It was astonishing, Martha thought two mornings later, how swiftly human beings could grow used to the unlikely.
Only three days had passed since she first set foot in Corbyn Hall, and yet the pattern that had begun to form already felt as though it had roots.
Lessons at nine. Fractions, then geography, then history. An hour after luncheon for reading. Walks in the muddy garden when the weather allowed, corridors when it did not. Arguments, always. Of the intellectual sort and the childish sort and, increasingly, the sort that teetered somewhere between the two.
And now, unexpectedly, a new rhythm: the marquess in the schoolroom.
He had come again the following day. On time, as promised. He had taken up his post by the window, arms folded, expression guarded. He said little, at first. But when Mabel struggled with the concept of longitude, he had reached for the globe, straightened the dent with a firm hand, and begun to explain the Greenwich meridian in a voice that betrayed more engagement than he might have liked.
“Imagine,” he had said, kneeling so that his eyes were level with hers, “that the world is a great orange. You must decide where to make the first cut. Once you have it, all others follow.”
“Can we eat it after?” Mabel had asked.
“No,” he had said. “Because it is a globe, not an orange.”
“Then this is a terrible metaphor,” Mabel had declared.
“Welcome to the world of politics,” he had murmured, with a glance at Martha that suggested he knew exactly what he was saying.
Today, he came a little earlier.
Martha was on her knees in front of Agnes’s chair when his shadow darkened the doorway. Agnes’s hair, still damp from its morning wash, curled damply around her temples. The fever had at last retreated enough to allow her downstairs, but it had left in its wake a lassitude that clung.
“You must sit still,” Martha was saying. “If we are to read, you may not use the book as a hat.”
“It was bored,” Agnes whispered. “I was trying to give it a more interesting view.”
“She insists the pages can see,” Mabel offered from her place by the window, where she was supposed to be copying capitals and was instead sketching something that looked suspiciously like a one-legged dragon.
“Books see everything,” Agnes said solemnly. “They have more eyes than spiders.”
Richard stopped just inside the threshold.
“Good morning,” he said.
Three heads turned.
Mabel’s face split in a grin. Agnes brightened perceptibly. Miriam, seated at the small table with a quill in her hand, blinked as though she had been pulled from some internal landscape.
“You are early,” Miriam said, with the same inexorable attention to punctuality she had displayed two days before.
“I had no hedgerow disputes this morning,” he said. “The tenants are either content or avoiding me. Either way, it saves time.”
“Perhaps they have taken their hedgerows and gone to London,” Mabel suggested.
“It is too early for satire,” Martha said.
“It is never too early for satire,” Richard countered.
She did not look at him. Her hands were occupied with tying Agnes’s sash more securely.
“It is always too early,” she said, “to encourage Mabel to discover the delights of mockery before she has fully grasped spelling.”
Mabel scowled. “I can spell.”
“Then write it,” Martha said. “Ten times. ‘Mockery without understanding is only noise.’”
“Ten?” Mabel groaned.
“Eight,” Martha amended. “I am not a monster.”
“You are certainly not,” Richard murmured, his gaze resting briefly, almost unconsciously, on the curve of her neck above the simple collar of her gown.
Heat flickered low in Martha’s abdomen at the weight of it. Much like that night in the library, some part of her reacted before her mind could scold it.
She straightened, smoothing Agnes’s hair once more, and turned.
“My lord,” she said. “You honour us again.”
His mouth quirked. “Do not sound so surprised, Miss Harrow. I *did* say I would come.”
“You also said,” she returned, “that you loathed fractions, and yet you bore them with exemplary stoicism. One cannot be expected to predict a man so at odds with himself.”
Miriam’s quill scratched, paused.
“I do not hate fractions as much today,” she said, in a tone that suggested this admission cost her almost as much as an apology.
“Progress,” Martha announced. “We should commemorate it. Perhaps with tea.”
“We always have tea,” Mabel pointed out.
“Not *in here*,” Martha said. “Mrs. Pritchard is very firm on the segregation of tea and ink. She believes the two are natural enemies.”
