Chapter 6

N one of Victor’s past holidays had ever prepared him for one like this.

Her flush was as warm and golden as he remembered. That dreadful coat was gone, yet the plain green gown she wore beneath it was like brass choking a diamond. It might protect her, but it hardly did her justice.

He didn’t want to let go of her hand.

Her fingers were so small. Carefully, he tucked them in the crook of his arm. “Simply say when you are ready to put the pages down, then.”

“Of course.” She too sounded as if she had been running.

Had she truly just come for the pleasure of his company? Nothing so radical had ever happened to Victor before. He felt an entirely new urge to impress her with this house. His house.

The long walk back from the kitchen wing had never been so pleasant. “Henry VIII granted my family the land. It was a country house then. The city has grown around us.”

Miss Snow—it felt utterly delightful to know her name—peered carefully out the windows as they walked down the long corridor back to the house proper. “You have a courtyard.”

“Yes, I think my ancestor fancied himself rather Roman. I believe there’s still a bit of mosaic under the trees.” He shrugged. “There was a fine fountain there when I was a child.”

“What happened to it?” She rustled when she walked due to the large collection of tied paper pages she hugged to her body. It seemed to serve her as some sort of armor. He longed to relieve her of it.

“I imagine my father disposed of it once my grandfather was dead.” He felt that cold wave of fury and helplessness he always did when his father crossed his mind. “He disposed of anything useless.”

This was no way to entertain a lady. Victor had only the faintest idea how it was done, but this wasn’t it.

He pointed out the window again. “There is a Tudor rose engraved on the architraves, above each courtyard door, supported by falcons. The Hartwick crest has falcons.”

He wasn’t looking at the courtyard, he was looking at her.

Even the colors of her were soft and delicious. Some of the teasing sparkle came back into her eyes. “You did not tell me you were an earl.”

He shrugged. The title chafed, like someone else’s coat. “Why would it matter on a walk in Wales?” he asked to defer explanation.

If he told her that those hours spent in a book shop in her company had been the most pleasant of his life, he would appear pathetic.

Her hand spasmed in the crook of his arm; the feeling of it, small, warm, alive, made the whole world feel live and joyful.

“I would have expected it to show somehow. Embroidered falcons on your coat, perhaps. Or a vast diamond in the head of your walking stick.”

“I have a vast diamond in the head of my walking stick; that is why I left it safely at home.”

Her eyes grew even wider. Victor laughed. Actually laughed.

“I have no diamond in my walking stick, Miss Snow.”

“Oh!” With one hand in his possession and the other clutching sliding pages of a book, she had no way to wave her hands, but he could see she wanted to. She could have pulled away; she didn’t. “That is what finally makes you laugh? To tease me?”

“What else should make me laugh?” He’d learn to laugh if it kept her close.

“No, you’re right. I’m a country girl with no Latin or French and I’ve never been to Wales or anywhere except Pritchard’s book shop. You should laugh if I cannot tell an earl when I see one.”

“Well, I’ve only been an earl for two days.” Perhaps that would reassure her.

Instead she stopped, frozen, jaw and arms dropping open, the pages limply sliding to the floor.

“What a fool I am!” It was almost a whisper. “You are in mourning! And I’ve disturbed you in mourning. ”

She seemed to take the idea of mourning much more seriously than he did.

Indeed she seemed stricken. “All in black! Why didn’t I notice?”

Victor fought the urge to look down at his clothing.

He always wore black. The coats were serviceable and all his peers did the same, even in the Americas, and certainly on their formal state visit to Ghent. Most wore fawn trousers, but Victor wore black to hide his lack of bulk.

Gently, so as not to startle her, he slipped to one knee and began picking up the pages.

“Miss Snow. I am entirely grateful for your distraction. I’ve given no thought to mourning, nor expect to. I plan to mourn my father exactly as much as he would have mourned me.” About five minutes, sometime later when it suits me, Victor thought to himself. “Any distress I feel this evening concerns my work abroad, which I left unfinished to rush to my father’s side. In vain.”

There. He’d laid some of his pathos out for her to see.

