Her Sisters Were Presented to the Duke—But He Asked About the Daughter They Overlooked

Chapter 10

Mrs. Toft had sent word that morning by her eldest boy: the baby had a fever, the coal bin was empty, and the apothecary in Harrowgate would not give credit a third time.

Wren had promised a basket before nightfall, and nightfall in February came early and hard.

She worked in the pantry by the light of a single candle stub, wrapping bread in a cloth and adding two small pieces of cheese, a twist of tea, and the heel of the ham from the kitchen that Cook pretended not to notice going. It was not charity. Wren disliked that word; charity was something you did so that other people could see you doing it. This was arithmetic. A family in a cold house lost the baby, lost the winter, lost the rent, and became a problem that came back to Ashmoor with a magistrate attached.

She was tying the cloth when a shadow crossed the doorway.

“You do disappear efficiently.”

She turned.

Atticus Vale stood there without his dinner coat, sleeves rolled to the elbow like a man who had already been somewhere he was not supposed to be. In the candlelight the great formal severity of him softened at the edges, and Wren had to make herself look at the basket instead of his forearms.

“You have developed an alarming habit,” she said, “of finding me in inappropriate rooms.”

“Perhaps you have developed an alarming habit of being in interesting ones.”

His eyes dropped to the basket. “For whom?”

“A tenant family.”

“Your father’s charity.”

“No.”

He said nothing. She disliked profoundly how easily his silence invited the truth out of her.

“Mrs. Toft’s youngest has a fever. They spent the coal money on the apothecary. The apothecary will not give credit twice in the same quarter, which is his right, and which is also why the child will die if the room is cold on Thursday.”

“And your father does not know.”

Wren’s fingers stopped on the knot.

“Because generosity is less attractive,” she said, “when no one important is watching.”

Something in Atticus’s expression changed — not softened, exactly, but shifted, the way a man shifts his weight when the ground under him has turned out to be a different substance than he thought.

“You do not speak of him like a daughter trying to impress a prospective husband.”

Heat touched her cheeks.

“I was not aware I was being considered.”

“Neither was I.”

Their eyes met, and the words hung in the cold air between them for longer than either of them intended, and Wren became aware of the small sounds of the house — the distant clatter of the kitchen, the wind at the sill, her own breath.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Lady Isobel’s voice, calling Blythe’s name, going past the pantry door and away.

Wren lifted the basket.

Atticus stepped aside to let her pass. But as she reached him, he said, quietly:

“Your father lied about the southern farms.”

She stopped.

“You knew,” she said.

“I knew he was lying.” His gaze settled on her face, steady and unreadable. “I did not know why.”

Wren tightened her grip on the basket and looked up at him. And because the corridor was dark and the house was asleep at the edges and there was nobody to perform for, she said the dangerous thing.

“Then perhaps you should ask him.”

“I intend to.”

She moved past him, toward the passage that led to the side door of the stable court. His next words stopped her again, and this time they stopped her cold.

“But first, Miss Ashby, I think I would rather ask why a man so eager to display his family worked so hard to keep one daughter hidden.”

Wren did not answer at once. Somewhere beyond the passage a door opened, and laughter drifted down from the drawing room — Blythe’s laugh, bright and meaningless and perfectly timed.

“Perhaps,” she said at last, “because some daughters are more useful when nobody notices what they do.”

Atticus’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Useful. How?”

Then, from the drawing room: “Wren? Wren, are you there?”

Mrs. Toft was waiting.

Wren stepped past him into the dark without answering, and she heard him not follow her, and she told herself she was relieved.

She was not.