“Mrs. Pritchard believes many things are natural enemies,” Agnes whispered. “Mice and wainscoting. Curtains and sunlight. Fathers and arriving on time.”
“She is not wrong about the last,” Richard said. “Though I am attempting reform.”
“So we have observed,” Martha said. “And so we must reinforce. Children, what do we do when someone attempts to improve?”
“Mock them,” Mabel said promptly.
“No,” Martha said. “Encourage them. Then mock them privately.”
Agnes giggled, then coughed. Once. Twice. She counted, solemn, under her breath.
Martha checked the clock. “We shall do half an hour of dictation,” she decided. “Then, if Agnes’s cough has not multiplied beyond all reason, we shall take a short walk as far as the south lawn. Fresh air will do very well. Mud, less so. Boots and cloaks will be required.”
“Boots!” Mabel cheered. “I love boots.”
“You love mud,” Miriam corrected. “Boots are merely complicit.”
“Complicity,” Martha said, chalk already in hand. “Now there is a word we might explore.” She turned to the blackboard and wrote it, letters looping firm and clear. “Who can define it?”
“It is when you help someone do a naughty thing,” Agnes said.
“More precisely,” Martha said, “when you participate in a wrong act, by action or inaction. If Mabel watches Miriam set fire to her arithmetic and does nothing, she is complicit.”
“I would never set fire to arithmetic,” Miriam said. “It is not worth the wood.”
Richard made a strangled noise.
“You must *tell* me when you intend to say such things,” he said. “I nearly choked.”
“It is not my task to alert you to your own amusement,” Martha said over her shoulder. “That, my lord, is your affair.”
His eyes narrowed slightly at the repetition of *my lord*. She had, he noted, avoided his given name since that midnight in the library. Avoided, but not forgotten. The one time it had almost slipped out the previous day—on her tongue, rounded and soft—he had seen her catch it back behind her teeth.
He could not decide whether he was grateful or disappointed.
***
They took their walk.
The day was bright but cold, the sky a washed-out blue like a memory of summer. Martha bundled Agnes in two shawls and a cloak that had evidently belonged to some older relative, for the sleeves fell past her hands and the hem dragged.
“I am a cloak ghost,” Agnes announced, arms outstretched, fabric billowing.
“You are a draught,” Mabel said. “Blow away and leave us in peace.”
“You will not speak thus to your sister,” Martha said mildly. “If you must insult someone, you may insult me. Governesses are very sturdy.”
“Miss Harrow,” Mabel said promptly, “you are a hedgerow.”
Martha blinked. “Am I.”
“Yes,” Mabel said. “Always in the way.”
“That is an excellent start,” Martha said. “Now add detail. Am I a thorny hedgerow? A tidy one? An overgrown one harbouring smugglers?”
“Smugglers?” Mabel’s eyes widened. “Do we have those?”
“Only of ideas,” Richard said under his breath.
He had come with them. It had taken half an hour of debating with himself, another ten minutes of wandering aimlessly in the corridor outside the schoolroom, and a brief conversation with Mrs. Pritchard about the state of the south lawn (“soft, my lord, but not swamp”) before he had, almost despite himself, put on his boots and coat and followed.
Now he walked slightly ahead, his longer stride checking itself every few steps to match theirs.
Martha watched, brows drawn against the wind.
He did not hover, as some fathers did, barking injunctions or plucking at sleeves. He did not pace at a great distance either, aloof and untouchable. He walked as someone who had once been easy on this land. A man whose boots knew the rise of each root, the dip of each stone.
“Am I harbouring smugglers?” she prompted Mabel.
“Yes,” Mabel said firmly. “Of *books*.”
“Books are not smugglers,” Agnes protested. “They are cargo.”
“Enough,” Miriam said. “If you speak of smugglers within Father’s hearing, he will send for the magistrate and we will be deprived of our metaphors.”
Richard glanced back.
“I am not a complete killjoy,” he said.