She did not sneer. “What was the work?” was all she said.

So he told her what no one else knew. Because he hadn’t conveyed to his father his reasons for sailing directly from Carolina to the Netherlands, and had no other family to concern.

He rose before her, the haphazard pile of papers trapped between his palms.

“The treaty with the Americans,” he said simply.

“Oh!” She put a great deal of feeling in the wordless sounds she made.

He felt lighter. As if just saying it to someone who didn’t throw it back in his face made him taller. Stronger.

“You negotiated a treaty?” She still didn’t leave. She seemed... impressed.

He hated to disappoint her. “Only consulted on the law.”

She did not look disappointed. Her whole face was alight with interest and, yes, admiration. “On the law of a treaty. Imagine that.”

It was like opening a floodgate. Things Victor had wanted to tell, wanted to brag on, truth be told, spilled from him now, days after arriving at his supposed home.

“I read law with a friend who has since been appointed under-secretary. We both subscribe to the idea of international law, law that transcends boundaries. The world has grown too small for the old law. I went to America to study a problem and he—” Sensing that he was about to pour out the story of his life for the last five years, Victor checked his runaway words. “He asked for my expertise.”

“On what?” She looked genuinely interested.

He couldn’t possibly be as self-effacing as he appeared. A titled lord, expert in law, called by ministers to consult on a treaty; he had such reason to be proud!

And indeed, alight with his topic, the shadow that clung to him him faded; he even looked younger.

“The Americans’ complaint that we impress their men to sail our ships,” he said, simply and clearly as he said everything else. The law in his hands must be very clear indeed.

“We do what?” Isabel had never read newspapers. They cost too much for her current living, and when she had been at home her parents had not cared for them. Now she wondered how much she had missed there, too.

“We take their men to sail our ships. We have, I should say, for decades. It was one of the questions of law that vexed me. The Americans want the right to live unmolested by a government they have thrown off, as you might well imagine; our courts have time and again upheld the our Navy’s right to gain men however they can, including taking men from American ships and ports. Under certain circumstances.”

He held back again, perhaps aware that he could flood her with information and wanting to spare her. Isabel did not want to be spared.

The world was so large and she had never known anything about it. She could not bear to think how small her existence would have continued had she not decided to buy herself a book for Christmas Eve.

“So you went to look?” She felt stupid asking, but his nod was vigorous.

“I went to look. Two years in Virginia and the Carolinas; Philadelphia too. Some of the legal maneuvering of the Americans was specious—was clearly intended to subvert the law,” he added, as if that made it any clearer. Isabel noted to herself what questions she should ask later. “Yet the meat of the thing was clear. Americans were removed from the land to staff our ships. Tradesmen, poor men, men of African descent, all forced to sail on our ships.” He frowned. “The Americans impressed one of our men as well but that hardly evened the weight of it.”

“Please. Let me take back the book.” She tugged on the pages. She felt so foolish, having him stand there so serious and holding her unbound pages. The pages she had charged to his account.

But he just smiled down at her and shook his head. “I’ll have it put in the library. We can read after supper. Ah, Alice.”

For the maid bustled down the corridor after them, looking surprised that they had not gone farther.

“Mrs. Hopp says supper is served, sir,” said the maid with a little curtsey.

“Fine. Miss Snow, allow me.”

The dining room was easily the most richly appointed room Isabel had ever seen.

The polished red wood of its panels, chairs, and table glowed as if they contained light, and the table’s legs were adorned with golden wreaths of leaves that made crowns. The snowy linen was set with two places of shining blue porcelain; as Isabel drew closer, she saw their pattern was of deep blue irises. Silver platters and tureens gathered between the two places, and sparkling forks and spoons seemed to be everywhere.

All the glow came to a halt at the black-gowned figure who stood by a sideboard, clutching her hands together at her waist. Isabel thought in a gown that black, she must be mourning many people at once.

“Lord Hartwick.” The woman’s nostrils flared as if she had been assaulted by some smell.

