The day of their arrival dawned bright and raw, the kind of late-March morning that held both promise and spite. The sun shone determinedly between grey clouds. The air snapped at exposed fingers like a small dog.
Martha had not truly slept.
She had written to Thomas, received his brief reply—*Prepare yourself. Mother is determined to be a credit to your marquess and to cough only in corners*—and then thrown herself into the small war of preparing Corbyn Hall for an extra body.
Mrs. Pritchard had sniffed, grumbled, and set maids scrubbing the blue room. Cook had muttered about extra mouths and the price of beef. The girls, once told, had reacted according to their natures.
“A *grandmother*,” Mabel had breathed. “Like in stories.”
“You have always had one,” Miriam had pointed out. “She was simply far away.”
“Stories do not say they are far away,” Mabel had argued. “They say grandmothers live in cottages and give gingerbread.”
Agnes had coughed and asked, very small, “Will she like us?”
“She will love you,” Martha had said, with a conviction she hoped would be borne out.
“She will,” Richard had said, surprising them all. “Any woman with sense would.”
Martha had tried very hard not to look at him then.
Now, as the bells in the village church struck eleven, she found herself on the front steps, cloak wrapped tight, bonnet strings tugged by the wind.
She should, perhaps, have waited inside. She was a governess, after all. Not mistress of this house. But she could not. Her feet had carried her to the door of their own accord at the first distant rumble of wheels on the lane.
The carriage that came into view was not grand. No crest on the panels. No lacquered shine. A sturdy hired conveyance, its paint worn in places, its axles protesting the ruts.
Thomas sat atop, hat jammed low against the wind, hair escaping beneath it anyway. He had grown thinner, Martha thought, but his posture still held that indefatigable energy she envied.
Inside, through the small clouded window, she glimpsed a pale face framed in grey hair.
Her throat closed.
The carriage drew up. The driver set the brake, scrambled down. Thomas was already swinging himself off, landing lightly on the gravel.
“Martha,” he called, grinning. “You have not grown a whit.”
She laughed, breathless.
“Nor have you,” she said. “In wisdom.”
“I am wise enough to bring Mother to you,” he said, spreading his arms as if presenting a masterpiece. “Do I not deserve a laurel for that?”
“You will get a shawl,” she said. “And a lecture.”
He winced. “Perhaps I will take the laurel instead.”
The carriage door opened from within.
Martha’s heart thudded.
Her mother stepped carefully down, one hand on the driver’s arm, the other clutching her small reticule.
She had shrunk.
Martha had known, of course, that illness ate at people. But seeing it—her mother’s frame diminished inside her black cloak, her shoulders narrower, her face more deeply lined—made Martha’s eyes sting.
“Mama,” she said.
Her mother looked up.
“Martha,” she said.
They moved together at once.
Her mother’s arms were not as strong as they had been. But they wrapped around Martha with the same intentness, the same fierce holding. Martha inhaled the familiar scent—lavender, ink, the faint medicinal tang of camphor.
“You are too thin,” her mother murmured into her ear.
“So are you,” Martha replied, voice catching.
“Then we are a matched set,” her mother said, pulling back to look at her. “My dear girl. Let me see you.”
Martha submitted, cheeks flushed, as her mother’s gaze took inventory: the lines at her mouth, the smudge of ink she had missed at her wrist, the slight tightness around her eyes.
“You look… older,” her mother said gently.
“I am,” Martha said. “It happens.”
Her mother’s fingers brushed her cheek.
“And brighter,” she added. “The mind is being used. I can see it. That is something.”
“It is,” Martha agreed. “You must sit, Mama. The steps—”
“Nonsense,” her mother said, though she was breathing a little faster. “We will go inside in a moment. First, you must introduce me to the house.”
“The house?” Martha blinked.
“Yes,” her mother said. “You have written so much of it. ‘Broken Oaks’.” She glanced at the long façade, the ivy, the repaired but still weathered stone. “It looks… stubborn.”
“That,” Thomas said, “is exactly the word I used for the marquess.”
“Mama,” Martha hissed. “This is not—”
“Not the time? Not the place?” Thomas grinned. “You forget, I am accustomed to saying the wrong thing at both.”