“You are sufficiently killjoy to ban theatricals,” Miriam retorted.
“I do not ban theatricals,” he said. “I ban unsupervised theatricals involving open flames and ladders.”
“That was one time,” Mabel muttered.
Martha slowed her steps until she fell into pace beside him.
“You disapprove of theatricals?” she inquired.
“I disapprove of broken necks,” he said. “And of seeing my daughters cast as tragic heroines in their own improvised productions.”
Martha’s brows rose. “They enact tragedies?”
“They *attempt* to. Their last play featured a duchess, three highwaymen, and a very confused milkmaid,” he said. “Dialogue consisted largely of shrieking. I suppose Aristotle would call it a failure of catharsis.”
“Aristotle,” Martha said, “never met Mabel.”
“Indeed,” he said dryly. “If he had, he might have reconsidered his thoughts on mimesis.”
She smiled, unexpected. The wind seized a strand of brown hair and tugged it free of her cap. It whipped across her cheek. Without thinking, she lifted a hand to push it back.
Without thinking, he reached out.
His fingers brushed hers at her temple.
The contact was fleeting. Bare skin against bare skin for the space of a heartbeat.
It was enough.
A spark jumped, hot and immediate, from that small point of contact down his arm and into his chest. Into his gut. It was as though his body, dormant too long, had been jolted awake.
She snatched her hand back as if singed.
“Thank you,” she said, voice suddenly tight.
“Your cap is—” He gestured, then dropped his hand, cursed himself. “The pins are insufficient.”
“They are of long experience,” she said. “The wind is simply more determined.”
He made a noncommittal sound. His fingers felt oddly bereft, his palm tingling.
They walked in silence for several paces, each acutely conscious of the other’s presence in a way neither wished to examine.
Agnes, oblivious, trotted ahead, her too-large cloak flapping. Mabel darted after a crow that had the temerity to land on the lawn. Miriam, more subdued, walked slightly behind, eyes flicking from the hedgerows to the house and back as though measuring distances known only to her.
“Have you plans for this afternoon?” Martha asked, to distract herself.
“More lessons,” he said. “The steward wishes to review the tenants’ accounts. And Cook insists I sample some new abomination involving suet.”
“I meant,” Martha said patiently, “for the children.”
“Ah.” He cleared his throat. “No.”
“Then I do,” she said. “We will begin Latin conjugations for Miriam and Mabel; Agnes may listen if she likes, though I do not intend to mention the word ‘conjugation’ to her yet, or she will imagine dishes.”
“She already conjugates ‘to cough’ with distressing frequency,” he muttered.
“A cough is not a verb,” Martha said. “It is an exclamation. Like ‘oh’ or ‘damn’.”
His mouth twitched.
“Do you swear often, Miss Harrow?” he asked.
“In my head, frequently,” she said. “Aloud, only when no one is listening. Or when someone particularly deserves it.”
“And do I?” he asked, something dangerous in his tone.
“Not yet,” she said. “You have shown improvement.”
“I am glad to meet your exacting standards,” he said.
“You should be,” she replied. “They are the same I apply to myself.”
He glanced at her, a question in his eyes, but she had already turned to call out to Agnes, who had strayed too close to a particularly treacherous patch of mud.
“Only the edges,” she warned. “If you sink to your ankles, Mrs. Pritchard will use *all* her disapproval upon you, and there will be none left for me.”
Agnes skipped back, giggling.
They made it as far as the crumbling stone ha-ha at the edge of the south lawn before Martha declared it enough.
“Back inside,” she commanded. “We shall not test Agnes’s lungs further. Nor the structural integrity of your boots.”
“I like testing things,” Mabel complained.
“Test your spelling,” Martha said. “It does not leak.”
***
That afternoon, for the first time since her arrival, Martha found herself summoned to take tea not in the nursery, but in the small morning room adjacent to the library.
Mrs. Pritchard delivered the invitation with all the solemnity of a royal decree.
