be no consequences for doing so.”
The silence was of the listening kind.
“The orphanage fund,” he continued, “has been separated from the household accounts entirely and placed under a trust. Three trustees, independent governance.” He paused. “Her Grace will oversee the work from this house going forward. All correspondence, all requests, all reports from St. Clement’s are to be directed to her. Her decisions in that capacity are not to be redirected elsewhere or delayed.” He looked at them pointedly. “That is not a suggestion. That is how this household works from now on.”
Mrs. Beam looked at Cecily. “Very good, Your Grace.”
Mr. Prentiss inclined his head with the gravity of giving something his highest official approval.
“One more thing.” William looked at the assembled servants somberly. “The Duchess is not a guest in this house. She is not a visitor. She is my wife. She is not here on any arrangement or agreement. She is the mistress of Blackmoor House. She has been from the day she came here, which the rest of us are now going to act like we understood all along.” A pause. “Because we should have.”
The entrance hall was very quiet.
Then Ellen, nineteen years old and the only person in the hall who had apparently decided this called for a direct response, said, “Yes, Your Grace,” with such genuine feeling that Mrs. Beam looked up at the ceiling.
Cecily pressed her lips together.
William caught her eye, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
Later, the house was quiet, and the fire burned low in the library. He found her there, not because she was waiting. Except that she was, a little.
She was lounging on the settee, with a book that was not getting much of her attention. He came in and sat beside her, and she looked up.
“Everyone is settled,” he said.
“Even Letitia?”
“Letitia hardly falls asleep easily when she is excited. She has to expend the energy by talking the house down. So much energy for a fourteen-year-old.”
Cecily laughed. He watched her laugh, and she blushed under the intensity of his gaze.
“William,” she said.
“Mm.”
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like–” She gestured vaguely. “Like that.”
“I’ll try,” he said, without any conviction.
She looked at him. He looked at her. The fire crackled.
She found that she liked looking at him and his dreamy eyes.
“I want to tell you something,” he said.
She set down the book.
“I nearly drowned when I was seventeen,” he revealed. “We were on the shore with James, the last summer before I came down from school. The current was stronger than I had accounted for, and it took me out–” He stopped. Breathed. “I thought, in the time between going under and coming back to the surface, that that was it. That was going to be how it ended.” He met her eyes. “I have thought about it many times since then, when I have needed to understand whatrealfear feels like.”