“You had better accustom yourself to saying the right things now.” A new voice intruded. “We have impressionable ears at every keyhole.”
Richard stood in the open doorway, coat on, cravat tied, hair marginally more controlled than usual. He descended two steps, then stopped, as if unwilling to step fully into their familial circle.
“Lord Corbyn,” Martha said, schooling her face. “May I present my mother, Mrs. Harrow. And my brother, Mr. Thomas Harrow.”
Her mother straightened.
“My lord,” she said, with a neat curtsey. It was neither obsequious nor defiant. Simply… correct.
“Mrs. Harrow.” He inclined his head. “Welcome to Corbyn Hall.”
“Thank you for receiving me,” she said. “My daughter has written of your… hospitality.”
Martha nearly choked.
“Has she?” he asked, one brow faintly raised. “She must have chosen her words carefully.”
“She did,” Mrs. Harrow said. “She always has.”
Thomas stepped forward, sketching what might generously be called a bow.
“My lord,” he said. “I understand you like philosophers more than violinists. I shall keep my instrument in its case.”
“For now,” Richard said. “We will reassess once I have heard you.”
“You assume I will play for you,” Thomas said.
“You assume I wish to listen,” Richard returned.
Martha closed her eyes briefly. “Gentlemen,” she muttered.
Her mother’s lips twitched.
“Shall we go in?” Richard said, offering his arm.
To Martha’s faint surprise, he offered it not to her, but to Mrs. Harrow.
Her mother blinked, then laid a light hand on his sleeve.
“You are very kind, my lord,” she said.
“Not at all,” he replied. “If I allow you to collapse on my steps, Pritchard will never forgive me the stain.”
They moved inside. Thomas trailed, carrying a small case and a bundle.
Martha walked a step behind, oddly suspended between worlds: governess and daughter, deferential and familiar.
The entrance hall, dim and echoing, seemed to straighten under Mrs. Harrow’s gaze.
“It is handsome,” she said. “Even tired, it is handsome.”
“You are charitable,” Richard said.
“I am accurate,” she replied. “My late husband would have rhapsodized over your cornices and deplored your draughts.”
“He would have been correct on both counts,” Richard said.
“Then you have something in common already,” Thomas put in cheerfully. “My father rhapsodized over everything.”
Mrs. Harrow’s fingers tightened briefly on Richard’s arm. A flicker of pain crossed her face. Then it was gone.
“Come,” Martha said. “Let me show you your room.”
Richard relinquished Mrs. Harrow to her, stepping aside.
“The blue room is ready,” he said. “Pritchard has bullied the maids into making it fit for the Queen. At least, the Queen as we imagine her, which may be more flattering than reality.”
“I am certain it will be more than I require,” Mrs. Harrow said.
“We will see,” he replied.
Their eyes met briefly. A silent exchange.
Then Martha guided her mother down the passage toward the ground-floor room that had been hastily aired, scrubbed, and furnished with an extra quilt.
Thomas fell into step beside Richard.
“You have done a great kindness,” he said, low enough that the women ahead might not hear. “To my sister. And to Mother. She will never say so properly. She believes gratitude is best expressed in casseroles, not words.”
“Cook will not allow her near the kitchen,” Richard muttered.
“Then she will be forced to attempt conversation instead,” Thomas said. “You have my sympathy.”
Richard gave him a sideways glance.
“You are very free with your tongue, Mr. Harrow,” he said.
“I am a musician,” Thomas said. “It flaps of its own accord.”
“Do you always speak thus to your elders?” Richard asked.
“Only those I suspect are not as old as they feel,” Thomas replied.
Richard huffed. “Cheek and flattery in one sentence. You are dangerous.”
“So Martha tells me,” Thomas said, grinning.
Richard watched his profile. The resemblance to Martha was there in the line of the jaw, the set of the mouth. But where she contained herself, he spilled. Energy, words, a kind of reckless brightness.
“You send her most of your wages,” Richard said abruptly. “From what she has said.”
Thomas’s grin faltered, then returned, more modestly.
“As she sends me most of hers,” he said. “We have been engaged in that particular duet for some time.”
“You must find it… tiresome,” Richard said.