“His lordship wishes to speak with you,” she said, hands folded over her apron. “At four o’clock. In the morning room.”
“About?” Martha asked.
“The girls,” Mrs. Pritchard said. Her expression did something odd, tightly contained. “And other matters, I do not doubt.”
“Is there a particular reason tea is involved?” Martha inquired.
“It is the hour for it,” Mrs. Pritchard said. “And because he will be less likely to shout at a woman if his mouth is occupied.”
“Your faith in the soothing powers of China leaves is misplaced,” Martha murmured. “But I will attend.”
She dressed, such as she could, for the occasion: fresh fichu, the least frayed of her cuffs, the gown brushed free of chalk. She pinned her hair more firmly beneath her cap—a futile effort, but one made nonetheless—and checked for ink on her fingers.
At four, she knocked on the morning room door.
“Come.”
She entered.
The room had once been cheerful. The faded rose wallpaper, the low sofa, the lace-curtained windows facing east—all spoke of some long-departed lady who had taken her tea here, perhaps, and written notes on scented paper. Now, a layer of dust dulled the sheen. The curtains were clean but thin. The sofa’s stuffing had shifted oddly.
Richard stood by the window, cup in hand.
“It appears,” he said, “that we are to play at civility.”
“Tea is never play,” Martha said. “It is war conducted by other means.”
His brows lifted. “You take your beverages seriously.”
“Anything worth doing is worth doing well,” she said.
He gestured to the small table where a tray had been set. Mrs. Pritchard, it seemed, had deployed her best china: thin cups with gold rims, a teapot without a chip, a plate of finger sandwiches that looked earnest if not elegant.
Martha poured for them both, hands steady. Years of vicarage hospitality had left her adept at pouring tea in tense silence.
At last, Richard cleared his throat.
“I have been thinking,” he said. “About terms.”
“Your terms or mine?” she asked.
“Mine, in this case,” he said. “You have imposed enough of yours for the moment.”
“It is not imposition,” she said. “It is mutual understanding.”
He ignored that.
“I have… observed you with the girls,” he said. “In the schoolroom. In the garden.” He hesitated. “You have a talent for… irritating them into thinking.”
“I shall embroider that on a pillow,” she said.
“And you have a talent for irritating me as well,” he added.
“Ah.” She sipped her tea. “Then at least I am consistent.”
He watched her over the rim of his cup.
“It is… not an entirely unwelcome irritation,” he admitted.
The words surprised them both.
He set the cup down.
“I asked you here,” he said more briskly, “to make certain expectations plain.”
“Do,” she said. “I am excessively fond of plainness.”
“You will continue,” he said, “to have charge of their daily lessons. You will set their schedule as you see fit, within the bounds of propriety. I expect them to be able, within a year, to acquit themselves decently in any drawing room. They must read, write, speak French and basic Italian, dance without falling over, and hold their tongues when necessary.”
“That is a great many ‘musts’ for three children raised largely without example,” she said. “But I will endeavour to meet them. With the exception of the last.”
He frowned. “Holding their tongues?”
“Yes,” she said. “I will not teach them to swallow their thoughts entirely. I will teach them when to speak and when to hold. There is a difference.”
“Semantics,” he said.
“Survival,” she said.
His jaw worked. “Very well. Nuanced tongues, then. But whatever you teach them, it must not render them ridiculous in society’s eyes. They will have enough to overcome as it is.”
“On account of their mother,” she said quietly.
He looked away. “And their father.”
She waited.
“You know,” he said, “that rumours have circulated. About her. About me. About why we do not appear in town. I have kept them here, in part, to shield them from that. But I cannot keep them here forever.”
“The world must be faced,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “But I would have them go into it armed, not exposed.”
She studied him. There was something almost naked in his expression, some depth of concern that, had she not already believed in his affection, would have convinced her now.
“I will arm them as best I can,” she said. “With knowledge, with poise, with the ability to think beyond their first impulse. I cannot change the world’s judgment of you or of her. I can only help them withstand it.”
He nodded, once. “That is all I ask.”