“Mrs. Hopp.” That was all he said, just pulled out the chair at the right of the table’s head and gestured for Isabel to sit.

Once he seated himself in turn, the crow-like woman seemed to take it as a flag for her continued speech.

“The first course is purée of parsnips, beet soup, eggs à la Francaise, roasted partridge, and roasted fennel.”

Wet leg forgotten, Isabel’s mouth watered. The savory smells seemed to curl from every dish straight to her nose, beckoning, dragging her forward.

One kiss and a faint plan to become a fallen woman, and here she was, slave to the pleasures of her senses.

She was so lost in studying every dainty little dish, all topped with butter in their shining silver haloes, that she failed to notice her companion patiently holding a platter at her elbow.

“My lord! Never wait on me.”

“I’m delighted to do it.” He looked like he meant it.

The dishes were sufficiently close that they could help themselves, yet he wanted her to have the eggs while they were still warm.

Smiling a little, she helped herself, then sampled a few of the other dishes, only then noticing that his plate held only a roast partridge.

“Have you already eaten?” Surely they would not have waited the supper on her.

“No,” was all he said.

And as he addressed the partridge, surely no more than six ounces on his plate, Mrs. Hopp approached like a shadow of doom and poured a white sauce from a silver boat all over the remaining birds.

He closed his eyes as if in forbearance and said nothing.

“Let me help you to the parsnips.” She scooped some of the creamy vegetables into the ladle in their tureen.

“No.” If anything this time it was more short.

“Perhaps the soup.”

“No.”

Waving to her plate as if inviting her to eat, he himself sliced a small bite of cooked meat from the bird and put it in his mouth.

This was more peculiar than Isabel could bear. “I cannot enjoy all this if you will not join me.”

The muscle flexed in his jaw. He looked again like she had first seen him in the bookshop, impatient, angry. “I cannot.”

Isabel felt something pulling under her ribs, for him, toward him. He was clearly suffering. “You are ill.”

“ No. ” Each time the word was more vehement, more abruptly cut off.

Mrs. Hopp just stood by the sideboard, glaring.

The buttery food suddenly tasted like ashes.

Something was wrong.

Isabel had no idea what a mistress would do. Only the faintest idea what a wife should do.

But she had an impulse that seemed suited to a friend, and she had to follow it.

She had never been able to ignore things that were wrong.

“Would you excuse me a moment?”

Confused, her host paused in the demolishing of his lone, small bird, and just nodded. Frustration emanated from him so strongly she could feel it, frustration and embarrassment.

Mrs. Hopp just watched her like an angry vulture.

She would hurry.

It took just moments to rush down the long corridor where they had strolled so slowly before.

“Mrs. Reed.” In the kitchen, Isabel went right to the cook, who was bent over a delicious-smelling roast of beef. “His lordship only took one partridge. Can you give him another?”

“I sent out four!”

“Mrs. Hopp poured sauce over them and...” She didn’t explain how she knew he would not take another. She just knew. “Is he ill? Please tell me. I know you did not cook all this for me.”

The face of the friendly cook gyrated through anger and embarrassment herself, then back to anger. “It’s not right of her to do that.”

“What? Please tell me.” His lordship was so young. Did he suffer from a wasting disease? A cancer? Isabel had to know. He was too young, and too brilliant, for such an end.

“T’owd master set his menu, and t’new lad hasn’t had a minute to talk to her since he returned. Or mebbe avoiding her. I would if I could.” She saw Isabel’s continued confusion and added, “That harpy serves t’owd master’s dinners knowing young master can’t eat it. She’s ‘eartless, she is.”

“But why can he not eat it?”

Mrs. Reed just shrugged her round shoulders under her apron. “Never could. Every dinner a battle! The earl insisting him eat what he got or nothing, the lad picking out a dry bit here and there. It’s heartless.” Then she patted Isabel’s hand with her own strong one. “Never you fear. I always sent him some plain bread later. And apples. Raw scraped carrots, if you can believe.”

Isabel didn’t understand any of this, but the important thing seemed clear. “Then do it now!”