“Tiresome?” Thomas shook his head. “Occasionally terrifying. Often frustrating. Never tiresome. It is what families do, is it not? Pass the same coins round a table and call it dinner.”
Richard thought of the Corbyn inheritance. Of estates and rents and investments carefully shepherded by stewards, all flowing, in the end, to a single name. Of daughters who had never lacked for food and yet who lacked for something else.
“I would not know,” he said quietly.
Thomas glanced at him, eyes shrewd.
“No,” he said. “I suppose you would not.”
They reached the blue room.
Inside, Mrs. Harrow stood by the window, one hand on the sill, looking out at the south lawn.
“It is… very fine,” she said as they entered. “I shall feel quite grand coughing here.”
“You will feel warmer, at least,” Martha said. “The sun reaches this room first.”
“And the draughts last, I hope,” Thomas muttered.
“Hush,” his mother said. “We are guests.”
“You are family of my governess,” Richard said. “If anyone attempts to treat you poorly, they will have me to answer to. And Miss Harrow. Which is worse.”
Mrs. Harrow smiled faintly.
“I have no doubt my daughter can defend both herself and me,” she said. “She always has.”
“Even so,” he said, “there are times when another shield is useful.”
Mrs. Harrow’s gaze sharpened.
“Do you see yourself as a shield, my lord?” she asked.
He blinked.
“Sometimes,” he said. “When my daughters remember I exist.”
“And when they do not?” she pressed gently.
He hesitated.
“Then,” he said, “Miss Harrow wields the shield for us all.”
Martha cleared her throat.
“Mama, you must sit,” she said. “You are pale.”
“I am always pale,” her mother said. But she sank onto the chair by the hearth without protest.
Thomas set down her small case.
“I will unpack,” he said. “Else you will insist on doing it yourself, and the last time you tried to lift anything heavier than a hymnbook you coughed for a week.”
“I recall,” she said dryly. “You sang the hymns badly in sympathy.”
“I sang them with feeling,” he corrected.
“Which is not the same as accuracy,” she said.
Richard watched them with a peculiar sensation. As if he were watching a play from very close to the stage. The intimacy of their bickering, the ease of it, pressed against some unhealed place in him.
This, he thought, was a family.
Not a perfect one. Not a wealthy one. But a small knot of people who had learned the shapes of each other’s breaths.
He felt, acutely, his own distance from them. From his girls. From the easy interplay of affection and annoyance.
Martha glanced at him, reading something in his face.
“You have hedgerows to consult,” she said gently. “And tenants to terrify. Mama will rest. Thomas will unpack. I will—”
“You will not do everything yourself,” her mother cut in. “You will sit down for five minutes and let me look at you.”
“I have already sat,” Martha protested.
“Not in the last ten minutes,” her mother said. “Which is far too long for my peace of mind.”
“A formidable woman,” Richard murmured under his breath to Thomas.
“You have no idea,” Thomas whispered back.
Richard cleared his throat.
“I will… leave you,” he said. “If you require anything, Pritchard—”
“Will terrify us into good health, I am sure,” Mrs. Harrow said. “Thank you, my lord. For opening your house to… vicarage detritus.”
He stiffened.
“I do not consider you detritus, madam,” he said. “Nor your children. Corbyn Hall has been too long empty of visitors who bring their own weather.”
Her eyes crinkled.
“Then we shall do our best to be a draught,” she said.
He inclined his head, retreated.
In the corridor, out of sight, he let out a breath he had not realized he was holding.
He had held himself taut, he realized, braced for disapproval. For some cutting remark about the state of the house, the irregularity of a governess’s position, his own absenteeism. It had not come. Instead, he had been met with humour. With shrewdness. With a particular, assessing kindness he recognized from Martha.
Dangerous, he thought again.
He ought to keep his distance.
He turned—to find Pritchard lurking a few yards away, arms folded, expression inscrutable.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Well what?” he said.
“She is thin,” Pritchard said. “And coughs. And looks at things as though she sees more than they show. Much like another Harrow who has invaded my domain.”
“One Harrow at a time is evidently insufficient,” he said.
Pritchard snorted.
“She will need broth,” she said. “Proper broth. Not Cook’s boiled water. I will see to it. And extra coal. And you will not allow the young ladies to pester her with questions until she has had a day to settle.”
