By the following week, Broken Oaks thrummed with a clamor it had not known in years.
The carpenters arrived on a Monday, two carts laden with timber and tools. They tramped through the halls in heavy boots, carrying ladders, muttering about rotten beams and drafty eaves. Their hammers rang overhead like belated cannon fire.
The girls, of course, were determined to be underfoot.
“They are *building*,” Mabel whispered in awe, nose pressed to the nursery window as two men hoisted planks onto the roof. “Like giants.”
“They are repairing,” Miriam corrected, but her eyes, too, were bright.
Agnes, who had been granted permission to sit in the rocking chair by the fire provided she kept her blanket over her knees, frowned thoughtfully. “Will they make the rain stop entirely?”
“No,” Martha said. “They will only encourage it to stay outside, where it belongs.”
“Rain belongs in clouds,” Agnes argued. “Or in poems.”
“A necessary nuisance,” Martha said. “Like governesses.”
“You are not a nuisance,” Mabel said promptly. “You are an irritation. There is a difference.”
“Very well,” Martha said. “Today I will irritate you with Latin verbs.”
Groans all around.
“You promised we would start this week,” she said. “I never break a promise relating to the torment of children.”
Mabel flopped onto the rug, arms splayed dramatically. “I expire.”
“You conjugate,” Martha corrected.
“If you die theatrically, at least do it in Latin,” Miriam muttered. “It will sound more impressive.”
“Father said that if we know Latin, we will understand lawyers,” Agnes said vaguely. “He said Latin is the language of men who write long sentences to say ‘no’.”
“Your father is not wholly wrong,” Martha said. She moved to the blackboard and wrote in large letters:
> AMO — I love > AMAS — You love > AMAT — He/She/It loves
“Oh,” Mabel said, peering. “This is pleasant.”
“Do not be deceived,” Miriam said darkly. “She will soon add ‘we love’ and ‘they love’ and ‘you love’ in different numbers, and then we will be surrounded.”
“Yes,” Martha said. “Love, in Latin, is inescapable.”
“Unlike in life,” Agnes murmured, startling them.
Martha stilled.
“Who said that to you?” she asked gently.
Agnes frowned, thinking. “Mrs. Pritchard. When Cook burned the pudding. She said, ‘love is like pudding—scarce and likely to be dropped.’”
Martha exhaled. “In future, we will avoid analogies involving pudding.”
“Pudding is comforting,” Agnes protested.
“Only when not on fire,” Mabel said.
Martha cleared her throat.
“Today,” she said briskly, “we will content ourselves with the present tense. ‘I love, you love, he loves.’ Tomorrow, perhaps, we will venture into the past. If you survive the present.”
By the time they had successfully conjugated *amo* in the present tense, pressed it into neat columns on their slates, and attached to it a series of ridiculous mental pictures (Mabel insisting that *amamus*—“we love”—must apply to a family of otters, Miriam decreeing that *amant*—“they love”—belonged exclusively to tragic heroines who loved their reputation more than their happiness), the midday bell had rung twice and Agnes was drooping.
“You will go and rest,” Martha said, tucking the blanket more firmly around her. “Miriam, will you carry her book of tales back to the nursery? Mabel, you may accompany us only if you promise not to fling yourself into any carpenter’s path.”
“I am very tired,” Mabel lied, yawning extravagantly. “Too tired to fling.”
“You are never too tired to fling,” Miriam said.
“You both talk too much,” Agnes murmured, already half-asleep.
Martha shepherded them back to the nursery, navigated around a bucket set beneath a temporarily exposed pipe, soothed Agnes into bed, and extracted promises from the other two that they would use the next half-hour for quiet reading.
“Quiet,” Miriam agreed. “Reading, less so.”
“Mabel may whisper to you the story of the Latin otters,” Martha said. “If you must choose between disobedience and mutiny, choose the least structural damage.”
