“Just so.” Alistair rose and moved to the window, clasping his hands behind his back. The rain continued its dull roar beyond the glass, a curtain of gray that obliterated the horizon. He could just make out the shadow of the stone gatehouse in thedistance, but the avenue of trees had vanished entirely behind the downpour. “This weather is relentless. If it carries on much longer, the roads will be impassable.”
“They are already near it,” Beckwith confirmed. “The track from the gatehouse to the village was ankle-deep in mud when I rode in yesterday afternoon.” They both fell silent for a moment, watching the rain streak the glass in unbroken rivulets. The sky offered no promise of reprieve. If anything, the clouds had thickened since morning, pressing low over the valley like a gray wool blanket draped across the hills.
“I do not have much more time to spare here, Beckwith. The mill has pressing business, and I must leave for London soon to secure an important contract. Hollingford & Goss will not wait indefinitely, and my brother Franklin has been holding them at bay with assurances of my imminent arrival for longer than is prudent.”
“How long will you be away?”
“A fortnight, perhaps longer. It depends on the negotiations and the state of the roads.” He turned back to the room, his gaze sweeping the stacks of Beckwith’s careful notes, the ledgers with their columns of bleak arithmetic, the map with its penciled annotations. So much to be done, and never enough hours to see it through. Alistair had always thrived on the pressure of competing demands, but the scale of Fortunestone’s decay tested even his appetite for industry. At the mill, problems had solutions. Here, problems had histories. “I am leaving the estate in your hands. You have my full authority. If you encounter resistance from the household, invoke my name without hesitation.”
Beckwith offered a thin smile. “Byhousehold, you mean Her Grace the elder.”
“I mean anyone who obstructs progress. But yes. The dowager will test you. Do not be cowed by her. She has nolegal authority here, whatever she may believe to the contrary.” Alistair had already begun drafting a letter to his own solicitors in Leeds to make the legal position explicit. The dowager would receive a copy in due course. He did not like using litigation with family members, but he did not trust her or consider her family after what she had done to his father.
Before Beckwith could reply, a soft knock interrupted them, followed by the library door opening a few cautious inches.
Genevieve appeared in the gap and stopped short, her silver-blonde hair catching the low firelight. Her pale eyes darted from Alistair to Beckwith, and color rose swiftly in her cheeks.
“Forgive me. I did not realize you were in conference.” She was already retreating. “I only wished to find a volume from the shelves. I shall return later.”
“Come in,” Alistair said, waving her forward. “We are nearly finished. Find what you need.”
She hesitated, then stepped inside with the studied caution of a person crossing ice. She kept her gaze fixed on the bookshelves along the far wall, navigating the room as though Beckwith were a piece of furniture she was determined not to acknowledge. Yet Alistair noted the stiffness in her posture, the determined angle of her chin, her fingers trembling slightly as she reached for a leather-bound volume. Her fingers closed around a slim green book. Poetry, from the look of the gilt lettering. She drew it from the shelf with exaggerated care, as though the slightest sound might betray her. His youngest cousin was seventeen, and her experience with presentable young men extended no further than the fired steward and the ancient butler. Jerome had kept his daughters sequestered like relics in a cabinet, hidden from the world and otherwise forgotten. It was a cruelty dressed as protection, and Alistair meant to undo it. A man of capable bearing and quiet authority entering her sheltered sphere would naturally cause her to feel shy.
Alistair sighed, considering the implications of introducing his relations to the world they had been kept from. They were ill-prepared to venture into society and begin their lives, and an unexpected complication in his.
“I shall take my leave, Your Grace,” Beckwith said, tucking the rolled map under his arm. “I will have the drainage estimates drawn up by morning, and I intend to ride out to the eastern tenant farms this afternoon despite the weather.”
“Very good. Take care on those roads.”
“I have ridden through worse.” He inclined his head, offered a polite nod to Genevieve who did not appear to see, and departed.
Genevieve clutched her book against her bodice, her color still heightened, and turned toward the door. “Thank you, Your Grace. I apologize for the intrusion.” She managed the sentence with dignity but moved with the haste of someone who wished to be elsewhere.
“Genevieve.”
She paused, glancing back with wary eyes.
“You are welcome in the library at any time. You need not wait for it to be empty.” He kept his tone mild, conscious that she startled when addressed too directly. “This is your home. And my name is Alistair.”
Her expression softened. Not quite a smile, but the faintest easing of the vigilance that seemed to live permanently behind her features. Living under her grandmother’s reign had left its mark in the rigid set of her shoulders and the careful manner with which she rationed her words in front of Beckwith. She dipped her head and slipped through the door, her slippers whispering on the stone floor.
He listened until the sound disappeared entirely, conscious of how accustomed the women of this household were tomaking themselves small. Even their departures were practiced in silence.
Alistair stood alone in the library, listening to the rain and the crackle of the fire and the settling solitude. He returned to the desk where Beckwith’s notes lay in a neat hand, lists of repairs and tenant grievances that would consume months of attention and capital he could scarcely spare.
He thought of his mill. Of the contract waiting in London. Of the looms that needed his oversight and the workers who depended on his judgment. He thought of Franklin holding the negotiations together by charm and competence, and of Benedict and Gregory managing the daily operations with a carelessness that concealed surprising capability. His brothers would manage. They always had.
Then he thought of Josephine.
The library felt larger without company, the silence pressing in where conversation had been. Rain could not fill that void. He pressed his palms flat on the desk and stared at the ledger without seeing it. The columns of figures blurred into a single truth he had been circling for two days.
He thought of the scent of chamomile and mint that followed her through every room. Of her cool gray eyes that soothed the relentless machinery of his thoughts whenever she turned them upon him. Of the gentle curve of her belly beneath the black bombazine, and the courage it took to carry a dead man’s child while living under the roof of an old woman who would use that child as a weapon. He thought of her standing in this very room two days earlier, asking for his help with an expression that contained equal measures of desperation and dignity, and the way he had sent her off with bruised feelings because her candor had struck too close to a vulnerability he refused to name.
He thought of leaving for London and returning to find her crushed beneath the dowager’s boot, the girls retreated intotheir silent obedience, and the fragile changes he had set in motion undone by weeks of his absence.
That was not going to happen.
He had spent fifteen years solving problems that others deemed impossible. A crumbling estate and a tyrannical old woman were obstacles, not verdicts.