“You presume to dictate to me?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “When you are apt to be foolish. It is my calling.”
He bit back a retort.
“Very well,” he said stiffly.
“And you,” she added, “will not skulk. They are here now. Best to be plainly seen.”
“I do not skulk,” he said.
“You lurk, then,” she said. “A shade in your own corridors. It unsettles the maids.”
He laughed, despite himself.
“You are intolerable, Pritchard,” he said.
“Someone must be,” she replied, and swept away.
***
That evening, the household gathered in a configuration it had not known for years.
In the drawing room—usually shut up to save coal—the fire burned brightly. Chairs had been moved closer. Mrs. Harrow, shawl around her shoulders, sat in a cushioned seat with a footstool. Martha occupied a nearby chair, basket of mending at hand. The girls were on the floor, Agnes tucked into a corner with a small quilt, Mabel and Miriam claimed by the hearth-rug.
Thomas stood by the pianoforte, violin tucked under his chin.
Richard lingered near the mantel, ostensibly listening, actually observing.
“Something cheerful,” Mrs. Harrow requested. “Not a dirge. We have enough of those in church.”
“Bach, then,” Thomas said. “He is mathematical joy.”
Mabel made a face. “Mathematical? Then no.”
“You like numbers now,” Martha reminded her. “They keep you from being cheated at cake.”
“That is the only good thing about them,” Mabel muttered.
Thomas lifted his bow.
The first notes unfurled into the room: precise, bright, rippling. He played with ease, the instrument an extension of him. The sound filled the spaces between the furniture, smoothed the rough edges of the day.
Agnes’s eyes drifted closed. Miriam, despite herself, leaned back against the sofa, head tipping.
Martha stitched, her needle moving in time with the music.
Richard watched her more than the violin.
The lamplight caught the curve of her cheek, the line of her throat, the small frown of concentration between her brows as she turned a cuff. She looked—he thought, surprising himself—with something like contentment.
Her mother watched her too, a faint smile deepening the lines around her mouth.
“You have settled,” Mrs. Harrow said quietly, during a lull between pieces.
“Settled?” Martha echoed.
“Your edges are less sharp,” her mother said. “You no longer look for the door at every moment.”
Martha’s fingers paused.
“I have doors to mind,” she said. “Literal ones. To keep Mabel from falling out of them.”
Her mother’s gaze slid, almost imperceptibly, toward Richard.
“And other doors,” she said.
He looked away, heat in his ears.
“I am… engaged,” Martha said, colour rising. “The children. The lessons. The carpenters. It leaves little time to pace.”
“Engagement suits you,” her mother said. “I worried you would… shrink. In service. You have not.”
Martha snorted softly. “If anything, I have expanded. My opinions have found fresh targets.”
Her mother’s hand, pale and thin, reached to pat her knee.
“I am glad,” she said simply.
Later, after music and tea and a great many questions from Mabel about vicarages and Bath and whether milk in Somerset tasted different, the younger girls were sent to bed. Miriam lingered, reluctantly carried off at last by Mrs. Pritchard’s inexorable hand.
The drawing room quieted.
Thomas set his violin aside, flexed his fingers.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Harrow said. “You play better in marquessates than in Bath.”
“The acoustics are superior,” he replied. “Your lodgings are too full of other people’s wheezes.”
Mrs. Harrow smiled faintly.
“Miss Harrow,” Richard said, after a time. “Will you take a turn about the room? You have been sitting for an hour. Pritchard will accuse me of letting you stiffen.”
She lifted a brow. “You are concerned for my joints?”
“I am concerned,” he said dryly, “for the noise you will make if you rise and find yourself unable to walk.”
She snorted, but rose, setting aside her mending.
He offered his arm.
She hesitated, conscious of her mother’s eyes, of Thomas’s, of the servants who would undoubtedly hear of any impropriety within minutes.
Yet this—this small, formal offer—was, on the surface, unexceptional. A marquess offering his governess a turn about the room, with her invalid mother present.
She laid her hand on his sleeve.
They walked.
“Your brother is tolerable,” Richard said under his breath.
“He will be insufferable when he hears that,” she murmured back. “He lives for aristocratic toleration.”