Downstairs, somewhere, hammers pounded in rhythm. The house seemed to shake itself, stretching muscles unused too long.
Martha left them with reluctance. But Mrs. Pritchard had glared and informed her she would *take her proper dinner* in the governess’s sitting room belowstairs and not attempt to subsist on crusts snatched in corridors.
“You’ll fade,” the housekeeper had said severely. “And then where will we be? Down one governess and with nobody to keep them from throwing themselves off the scaffolding.”
“I am not so delicate as to fade,” Martha had said. “I tend more to… set.”
“Set what?” Mrs. Pritchard had snorted. “Your jaw?”
“Precisely,” Martha had replied.
Still, she obeyed. Hunger was hunger, however dignified one might pretend to be.
***
The governess’s sitting room was small, barely more than a widened stretch of corridor between the servants’ hall and the back stairs. It contained a hearth, two chairs, a wobbly table, and a shelf with three chipped plates and a heroic determination not to collapse under the weight of an old atlas.
Martha sat with her plate—stew and bread, both improved by actual warmth—and allowed herself, for the span of ten minutes, not to think.
Not of Agnes’s cough. Not of Mabel’s brightness curdling into defiance when untended. Not of Miriam’s watchful silences. Not of the way Richard’s hand had brushed hers in the garden or the way his eyes had darkened when he spoke of temptation.
She thought instead of Latin otters. Of tea. Of Bath. Of her brother’s last letter, carefully folded in her pocket.
> I played at Lord Whitby’s on Wednesday. He has a daughter who persisted in leaving the instrument to me and wandering off when I was only halfway through a piece. She prefers to dance without music, it seems. I have decided this must be the very height of Fashion, and you are dreadfully behind in Hertfordshire.
> Mother is much the same. The doctors disagree about little beyond the precise number of leeches to apply. I have decided they are all idiots and that the only thing which truly helps is whether the landlady remembers to air the bedchamber. She seldom does. I have taken to doing it myself.
> Do not starve. Or if you must, do it beautifully, in a tragic pose, such that when I am a famous musician the poets may write about my noble sister who expired in some ruinous marquess’s house.
She smiled faintly at that.
“A ruinous marquess’s house,” she murmured. “How apt, Thomas.”
She was still smiling when Mrs. Pritchard appeared in the doorway.
“Miss Harrow.”
“Yes?” Martha set down her spoon.
“His lordship is in the library,” the housekeeper said. “He… requests your presence.”
“At once?”
Mrs. Pritchard’s mouth twitched. “He did not specify the degree of haste required. But his tone suggested sooner rather than later.”
“Is there blood?” Martha asked.
“Only metaphorical,” Mrs. Pritchard said. “He has been reading pamphlets.”
“Ah,” Martha said. “Then I will go at once. Before he attempts to apply the French Revolution to the open question of the breakfast pastries.”
She wiped her hands, checked her cap again, and made her way upstairs.
***
The library door stood open.
Richard was at the central table, surrounded by chaos.
Not the previous chaos of dust and toppling books. A different sort now. Open volumes lay scattered, some face-down, some weighted with paperweights. Papers covered in his crabbed handwriting were strewn about. Several pamphlets, cheaply printed, their edges rough, flapped when the door’s movement sent a breeze.
He looked up as she entered.
“Miss Harrow,” he said. “How well-versed are you in the works of Paine?”
“Thomas or the concept?” she asked.
A corner of his mouth kicked up. “The man, in this case.”
“Moderately,” she said, stepping over a particularly precarious stack. “I have not had the opportunity to read *all* the Rights of *all* Men, but I am acquainted with the first.”
He held up a pamphlet. *Rights of Man* indeed, its cover grubby.
“And in the writings of Burke?” he asked.
“Less familiar,” she admitted. “Most of what I have heard of Burke has been second-hand and shouted in coffee-houses.”
“Then you are more advanced than half the House of Commons,” he said. “Sit.”