“I doubt it,” she said softly.
His eyes snapped back to hers.
“You doubt much,” he observed.
“I have earned the right,” she said.
“So you have,” he allowed.
He toyed with the handle of his cup.
“There is another matter,” he said.
“Of course there is,” she said. “You do not summon governesses to tea merely to discuss conjugations.”
A flicker of something like humour crossed his face.
“No,” he said. “There is the question of… boundaries.”
“Ah,” she said. “We return to fences and hedgerows.”
“You must not,” he said quietly, “Be alone with me in ways that invite talk.”
Her brows rose. “We are alone now.”
“We are in a public room,” he countered. “At a respectable hour. The door is open. Pritchard passed twice in the last ten minutes. That is not what I mean.”
“You mean after midnight in the library,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Do you fear Pritchard’s censure?” she asked.
“I fear,” he said, “many things. Mrs. Pritchard’s disapproval is, oddly, one of the least of them.”
“Then what?” she pressed.
He looked at her, something raw flaring briefly in his eyes.
“I fear,” he said slowly, “myself.”
Silence pooled between them.
Martha set her cup down very carefully.
“In what sense?” she asked. Her voice was steady. She was absurdly proud of that.
“In the sense,” he said, “that I am a man who has not shared a roof with a woman of your age and intelligence for five years. In the sense that I am not immune to… temptation. And that I have, thus far, kept my conscience intact more by isolation than by virtue.”
Heat rose in her cheeks. Low in her belly, something tightened—not entirely in alarm.
“I see,” she said.
“I am not,” he went on harshly, “Ashcombe.”
“I know,” she said.
“You do not,” he said. “You know nothing of what—”
“I know enough,” she cut in. “I know Ashcombe pursued your wife with studied charm and selfish intent. I know he lured her away with promises of pleasure and freedom. I know he left a trail of wreckage behind him, which men like you were left to clear. You are not Ashcombe.”
He swallowed.
“You are very certain,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Ashcombe was a man who believed the world existed for his gratification. You are a man who believes the world is his responsibility. Those two types rarely overlap.”
“Responsibility and temptation are not mutually exclusive,” he said. “Ask any parson.”
“Ask any governess,” she snapped. “We, too, are tempted. To steal a moment alone. To resent the children in our care. To envy the women who wear gowns we mend and lives we cannot share. Do you think you are the only one in this equation with urges to master?”
His gaze dropped to her mouth.
“Perhaps not,” he said, very low.
The air between them seemed suddenly thinner.
Martha’s pulse thudded at her throat. She forced herself to breathe evenly.
“Then we are agreed,” she said. “On this: we will be… careful.”
He snorted softly. “That word again. You are very fond of it.”
“It has served me well,” she said. “In houses less… complicated than this.”
“Has a vicarage ever outcomplicated a marquessate?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Regularly. You have never seen three curates and a bishop attempt to share a plum pudding.”
He smiled, involuntary. The lines around his eyes softened.
“Careful,” he echoed. “Very well. No more… midnight consultations.”
She hesitated.
“I did not come to you that night for… that,” she said. “You know that.”
“Yes,” he said. “I do. You came because you could not sleep. Because the roof leaked. Because Aristotle was displeasing in bed.”
“And,” she added, because anything less would be cowardly, “because I wanted to see you as you are when you are not performing expectation. For myself. Not for gossip.”
His fingers tightened around the cup.
“And what did you see?” he asked.
“A man,” she said. “Not only a marquess. Not only a wronged husband. A man who is clever and angry and very, very tired. A man who reads to avoid feeling, and feels more than he will allow himself to name.”
He inhaled sharply.
“You presume—”
“Yes,” she said. “I presume. It is how one learns. You may correct me where I err.”
“Sometimes,” he said, “I lack the energy to correct you. I am too busy being irritated by how often you are right.”
She smiled, small and bright.
“You will also,” he added, “avoid walking alone with me in the gardens. Or any other similarly compromising environs.”