“Mercy, yes.” She half-turned to her pots, then hesitated. “You’ll... he won’t let t’owd harpy sack me?”

Isabel understood that cooks were subject to the rule of housekeepers, but why hadn’t Lord Hartwick’s wife done something about this while she was alive?

Heavens, had the housekeeper killed the woman?

There was no time to feel faint again. This Isabel had to manage. “There’s nothing else for it. We cannot let him starve. Take a slice or two of that roast to a skillet and make it brown, please, Mrs. Reed. Bring that out on its own platter, dry as you can, and another plate with some of that bread. Does he eat butter?”

“No, miss.” Mrs. Reed looked pleased with her cheeks but frightened with her eyes.

“Have you anything else you know he can eat?”

“The seed cake, ma’am. He loves his cake. I give him some for breakfast.”

As if she had snuck keys into a dungeon.

What ailed this housekeeper?

“Very well.” Isabel cast another sharp eye around the room. “Bring some cheese— don’t toast it, bring it cold—and one of those apples. In fact, give me those and the bread now. Bring the beef and cake when you can.”

She had already left him alone for long minutes. Whatever he thought of her, he must think her peculiar already; this would hardly lessen the impression.

Still, she carried the little platter out of the kitchen herself.

Only to find, waiting outside the door, Mrs. Hopp.

The ghastly woman trembled with rage, a black ribbon in an invisible wind. “That is not your place.”

For the first time Isabel wanted not just to correct, but to scold. “It cannot be your place to starve the Earl.”

She scoffed. Scoffed. “As if he will ever be that. A willful brat taking the first chance he has to sully his father’s legacy. He knows perfectly well his father would never allow him to eat bread and apples at the table like a servant boy. He was a silly child and still is. Nor did his father let tarts dine at table.” She seized Isabel’s upper arm in a claw-like grip.

The accoster in the bookshop had been frightening because he had been bewildering. This woman was all too easily understood. “Let go of me!”

“You march right back in that kitchen and— owp .”

The noise was because the housekeeper’s wrist had been engulfed in a much larger hand.

“Mrs. Hopp.” One by one he peeled the woman’s claws from Isabel’s arm. “You are discharged.”

Like a cart rolling downhill, the housekeeper couldn’t seem to change her direction. “Your father tried so hard to make a lord of you!”

“And now he’s dead.” He was standing over her, all implacable shadow. He let go her hand as if it were a poisonous spider, still hovering between her and Isabel.

His voice was as calm and clear as ever, as were his words. “I don’t mind your scorn. I don’t like you either. But you will not touch Miss Snow again. You’re discharged.”

“ Miss, ” spat the older woman. “Tarts should know to use the servants’ entrance and not to sit at table.” Then the meaning of his words seemed to penetrate her seething anger and she subsided like a squashed pile of hay. “Discharged?”

“Discharged. And my tarts may use whatever door they like.”

Mrs. Hopp gasped as if seeing him for the first time. “A puppy playing the dog,” she retorted weakly, watching him warily. “Though more like him every day, it seems.”

That made his lordship wince again but he did not answer the jibe. “I arranged a pension for you at the solicitor’s yesterday. I intended to wait to discharge you till after Christmas. Merely a courtesy recognizing your years of service to my father. You’ve never served me.” He held out his hand. “Your keys, please.”

She made no noise about Christmas or mercy. Isabel melted inside for the little boy who had essentially been raised by this woman. She only said, “I expected as much.”

“I imagine you would.” His fingers wrapped around the chain of keys she surrendered. He stayed where he was, between Isabel and the housekeeper, and raised his voice rather than take two steps into the kitchen. “Mrs. Reed?”

“Yes, my lord?” The woman had clearly hidden just around the door jamb and was hanging on every word.

Isabel had the feeling she was witnessing the resolution of some very long-standing feuds.

Lord Hartwick handed the housekeeper’s keys to the cook. “Fetch a footman and confine Mrs. Hopp to her room. She’s leaving us tomorrow. No one need interrupt their Christmas Eve to escort her anywhere.”

“Yes, sir.” Mrs. Reed didn’t even try to hide her glee.