She raised an eyebrow but pulled out a chair.
“May I ask,” she said, “why Rights of Man requires the urgent attendance of a governess?”
“Because,” he said, “Paine insists that hereditary titles are an absurdity.”
“Yes,” she said. “I had gathered that.”
“And yet,” he went on, “the same man argues for the rights of future generations. For the necessity of preserving certain structures so that those who come after are not condemned to inherit chaos.”
“You find that contradictory,” she said.
“I find it… incomplete,” he said. “I find myself in violent agreement and violent disagreement with him, often in the same paragraph.”
“Welcome to the world of thinking,” she said. “It is rarely tidy.”
He glared. “Do not be glib. I am serious.”
“So am I,” she said. “You are discovering that things you were raised to believe are not as simple as advertised. Titles, rights, responsibilities. It is… disconcerting.”
“Disconcerting,” he repeated. “That is one word for it.”
“And you wished,” she said, “for someone to argue with.”
“Yes,” he said.
She smiled, slow. “Flattered though I am to be your substitute parliament, I must remind you that I am presently employed to conjugate Latin for your offspring.”
“They can spare you for an hour,” he said. “They are reading. Or plotting. Either way, they are occupied.”
“You left them unattended?” she said.
“I informed Mrs. Pritchard,” he said defensively. “She has promised to keep them from climbing anything higher than a footstool.”
“That will not suffice,” she muttered.
“Miss Harrow,” he said sharply. “I asked you here to discuss matters of weight. Not to scold me about footstools.”
She sighed. Took up one of the pamphlets.
“You side with Paine or Burke?” she asked.
He hesitated.
“I do not know,” he said. “There was a time when I would have said Burke, without thinking. Order, tradition, gradual change. Then the world—my world—changed violently while I clung to tradition. Now I find myself reading Paine and wondering if I have been defending a structure that only served to imprison.”
“In what sense?” she asked quietly.
“In the sense that my title,” he said, “compelled me to a certain path. Learn estate management. Attend Parliament. Marry appropriately. Produce heirs. Maintain dignity. The usual list. I did all those things, more or less. And yet none of them… protected what mattered.”
“Your marriage,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“And now,” she said, “you wonder whether the title is worth the cost.”
He looked at her, eyes very dark.
“Yes,” he said.
She turned the pamphlet over in her hands.
“And yet,” she said, “you care for this estate. For your tenants. For your daughters’ future. You cannot do that as effectively without the authority your title grants. Or, at least, you cannot do it in the same way.”
“What would I be without it?” he asked, raw. “A man in a leaking house with three girls and a talent for reading in the dark.”
“‘Richard’ would still exist,” she said. “Without ‘my lord’ stamped upon him. That man would not vanish.”
“He is less likely to be listened to,” he said.
“Only by those who value titles over substance,” she said. “And perhaps those are not the minds most worth reaching.”
He huffed. “You speak like a radical yourself.”
“I speak like a woman,” she said. “We have long been told that our words mean less because of who we are, not what we say. You are merely having the experience late.”
He leaned back, crossing his arms.
“So, governess,” he said. “Do *you* believe in hereditary titles?”
“I believe,” she said slowly, “that inherited responsibility is real. Whether or not one has a title. A farmer’s son inherits the fields. A vicar’s daughter inherits the parish’s temper. A marquess’s heir inherits the House and all its ghosts.”
“You do not answer the question,” he said.
“I seldom do, when the question is flawed,” she said.
He narrowed his eyes. “Explain.”
“Titles are tools,” she said. “They can be used to build or to bludgeon. The problem is not the spade. It is the man who wields it.”
“You think we can simply… separate the two?” he asked skeptically. “Man and structure?”
“No,” she said. “They are entwined. But you, sitting here with Paine and Burke and Hobbes and your own conscience, are proof that the man can question the structure from within it. That doubt is possible, even at the top of the ladder.”
