Isadora had asked, somewhere between the rose beds and the side door, whether Cecily had read Cowper, and from there the conversation had opened in the easy, unhurried way which ledto them discovering they had more common ground than they’d expected.
Isadora’s reading, it emerged, was both broader and more unconventional than her careful, considered manner suggested. She had opinions about Pope that she delivered with the precision of a scholar and the slight self-consciousness of someone who had not often been invited to share them.
She had read most of the library’s history section and had quietly, methodically, filled the gaps with whatever she could borrow from the neighbors.
“Miss Aldwell doesn’t object?” Cecily asked.
“Miss Aldwell,” Isadora replied, with the diplomatic tact of a girl who had learned to be careful with her words, “has a preference for improving literature.”
“She gave me a book about a girl who learns to be modest,” Letitia said from behind them, where she had been examining everything growing along the path. “The girl in the book is modest from the first page. She doesn’t seem to need the lesson.”
“The lesson is for the reader,” Isadora said.
“Then I especially don’t need it.”
Cecily looked at Letitia. “What would you read, if you could read anything?”
Letitia considered this with the seriousness the question deserved. “Something that happens. I don’t mind if it’s sad, as long as things actually happen in it. I read a novel last spring that was three hundred pages of a woman deciding whether to accept an invitation, and I nearly lost my mind.”
“Did she accept it?”
“She did. And then the book ended.”
“Good God.”
Letitia pointed at her. “Exactly.”
They came in through the side entrance, shaking the last of the outdoors from their skirts as they handed their bouquets to a footman, and parted ways at the foot of the stairs—the girls to change for the afternoon, Cecily to her rooms to do the same. But she found, once she had washed her hands and sat for a moment in the chair by the window, that she was thinking about the library.
Specifically, she was thinking about what was in it.
Isadora read history and poetry and had apparently been supplementing the gaps through external means, which suggested the library’s collection was uneven.
Letitia read whatever came to hand, which seemed to be mostly whatever Miss Aldwell approved, which, going by Letitia’s expression, covered a narrow and improving range of territory.
Neither of them had mentioned asking their brother for recommendations, and the omission, Cecily thought, was its own kind of answer.
She sat for another moment. Then she went downstairs.
She heard voices before she reached the study door. William’s, low and businesslike. And another—measured, unhurried, the voice of a man making a practiced speech.
She knocked twice.
“Come.”
The study had more people in it than the last time she’d entered it. William was at his desk, as before, but across from him sat a man of about fifty in good, plain clothes. He was large and steady in his chair.
He rose when she entered.
“Duchess.” William looked up from the papers in front of him. “Come in. I’d like to introduce you.” He gestured between them. “Mr. Harwood, my steward. Harwood, the Duchess of Blackmoor.”
Harwood bowed. “Your Grace. Allow me to offer my congratulations on your marriage. I trust Blackmoor House has been comfortable.”
“Very, thank you,” Cecily said. “I hope we’ll have the opportunity to speak properly in due course, Mr. Harwood. I’m still finding my way around the estate.”
“Of course.” He smiled pleasantly. “Whenever convenient.”
She settled into the chair at the side of the desk, not wanting to interrupt, intending only to wait until William was free. Harwood returned to his chair and resumed speaking, unhurried.
