Page 38

“The baker used to have a small dog who could beg on command!” she revealed. “Oh, and that is where the miller’s boy had once let a whole cart of turnips loose down the hill!”

By the time they reached the chandler’s, Laura’s arms were full of small parcels and her cheeks ached pleasantly from laughing.

While Iris was looking at two nearly identical candles with the shopkeeper, Miss Borden drew Laura gently aside near the window.

“I’m only mentioning it because you ought to know, Your Grace, given your position now,” she murmured, glancing once toward Iris to be sure she wasn’t listening. “It isn’t common knowledge, but it isn’t a secret either, not in this village. When Lord Grantham died, the title passed to a distant cousin, a Mr. Talbot.”

“I see. And?” Laura prompted, angling her body to give them more privacy.

“By rights, Iris ought to have gone into his household. He’s the nearest male relation on her father’s side.”

“But she didn’t go into his household,” Laura concluded. “What are you getting at, Miss Borden?”

“He didn’t want her.” Miss Borden’s lips thinned. “A little girl with no fortune of her own, and a scandal hanging around her mother’s death besides, in some horrible people’s eyes.”

“How awful,” Laura scoffed.

“He’d already made arrangements to send her off to a school in the north the moment the mourning period ended. A perfectly respectable school, I’m sure, but a school all the same for a girl not yet seven, with no family visiting between terms and making sure she is cared for the way a young girl should.” Miss Borden lowered her voice further. “His Grace found out only days before the arrangements were finalized. He rode through the night to Grantham House, and I understand there was a… heated conversation. Iris was moved into the castle within the week.”

Laura looked over at Iris, who was still deep in negotiation over the candles, and felt something twist in her stomach. “He never mentioned any of it.”

“He wouldn’t.” Miss Borden’s expression softened. “He isn’t a man who speaks of the good he does, Your Grace. Only of the debts he thinks he owes. You’ll learn that, I expect, if you haven’t already.”

They finished their shopping not long after, and as they made their way back toward the carriage, an older woman selling early apples from a cart caught sight of Iris. She called out a greeting warm enough to stop them both.

“There’s the little lady, growing taller every time I see her.” She pressed two apples into Iris’s hands without being asked, waving off any offer of payment. “And this must be Her Grace.” She looked Laura over with frank, friendly curiosity.

“A pleasure to meet you, Mrs.…?”

“Mrs. Marchand,” she supplied with a smile, her green eyes warm and kind. “You’ve married a good man, whatever they say about him in the papers,” she said gruffly. “When my Thomas broke his leg two winters past and couldn’t work the mill, His Grace sent his own physician out and never said a word about it after, never wanted to be thanked. Half this village would’ve gone under during the bad harvest year if he hadn’t quietly stopped collecting the rents. He doesn’t want anyone to know it, mind you. Gets prickly if you try to thank him properly, too!”

“He does seem to,” Laura agreed, and found she meant it with more pride than she’d expected to feel walking into this conversation.

“Rough hands, soft heart,” the woman said with a nod, as if she’d settled the matter for good, and went back to her apples.

Laura thought about that the whole ride home, turning it over like a stone worn smooth, while Iris dozed against her shoulder with a half-eaten apple still in one hand.

Rough hands, soft heart.

It matched everything she was slowly learning about her husband.

Nathaniel found Everett waiting for him at the crossroads where their estates met north, already mounted, grinning in the insufferable way he did whenever he sensed an opportunity to be irritating.

It is his supreme skill.

“You look like you haven’t slept,” Everett observed as they set off at an easy canter along the ridge road. “Your eyes are droopy. It’s the way they get when something is keeping you awake at night.”

“I slept,” Nathaniel growled.

“Sure you did.” Everett let that sit for a moment, then added with studied casualness, “So, how is married life treating you?”

Nathaniel didn’t answer immediately, watching the hedgerows blur past instead as they rode.

Everett, who had known him since they were boys tearing through this same countryside on ponies, read the silence for exactly what it was.

“That well, is it?” he asked after a few minutes.

“It’s… complicated,” Nathaniel said.