“And what good does that doubt do my tenants,” he asked bitterly, “if the laws remain the same? If I still collect rents, still sit in the Lords, still sign my name ‘Corbyn’ on parchment that binds them more tightly than me?”
“Doubt,” she said, “is not an end. It is a beginning. It is what prevents you from being cruel with complacency. It is what makes you authorize roof repairs instead of shrugging at leaks.” She gestured upward. A thud sounded from above, as if on cue.
He rubbed his forehead. “You reduce radical theory to carpentry.”
“It is the same impulse,” she said. “To mend. To refuse to accept that what is, must be.”
His eyes searched her face.
“And what,” he asked softly, “would you mend in me, if given the choice?”
She blinked.
“You assume I see you as broken,” she said.
“Do you not?” he asked.
“I see you as… unfinished,” she said. “Like these repairs. Like the girls’ grammar. Still in progress.”
“An unpolished sentence,” he said. “Missing its verb.”
“And perhaps its subject,” she said.
His hand tightened on the pamphlet.
“Do you truly think,” he said, “that a man who has failed so spectacularly at his first attempt at life can simply… rewrite himself?”
“I do not think it is simple,” she said. “I think it is necessary.”
“For whom?” he asked. “For me? For the girls? For the world?”
“For yourself,” she said. “So that when you stand before them—your daughters, your tenants, Parliament, any of them—you are not only a man reacting against his past, but one moving toward something.”
He stared at her.
“You speak,” he said slowly, “as though you have done this yourself.”
“Every woman who becomes a governess,” she said, “rewrites herself. Once I was a vicar’s daughter, hovering at tea-trays, expected to marry some modestly comfortable gentleman who would accept my mediocre dowry and my above-moderate opinions. That path vanished when Father died. I could have clung to the idea that I was still that girl. I did, for a time. It made me wretched. And so I chose another sentence. Another subject. I became ‘I teach’ instead of ‘I wait.’”
“And are you content with that conjugation?” he asked.
“Content,” she said. “No. But… reconciled.” Her mouth quirked. “On good days. On bad days, I envy the milkmaids.”
He barked a short laugh.
“You would make a terrible milkmaid,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “The cows would find me insufferable.”
He looked at her, really looked.
Her hands lay on the table, fingers ink-smudged. A faint powder of chalk dust clung to her sleeve. A strand of hair had escaped again, curling forward, haloed briefly by the thin light seeping in through the high windows.
“You are very sure,” he said, “of the path you chose.”
“I am sure,” she said, “that walking it is preferable to sitting and wailing over the vanished one. That is not confidence. It is survival.”
He leaned forward without intending to, drawn.
“And if,” he said slowly, “someone offered you another path now? A different sentence?”
“Such as?” she asked warily.
“Marriage,” he said. “Comfort. A house that is not falling down. A man who”—he hesitated—“sees you.”
Her breath caught.
“That is not on offer,” she said.
“No,” he said. “Hypothetically.”
“Hypothetically,” she said, “it would depend on the man. And the extent to which he truly saw me, and not some idea of what he required.”
“And of what you require?” he pressed.
She swallowed.
“I would require,” she said quietly, “not to be put away. Not to be told that my mind is a pretty trick to be tolerated so long as it does not impinge on his comfort. I would require… partnership. Not possession.”
He looked, suddenly, very young again.
“What if,” he said hoarsely, “the man had already failed once at precisely that? What if he feared his own failures more than the world’s judgment?”
“Then,” she said, “I would require that he be honest about those fears. That he not hide behind titles and hedgerows and feigned indifference. That he let me see him as a man, not a marquess, and trust that I might still choose him.”
The word *choose* hung in the air between them like something fragile and bright.
He could not quite breathe.
“This is all very… hypothetical,” he said, his voice unsteady.
“Entirely,” she said, equally unsteady.
He shut the pamphlet with more force than strictly necessary.