“And your mother,” he said, “is… formidable.”
“Yes,” she said. “She is. You must not let her bully you into extra church attendance.”
“She may bully me as she wishes,” he said. “She has earned a measure of indulgence I have not.”
Her fingers curled slightly against his arm.
“You are not… disturbed?” she asked, low, glancing up at him through her lashes. “By their presence?”
“Disturbed?” he repeated. “Yes. But not as you mean. I am… unsettled. It is one thing to be observed by a governess one pays. Another thing entirely to be observed by the woman who made that governess.”
“She will not judge you,” Martha said.
“Everyone judges,” he said. “In their own ledger. Your mother has already decided certain things.”
“Such as?” she challenged.
He smiled, brief.
“She has decided,” he said, “that I am a man who allows his house to fall into disrepair and his daughters to sit on the floor. She approves of the second and deplores the first. She has decided that I am clever enough to read philosophy and foolish enough to think it matters more than people. She has decided that I am not cruel. That is… something.”
Martha stared. “You gathered all that in an afternoon?”
“I have eyes,” he said. “And I have watched you. You are of her making. It follows.”
She swallowed.
“And you?” she asked. “What have you decided of her?”
“That she is tired,” he said. “But not done. That she misses your father but will not inflict that missing on anyone. That she is proud of you. And that she worries you will be… too much alone.”
“She is not wrong,” Martha said.
He glanced down at her.
“Are you?” he asked softly. “Too much alone?”
She shrugged.
“I am less alone now than I have been,” she said. “There are always children at my elbow. And a marquess in my library.”
“A tiresome creature,” he said.
“Frequently,” she said.
They reached the end of the room, turned.
Behind them, Thomas had resumed a soft melody, more for his own satisfaction than for any audience. Mrs. Harrow watched them with an expression that mingled contentment with worry.
“And you?” Martha said quietly to Richard. “Are you too much alone?”
“Yes,” he said. “Until fairly recently.”
Her breath hitched.
He looked straight ahead.
“Do not,” she said, equally quietly, “begin to speak in hypotheticals. We agreed.”
“This is not hypothetical,” he murmured. “It is simple fact.”
She clamped her lips together, said nothing.
They completed their circuit and returned to the chairs. Her hand slipped from his sleeve. Her skin felt oddly bereft.
As the evening wore on, as candles burned lower and yawns multiplied, the Harrows retired. Mrs. Harrow, leaning on her daughter’s arm. Thomas, promising to practice quietly in his room by stuffing socks into the f-holes of his violin.
Martha returned her mother to the blue room, settled her, tucked blankets.
“You are well placed,” Mrs. Harrow said, looking around. “This house. These people. This… marquess.”
“Mama,” Martha warned.
Her mother’s gaze sharpened.
“You have not written of him as you wrote of Lord Lennox,” she said. “Or of the rector’s family at your first post. There is less… bitterness. More… ink.”
“I am older,” Martha said. “Less given to melodrama.”
“You are more guarded,” her mother corrected. “For good reason. But your eyes, when you looked at him—”
“Mama,” Martha said again, sharper.
Mrs. Harrow subsided.
“I will not pry,” she said. “Not without cause.”
“You will,” Martha said wryly. “It is in your nature. But you may… temper it.”
Her mother smiled faintly.
“I see only this,” she said. “That he listens when you speak. That he does not dismiss you out of hand. That is… rare. Even among good men.”
“He is not—” Martha began, then stopped.
“He is not what?” her mother asked, softly.
“He is not… done,” Martha said. “He is mending. Like his house.”
Mrs. Harrow’s eyes softened.
“Then be careful,” she said. “When you lean against him. Partially built walls can still fall.”
Martha swallowed.
“I know,” she said.
She left her mother with a kiss on the brow and a promise to come early in the morning.
In the corridor, alone, she leaned briefly against the cool plaster.
Her mother in one room. Her charges in another. Her employer in his library.
Her life had become a series of doors behind which sat people she cared for in varying degrees and ways she could not afford to untangle.
She straightened. Went upstairs.
There would be time later, perhaps, to think.
For now, there were lessons to plan. Children to tend. A mother to coax into eating more than broth.
And, always, a marquess to argue into mending himself.
***