Mrs. Hopp regained enough poise to look down her nose at Isabel, then at his lordship. “Your father knew how to follow the rules of decent society. He tried to teach you. You have no self-control at all. You’re a demon run free.”

Lord Hartwick did not answer. He turned to Isabel as if no one else existed. “Would you care to resume our meal, Miss Snow?”

Stunned out of her silence, still clutching her small platter, Isabel’s answer felt inappropriate; but in the face of Mrs. Hopp’s vile accusations, she was perfectly willing to be inappropriate. “Whatever you’d like.”

“Very good. If I may.” And he took the silver platter from her hands.

Without anything to hold, she wanted to cling to his arms, but restrained herself.

By the time they reached the end of the long corridor they heard the hard-hearted housekeeper exchanging bitter words with two young footmen who’d already had a few ales and seemed to find her predicament hilarious. Isabel did not fear she would be contained.

But she did not find any of the situation hilarious.

Lord Hartwick simply walked her back to the dining room, where he sat again at the table and began to slice the apple she’d brought.

Only then did he look her way, with an echo of the wince she now knew was from an inner hurt. “I apologize. You should never have been subjected to the woman.”

“Nor should you ! Why on earth would she feed you this way?” Whatever his illness, Mrs. Reed knew what to do; Isabel could not imagine a reason not to let her do it.

In fact, at that moment Mrs. Reed appeared, carrying two slices of dry beef on a platter and a small plate of cake.

The little noise of unrepentant pleasure her host made tugged at Isabel everywhere.

And Mrs. Reed made that clear. “Good for you, sir,” she whispered, bending near as she placed the food at his elbow before disappearing herself. “Never you fear, Mr. Cargill will see she’s gone tomorrow without pocketing any of the silver.”

“I don’t care about the silver,” he muttered but gave a short nod indicating he heard and understood. He was slicing off a bite of the beef before she had even closed the door.

“Apologies,” he said again to Isabel, as if he had something to apologize for.

“You need not apologize to anyone.” Isabel felt incensed at him on his own behalf. “But if I may ask. Why allow her to treat you so?”

He sighed, swallowing his bite of seed cake like a starving man. Which he must be. “Habit, I suppose.” He looked so embarrassed Isabel wanted to pet his hand, but would not while it was still applied to the important business of eating. “I have only been home two days. Word reached me in Ghent that my father was ill, and I was persuaded to respond. I rushed to a Flemish port by carriage and sailed to London as quickly as I could. The vessels are all packed with wounded men coming home. Never travel with hundreds of desperate men, Miss Snow. The smell, the noise, are incredible.

When I arrived home all was just as it had been when I left, except that my father was dead... twelve hours before I arrived. All my effort, wasted.”

He looked like he wanted to throw the food in his hand, but set it down on the plate instead, scowling, before going on.

“Wasted like my life. I wanted to help bring peace with America. I spent years traveling and listening to the stories of wives and children the impressed men left behind. I could not help them. Many of their men died on the high seas. No one ever even notified the women.”

His hands flattened at the sides of his plate. “Then we war with them over the right to do that. Americans and British alike, slaughtered at Detroit and Lake Erie. Their new capital, burned. I wasn’t called back from America, Miss Snow. I came. I found the under-secretary’s letter here and left directly, I was so determined to help settle this war.

“Then my father’s illness called me away when we were so close, so close to signing. Now the only news I have is what the papers print, and they say both sides are perfectly willing to go on killing in this thrice-bedamned war!”

He looked about, as if for something to throw.

“I am a useless man who has lived a useless life.”

“Not so! Not so.” Even if Isabel were inclined to let mistakes pass by, she would not let him think so ill of himself. She had just seen his upbringing in miniature, and it clearly still burdened him. “Who else took it upon themselves to find out the truth? Who else took so much action? You saw a wrong and you wanted to right it. That is, to my mind, the best sort of man.”

He looked at her, some quirk of expression flitting around his face, and all she could see was the square set of his jaw and the pursing of his lips. His face gave none of this thoughts away.