“We wander,” he said briskly. “From Paine to proposals that do not exist.”
“Yes,” she said. “We should return to rights and duties, and avoid those which are still purely potential.”
“The rights of governesses,” he said.
“Few,” she said. “But I cling to them fiercely.”
They bent again over the books, their discourse drifting from Paine to property, from property to paternalism, from paternalism—inevitably—to the peculiar institution of fatherhood as practiced in English country houses.
Through it all, their hands sometimes brushed as they reached for the same volume. Each time, that small, treacherous spark leaped. Each time, both of them pretended not to notice, even as their pulses stuttered.
When she finally rose to go, conscious of the hour and the havoc three unattached children could wreak, he stood as well.
“Miss Harrow,” he said.
“Yes?” she asked.
He inclined his head, oddly formal. “Thank you.”
“For disagreeing with you?” she asked.
“For… being here,” he said. “For allowing me to say these things aloud and not… fall apart afterwards.”
“You underestimate your own structural integrity,” she said lightly. “You are remarkably un-collapsed for a man so assaulted by pamphlets.”
He smiled.
“You will go back to your Latin otters now,” he said.
“And you to your hedgerows,” she said.
He watched her as she left, the swish of her skirt, the straightness of her spine.
He did not know what name to give the thing that grew between them in those hours of argument. Respect, certainly. Curiosity. A kind of wary fondness that had more in common with hunger than he wished to admit.
He only knew that, for the first time in years, his days no longer felt like a series of obligations to be endured until he could retreat to bed. They felt—unsettlingly—like the beginning of something.
***
Three nights later, precisely at three in the morning, Martha woke with the peculiar clarity that meant her mind had been roused not by noise but by thought.
She lay in the dark, heart beating just a fraction too fast.
The dream—a muddle of Latin verbs and collapsing roofs and children shouting in French—slipped away as dreams did. What remained was the unmistakable itch of restlessness.
She tried to convince herself to stay in bed.
She failed.
With a soft exhalation, she rose, wrapped her shawl round her shoulders, and lit her candle.
She went not to the library this time.
Her pact with him—careful, careful—held.
Instead, she drifted down the back stairs, slippered feet silent on the worn treads. The house at this hour felt less haunted than companionable. The carpenters’ hammers had ceased, leaving only a faint ticking from somewhere deep within the walls.
She reached the ground floor and turned toward the kitchen.
Perhaps Cook had left bread out. Perhaps there would be milk. Perhaps simply moving would ease the restless thoughts that kept circling, never quite alighting.
She paused in the passage outside the kitchen door.
Light glowed beneath it. A low murmur, the clink of crockery.
*Someone is awake,* she thought.
She pushed the door slowly open.
Richard sat at the battered kitchen table, shirt sleeves rolled up, hands wrapped around a mug.
The sight of him there, in the servants’ domain, unshaven and bare at the throat, was so at odds with the habitual picture of marquessness that she had to swallow a startled laugh.
He looked up sharply at the movement.
For a moment, they simply stared at each other.
“I begin to suspect,” he said at last, “that you do not sleep.”
“I might say the same of you,” she replied.
He gestured to the kettle, set near the banked fire.
“I have discovered,” he said, “that the only way to get decent coffee in this house is to make it myself at ungodly hours. Cook resents the beans.”
“Cook resents everything that is not suet,” Martha said.
“Tea?” he offered.
“At three in the morning?” she asked.
“Is there a better time?” he countered.
She hesitated.
“We agreed,” she said quietly.
“Yes,” he said. “No more midnight libraries. This is the kitchen. Entirely different.”
“You quibble,” she said.
“I apply loopholes,” he said.
Her mouth twitched.
“I do not think the principles change with the room,” she said.
“No,” he said. “But I am not inclined to send you back upstairs into your leaking chamber when there is warmth and hot liquid available.”
Affection, exasperatingly, threaded through the words.
She stepped inside.
