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

Chapter 11

The next morning she was in the stable yard before the house was up.

Mr. Beckett had ridden in from the southern farms on the gray cob that was older than Wren and considerably more reliable than anyone in her family. He stood with his cap turning round and round between his hands, and his boots had been polished that morning, which told her more about his situation than his face did.

“Another month is all I’m asking, Miss Wren. Just until the drainage is cleared. The men will work it themselves, we’ve said so—”

“I know what my father said.”

“Then—”

“Your father” — Wren lowered her voice, though the only other creatures awake were the horses — “signed a letter in November insisting that the Michaelmas rent was due without exception.”

Mr. Beckett’s face closed.

“You do not sell the mare,” Wren said. “You need her for spring ploughing, and without her you’ll lose the whole of the lower field, and then the rent will not matter, because you will not have a field.”

His shoulders loosened a fraction. “Your father—”

“My father will not come as far as the southern farms before April. Not with the roads as they are.” She took a breath and told him something she had been sitting on for a week. “I have moved the rent to the midsummer quarter. It is entered in the book that way. The book is what the solicitor reads. What the solicitor reads is what my father signs.”

Mr. Beckett stared at her.

“God bless you, miss,” he said, hoarsely, and put his cap back on, and mounted, and rode out through the arch.

Wren stood a moment in the cold, watching the frost on the gate, and then she became aware that she was not alone.

Atticus Vale stood under the stable arch with his dark riding coat silvered at the shoulders and a horse already saddled behind him. He had clearly been there the entire time, and he had clearly heard every word.

“Do all household charities,” he said, “involve rent negotiations?”

Wren closed her eyes briefly, and let it out through her nose.

“Do all dukes listen at stable doors?”

“Only interesting ones.”

“Doors.”

“Conversations.” He came forward, leading the horse, and stopped a respectful distance away. “You promised him another month.”

“I did.”

“Can you give it?”

“I already have.”

“You are very confident, for a woman whose father signs the papers.”

“I have been confident,” she said, “and then corrected, and then confident again, for a little over a year.”

He was quiet. She rubbed her thumb over the faint ink stain on her glove — a habit, a nervous thing, the one her hands did when her mouth was being careful.

“Thirteen months ago,” she said, because he had asked nothing and that somehow made it easier, “my father dismissed our steward. Mr. Pike. His crime was bringing unpleasant numbers into the library where guests could see them.”

“I had heard something of that.”

“Someone had to keep the accounts.” She looked toward the stone wall and the fields beyond it, where a line of bare elms stood black against the sky. “Ashmoor employs twenty-nine servants and eighteen tenant families. The coal bills do not stop arriving because the gentleman responsible for them dislikes opening envelopes.”

Atticus said nothing for long enough that she turned to look at him.

There was no amusement on his face now. There was only attention, and something underneath it that she could not name and did not entirely trust, because it was too close to recognition.

“And your sisters know?”

“They know I am always busy. My mother prefers not to ask why.” Wren’s mouth tightened. “My father knows exactly why.”

“Yet yesterday he described you as having no interest in agricultural matters.”

“Father has always believed competence becomes unattractive when it is displayed by the wrong daughter.”

“And which daughter is that?”

“The one standing in front of you.”

It came out sharper than she had intended. She turned away at once, annoyed at herself — the sudden sting behind her eyes was ridiculous, was a waste, was the sort of thing she had spent years teaching herself not to feel in front of anyone. She had no right to it.

Atticus did not offer pity. He simply came and stood beside her in the cold, facing the same fields, and after a while he said:

“At Thornbury, people agree with me before I finish speaking.”

She glanced at him sideways.

“That sounds dreadful.”

“It is surprisingly inefficient.”

A reluctant smile pulled at her mouth. “Perhaps you should become poorer. A radical solution, but effective.”

His quiet laugh was a low sound in the cold air, and it warmed something in her chest that she had no business allowing to be warmed.

For several seconds they watched a groom lead a chestnut horse across the yard. Shared silence settled between them without demanding anything of it.

“Why haven’t you married?” he asked.

Wren stiffened. “That is rather direct.”

“I am told.”

“By whom?”

“Me. Subtlety wastes time.”

She shook her head slowly. “There were no serious offers.”

“I find that difficult to believe.”

Wren studied the frost beneath her boots, and considered lying, and decided she was too tired and too cold to bother.

“My sisters were presented first. Then there was always another season, another expense, another reason I should wait. Celeste was to be married, and then Verity, and then Blythe, and by the time it came round to me there was no money left for a season, and no reason to spend what was left.” She shrugged, once. “It was never a decision anyone made aloud.”

Atticus understood before she finished. She heard it in his voice.

“They kept you useful.”

She said nothing at all.

His voice came softer. “Invisible.”

Wren’s breath clouded between them. “You make it sound deliberate.”

“Wasn’t it?”

Before she could answer — before she had even decided whether she was going to answer — a servant came hurrying across the yard with a folded note held out flat in both hands.

“Miss Wren. This came from Mr. Quill in town. He says it’s urgent.”

Wren’s face changed at the name, and she knew it, and she took the letter anyway.