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She was among them but not of them.
Lord Harcourt was a decent man, though. That was what mattered. He had given Diantha a good life, better than anything she had imagined after her father’s fall from fortune and her sister’s disastrous marriage. She knew him to be a devoted son and a loving—nay, besotted—husband.
It was astonishing, really, to think how Lord Harcourt could coexist with Mr. Hill in the same category called Men.
Lord Harcourt’s friends, too. Diantha had followed the Parliamentary session of 1820, in which Queen Caroline was tried for adultery. She had been utterly astonished when Lord Harcourt’s bosom friend Lord Marsden had stood and given a speech in favor of the rights of ladies to divorce their husbands on grounds of adultery.
How could one man attempt to force a woman into an unwanted marriage, while another stood up and publicly championed their rights as related to the institution?
She thought of the lemon drops Lord Marsden had given her last time he called on the family. She tried to ration them, dear as they were. But she had a sweet tooth and was fond of the tart sugariness of lemon in particular. Lemon drops reminded her of childhood, of happier, more prosperous days.
She would allow herself one later, when she was done with Lord Harcourt. It would soothe her. Perhaps its tartness would even galvanize her sufficiently that she might think of a way out of her predicament—assuming she survived this meeting with her employer.
She dropped an abbreviated curtsy, bracing herself for what could well be her second disastrous meeting of the day. If it was, at least this one wouldn’t be an ambush. It would be the administration of justice.
“Miss Brown.” Lord Harcourt came around from behind his desk and led her to a pair of chairs near the fire. “I wanted to discuss this year’s Earls Trip.”
She had been spared. For today at least. She sat gratefully. This was a discussion she was more than prepared to have. “Yes, I’ve been meaning to suggest that your mother and I repair to Mollybrook in advance of your departure. She will fare better there while you are gone.”
Diantha considered that last sentence. She will fare better there while you are gone. Earlier in her employment, two or three years ago even, she would not have phrased it thusly. She would have said She may fare better there while you are gone, the equivocation of the word may standing in for the more definite will. Diantha would have been hesitant to so openly offer an opinion, to share it almost as if it were fact. Which it was. The dowager would fare better at the family’s country estate in her son’s absence. They were only in Town at the moment for a consultation with her doctors, something that was happening with increasing frequency but without, in Diantha’s estimation, very much to show for it.
“Mm,” Lord Harcourt said, and Diantha did not take his easy agreement for granted. He respected her opinion. It was gratifying. It told her that, as tedious as her work sometimes was, it was meaningful.
She didn’t want to give it up. She didn’t want to give them up. Her throat thickened. Tears amassed.
“Isn’t it ironic that while I am in her company, Mother doesn’t recognize me?” Lord Harcourt mused. “Yet when I am away from her, to hear you tell it, she grows upset?”
Diantha swallowed, forced back the threatening tears, and ordered herself to remain composed. “I am not sure it’s so ironic, because I don’t know that it’s the case that she doesn’t recognize you.”
“Come now, Miss Brown. You are too intelligent to be dispensing false flattery.”
“It isn’t false flattery. Of course, most of the time, your mother doesn’t know your name or that you are her son. Your shared past is, by and large, gone. But your physical presence calms her. So mustn’t it follow that some part of her knows you? That, not to be too mystical about it, her heart knows you?”
Was she mistaken, or was the earl about to tear up? Weepiness: It must be catching today.
She rushed to continue, to spare him the scrutiny. “Which isn’t to say you shouldn’t take your trip. We have had this discussion before. Time away is essential to the caretaking endeavor. We shall get along just fine without you. The new countess soothes your mother, too. Not in the same way you do,” she hastened to add, both because it was true and because she understood that it was important to Lord Harcourt that his mother needed him uniquely. Which she did.
“What else soothes my mother?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What else soothes my mother. Music, yes?”
“Oh, yes. Songs from her youth, particularly.”
“What else?”
“The gardens at Mollybrook.”
“Yes, yes. What else?”
Diantha found this line of questioning curious. Lord Harcourt was intimately involved in his mother’s care. Not in the corporeal way Diantha and some of the servants were—he left the dressing and bathing of the dowager to them—but he knew her habits and quirks and was familiar with the rhythms of her days.
He must have his reasons for this Socratic style of questioning, and she was happy to indulge him. “Water soothes your mother. Being immersed in it.” The servants drew a nightly bath for Lady Harcourt, which Diantha would have found extravagant even in her plentiful youth.
“Aha!” Lord Harcourt raised a finger to the sky as if Diantha were a student who’d hit on the answer to a thorny question. Except he didn’t look like a teacher, he looked like a little boy about to tear into a bag of sweets. “Miss Brown, I have recently completed the construction of a plunge pool at Gurglewood.”
“Gurglewood?” she echoed.