“One cup,” she said. “And then we return to our respective, virtuous beds.”
“Agreed,” he said.
He rose, moved with easy familiarity around the kitchen. Took down a mug, poured, handed it to her.
She accepted it, their fingers brushing. That small spark again. That treacherous leap of awareness.
Steam curled between them.
“Why are you awake?” he asked.
“Why are you?” she countered.
He sighed. “I asked first.”
“I had a dream,” she said, giving him the simpler truth. “Not a frightening one. Only crowded.”
“Crowded,” he said.
“Full of verbs,” she said. “And carpentry. I suspect my mind is protesting the number of new things it is required to hold at once.”
“And your mind?” he asked. “Does not like being required?”
“It resents compulsion,” she said. “Even from itself.”
He smiled faintly.
“And you?” she asked. “What woke you?”
He stared into his mug.
“A noise,” he said. “From the roof at first. Then… from my own head.” He huffed. “It is an unruly place, despite what people assume of men who alphabetize their books.”
“I never assumed that of you,” she said. “Your books are far too anarchic.”
He snorted.
They sat. The kitchen, with its scrubbed table and lingering smell of onions, felt almost… neutral. A place where the hierarchies of the house thinned. Where marquesses came for coffee and governesses for stolen quiet.
He leaned his forearms on the table, the thin linen of his shirt pulling tight over the muscles.
Her gaze caught there, involuntary.
He noticed.
“Miss Harrow,” he said, very softly.
She dragged her eyes back to his face, heat searing.
“Forgive me,” she said, because anything else would be worse.
“I am not offended,” he said. “Only… aware.”
The word hung, suggestive.
She sipped her tea to cover her fluster.
“Why is it,” she asked abruptly, “that men who read so much have so little understanding of their own hearts?”
He blinked.
“That is an ungenerous generalization,” he said. “Even for you.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But I have known too many who can quote entire speeches from Cicero and yet cannot say ‘I am lonely’ without turning it into a lecture.”
“Lonely,” he repeated.
She stared at the dark liquid in her cup. “Are you not?”
The question was reckless. It leapt from her tongue without consulting her sense.
He did not answer at once.
“If I say yes,” he said slowly, “what then? Pity? Advice? Or will you simply nod, having confirmed your hypothesis?”
“I will not pity you,” she said. “That would be… insulting. And presumptuous. Nor will I prescribe remedies. I am not so arrogant as to think I know the cure for another’s solitude.” She lifted her gaze to his. “But I might say: I understand. A little.”
“Do you?” he asked, voice low.
“Yes,” she said. “Governnesses are… solitary creatures. We live among families and yet apart. We are confidantes but not kin, servants but not of the servants’ world. We are expected to have no needs aside from the children’s. It can be… isolating.”
“And yet,” he said, “you move through my house as though isolation suits you.”
“Habit,” she said. “And armor. If one appears too eager for connection, people fear entanglement. Or obligation.”
He made a soft sound. “You speak from experience.”
“I have had mistresses’ daughters draw me into their rooms to whisper secrets,” she said. “And their mothers pull them away, reminding them I am ‘not quite one of us.’ I have been invited to dine with servants who resent my position and with families who regard me as a piece of furniture that occasionally speaks out of turn. It has taught me to stand at the edge of every room.”
“And yet here you sit,” he said quietly. “At a kitchen table. At three in the morning. With me.”
“Yes,” she said. “Which is, by any measure, foolish.”
“Do you regret it?” he asked.
“Not at this precise moment,” she said.
Something loosened in his chest.
“Nor do I,” he said.
Silence fell then. But it was not heavy. It stretched between them, full of unspoken acknowledgments.
She noticed, for the first time, the faint scar along his left hand, white against the darker skin. It traced from the base of his thumb toward his wrist, jagged.
“How did you get that?” she asked.
He glanced down.
“Fencing,” he said. “At university. A clumsy opponent. Or perhaps I was clumsy. I bled all over the Provost’s rug.”