“Because the hedgerows will talk?” she asked, arch.
“Because servants do,” he said. “And because the world is not kind to women in your position, whether or not they have done anything to invite its censure.”
“I know,” she said.
“And yet you came to the library at midnight,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Because if I lived my life entirely according to what servants might say, I would never say anything worth hearing.”
“You have an answer ready for everything,” he muttered.
“Almost everything,” she said. “I am occasionally silent.”
“I have yet to see it,” he said.
She laughed, unexpectedly. The sound loosened something in his chest.
“On a more prosaic note,” he said, regaining some of his earlier stiffness, “Mrs. Pritchard has informed me that the nursery requires… repairs.”
“Repairs,” she repeated, cautiously hopeful.
“Yes,” he said. “The fireplace smokes. One of the windows does not hang properly. And the ceiling—”
“Leeks,” she said.
“Leaks,” he corrected.
“Depends on whether you prefer vegetables or water,” she said.
He glared, half-hearted. “I have authorized the necessary work. Carpenters will come next week. It will be noisy, disruptive, and expensive.”
“Good,” she said simply.
“Good?” he repeated.
“Yes,” she said. “They will see that things can change. That cracks can be mended. That not everything broken stays so indefinitely.”
His throat worked. “You make rather a great deal of a window frame.”
“I make rather a great deal of *anything* that contradicts despair,” she said quietly.
He looked at her for a long moment.
“There is,” he said at last, “another matter. A more delicate one.”
“More delicate than midnight and temptation?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
She set her cup down. “Proceed.”
He shifted, visibly ill at ease.
“You are—” He stopped. Began again. “In this house, you are in an ambiguous position. Neither servant nor family. The girls… do not wholly understand that ambiguity. They are liable—”
“To attach,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “And to feel, later, that attachment as betrayal.”
She drew a breath. Here it was. The old, familiar ache. The thing every governess knew and almost none said aloud.
“I am aware,” she said. “That I am, to them, a… temporary mother. Of a sort. And that I am not permanent. That sooner or later, they will lose me. Whether by your choice or mine or the world’s.”
“And you accept that?” he asked, incredulous.
“What is the alternative?” she asked. “To hold them at arm’s length until they learn not to reach? That, too, is betrayal.”
He flinched.
“I would rather,” she went on, “they have some years of feeling safe with me, even if it ends in pain, than a lifetime of not trusting anyone. They will lose many things in this life. I will not have them lose the idea that affection can be real, even when it does not last forever.”
“You speak as though you expect to leave,” he said.
She met his gaze.
“I have been dismissed before for less than correcting a marquess,” she said. “I would be a fool not to expect it as a possibility.”
“I have no intention of dismissing you,” he said irritably. “Unless you seduce the vicar or burn down the stable.”
“I have no intention of doing either,” she said. “But life is not always governed by intention.”
He stared at her a moment, then sighed.
“I am not a monster,” he said again, more to himself than to her. “I will not turn them against you when the time comes for you to go. If it must.”
“Thank you,” she said softly.
He took a breath.
“And in the meantime,” he said, “I will… trust your judgment. In their education. In their tempers.”
Her brows rose. “That is a great deal of trust for a man who met me three days ago.”
He twitched a shoulder. “I am not entirely incapable of reading character.”
“You read mine and decide I will not corrupt your daughters?” she asked.
“If anyone corrupts them,” he said dryly, “it will be me. With philosophy.”
“The most dangerous corrupter of all,” she said.
He looked suddenly, startlingly young then, despite the streaks of fatigue and the ink on his fingers.
“I do not know,” he said quietly, “how to be what they need. Not yet. But I am willing to be instructed.”
The admission moved her more than any declaration of resolve could have done.
“Then,” she said. “We will instruct each other.”
His gaze dropped to her hands, folded on her lap.
“Carefully,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Carefully.”
He did not know then that carefulness, once invited into a house already strained with unspoken things, had a way of collapsing neatly arranged boundaries. One slow, precise cut at a time.
***