“Did you win?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “I dropped my sword. It was a good lesson.”
“In what?” she pressed.
“In the fact that,” he said dryly, “no matter how well-educated you are, another man’s steel can still cut you if you are not paying attention.”
“A useful metaphor,” she said.
“And you?” he asked. “Have you any scars I should know of?”
She stiffened, just slightly.
“Yes,” she said lightly. “Mostly around my patience. And my pride. Neither visible.”
“No physical ones?” he asked.
“None worth recounting,” she said.
He studied her.
“Did Lennox’s son ever—” he began, then stopped.
“Hurt me physically?” she finished, understanding. “No. He tried to trap me. Corner me. Kiss me. Twice. I made sufficient noise that he deemed the endeavour more trouble than it was worth.”
His jaw clenched. “If he had—”
“You would have done nothing,” she said briskly. “Because you would not have known. Because the world considers such incidents ‘regrettable misunderstandings’ at best. Do not take on injuries that are not yours, Richard.”
The use of his name, here in the kitchen’s dimness, drew his attention as surely as a touch.
“I do not like,” he said, low, “the idea of any man cornering you. Trapping you. Making you make noise to escape him.”
“No woman likes the idea,” she said. “We tolerate the reality because we must. We learn to place furniture between ourselves and doors. To gauge the temper of a room before entering. To drink less at parties than the men. To laugh in ways that deflect instead of invite. It is… tedious.”
His hands fisted on the table.
“And if,” he said, “I ever… make you feel so, you will tell me.”
“Yes,” she said simply.
He blinked.
“Yes?”
“Yes,” she repeated. “You have granted me that much license already. I intend to use it. If you attempt to corner me, I will tell you. And then I will leave. You will not have to guess.”
“Most women would not speak so,” he said.
“Most women have more to lose,” she said. “Wives. Ladies. They cannot afford such honesty. I, having already lost a great deal, find it faintly liberating.”
He laughed, soft.
“You see?” she said. “Lonely or not, you are no longer entirely alone. You have a governess who will tell you when you are being an ass.”
“Comforting,” he murmured.
“It should be,” she said. “Most men in your position are surrounded by people who tell them only what they wish to hear.”
“And you,” he said, “tell me what I need to hear instead.”
“Not always,” she said. “Sometimes I tell you what *I* need to say. The two do not always align.”
He looked at her, gratitude and frustration warring in his eyes.
“You are very… dangerous to my complacency,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “Complacency is dull. You deserve better.”
“Better what?” he asked.
“Better than dullness,” she said. “Better than half-living in a house that is finally remembering how to breathe.”
He glanced toward the ceiling. The faint sound of hammering echoed even now; the carpenters had taken to starting early.
“Broken Oaks,” he said. “An apt name.”
“Yes,” she said. “But oaks grow back if you let them.”
He finished his coffee. She drained her tea.
“We should go back,” she said reluctantly. “Before the maids begin moving about and find us here, scandalously conversing over caffeine.”
He rose when she did. They stood, for a breath, too close in the narrow space between chair and hearth.
Her shawl brushed his sleeve. She could feel the heat of him, the faint roughness of stubble still on his jaw.
He looked down at her.
“Thank you,” he said again. “For… not letting me drown quietly.”
“Do not thank me yet,” she said softly. “You may soon wish me less inclined to throw you ropes you do not want.”
“I suspect,” he murmured, “that I will want them and hate them in equal measure.”
She smiled, quick.
“Then we are alike,” she said. “I, too, resent the things that save me.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it.
“Good night,” he said instead.
“Good morning,” she corrected.
She slipped past him, candle held high, and disappeared into the dim corridor.
He watched the small, moving circle of light until it vanished up the stair.
“Very careful,” he said under his breath, not sure if he joked or prayed.
The house, newly awakened by hammers and Latin and unanticipated tea, listened.
***