The letter from Bath arrived on a wind-scoured morning that smelled of rain and distance.
Martha found it on her plate at breakfast in the governess’s sitting room, propped against the porridge bowl like an accusation. The hand on the front was unmistakable: her brother’s, looping and energetic, flourishes larger than the paper strictly required.
She wiped her fingers carefully, broke the seal, and unfolded.
> 10 March > > My incorrigible sister, > > I write with news which will no doubt annoy you, which is my chief pleasure in life. The secondary pleasure is music, of course, and the tertiary is imagining your face when you read this:
Her mouth tipped, despite herself.
> Mother is coming to stay with you.
Her stomach dropped.
> You see? I can picture the exact arrangement of your features. That little line between your brows. The way your mouth flattens when you are trying not to swear in front of the curate. > > Before you begin composing a blistering reply, permit me to explain. > > Mother has not been well— > *[Here the ink blotted, as if he had hesitated]* > —not worse, precisely, but not better. The doctor in Bath, who is paid far too much for his vague nostrums, recommends country air “away from the effluvia of the Pump Room.” As I cannot leave my engagements here without losing the few shillings I scrabble from them, and as the landlady has made it clear that she does not intend to lower the rent simply because we breathe less, we had limited options. > > Mother, in a moment of uncharacteristic decisiveness, announced that she wished to see your “crumbling marquess’s house” for herself. She is convinced that if one must be ill, it is better to do so in a place with proper trees.
Martha’s fingers tightened on the paper.
> I protested. I pointed out that you are in service, that your time is not your own, that your marquess (I persist in calling him yours; you may make of that what you will) might not relish the arrival of a semi-invalid vicar’s widow and her violin-slinging son. Mother is, as you know, unimpressed by marquesses. > > She waved her hand and said, “Martha will arrange it.” > > I am therefore writing to ask you to do what she has already decided you will do: beg some small corner of Corbyn Hall in which she may rest for a few weeks. I will escort her, see her settled, and then return to Bath or to London to fling myself once more into the arms of ungrateful pupils. > > If this is impossible, you must write at once and say so. If it is difficult but not impossible, you must do as you always do: make it possible. I have every confidence in your ability to move mountains and marquesses with your mind. > > We will not descend upon you unannounced. Mother cannot travel far on consecutive days. We plan to leave Bath in a fortnight, stay one night in Reading, perhaps another in Oxford if she looks too pale, and arrive at your door around the 28th. That gives you time to marshal your forces. > > Do not be angry with me. Or if you must, be so only briefly. You know how she has missed you. She speaks of you often. She would never say so, but I suspect she is a little afraid that if she does not see you soon, she will not see you again at all. > > Your exasperating, devoted, > Thomas
The letter shook, just slightly, between her fingers.
Mother. Here.
Bath mist and thin coughs in Corbyn’s draughty halls. Her mother’s narrow chest struggling against Hertfordshire damp. Her mother’s keen, anxious eyes seeing too much of what Martha was and was not in this place.
And Richard. The thought of him meeting her mother sent a peculiar jolt through her. As though she had taken the private, precarious arrangement in which they all lived and flung a stone at its surface.
“Damn,” she whispered, before she could catch the word.
The scullery maid, passing the open door with a pile of pots, gasped.
“Beggin’ your pardon, miss,” the girl squeaked. “I didn’t— I weren’t listenin’—”
“You were carrying,” Martha said, composing herself. “A more valuable occupation than listening to governesses swear at their breakfast. Off you go.”
The girl fled, cheeks pink.
Martha pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes for a moment.
There was no real question of denying the request. Her mother could not afford lodgings elsewhere. Martha could not afford to offend the landlady in Bath by delaying rent. And beyond the practical considerations, there was the simple, inescapable truth: she missed her mother.
They had parted almost a year ago, in a small, stuffy room off the Bath High Street. Her mother propped up on pillows, Thomas trying too hard to look unconcerned.
“I will manage,” her mother had said. “You must not worry. You must find a good position. A *kind* one. And write often. That is all I require.”
“All?” Martha had said, half-laughing, half-fearful. “You ask very little.”
“I have learned,” her mother had replied, “to ask for what is possible.”
Now, apparently, what was possible included moving into a marquess’s house.
She folded the letter carefully and slipped it into her pocket. There was only one person whose consent truly mattered in this matter, much as she might dislike that fact.
She would have to ask Richard.
***
He was in the library, of course.
She found him mid-morning, sleeves rolled, a faint smudge of ink on his cheekbone as though he had absently rubbed at an itch with a stained hand. The sight stirred a disconcertingly fond impulse in her to cross the room and wipe it away.
She resisted.
“Lord Corbyn,” she said from the doorway.
He looked up, surprise flickering before his expression settled.
“Miss Harrow,” he said. “You are late. It is nearly ten. The girls?”
“Writing Latin phrases of penitence,” she said. “I told them I would fetch a book to make the exercise more tolerable. They did not believe me.”
“They are wise,” he said.
She smiled, faint. “You will not find me defending *Fabulae Faciles*.”
He set down his pen, sat back.
“You look,” he said slowly, “as though you are about to argue for something you expect me to refuse.”
Her hand went to her pocket instinctively. “My face is too honest.”
“Curse your face, then,” he said. “It betrays you.”
“I would,” she said, “but the scullery maid has already been scandalized once this morning.”
He blinked. “You swore at a maid?”
“At my porridge,” she said. “The maid merely wandered through at the wrong moment. Rest assured, I have not begun berating the staff for crimes of oats.”
“That is a relief,” he said dryly. “They are already terrified enough of your chalk.”
She drew a breath.
“I received a letter,” she said.
“From your brother?” he asked. He had learned to tell Thomas’s letters: the flimsy paper, the exuberant hand.
“Yes,” she said. “He writes from Bath. My mother is… not worse. But not improved. The doctor has recommended country air.”
“Wise,” he said cautiously. “The air in Bath always smells of old water and disappointment.”
“Accurate,” she said. “In any case, Thomas cannot leave his work. The lodgings are cramped. And my mother… wishes to see me. She suggests—he suggests—that she might come here. For a few weeks. To… rest.”
The sculpted mask of his face did not crack immediately. It was subtle, the change: a tightening around the eyes, a slight thinning of the lips. A flash, very quickly suppressed, of something like alarm.
“Here,” he repeated. “To Corbyn Hall.”
“Yes,” she said.
“As a… guest?” he asked.
“As my mother,” she said simply. “However that might be made to fit within your house.”
He drummed his fingers once on the blotter.
“Your mother is a vicar’s widow,” he said. It was not a question.
“Yes,” she said. “Emphatically so. She can do nothing without worrying about its moral weight. Including, I suspect, breathing.”
“And she will wish to see where you live, where you work, who you… work for,” he said.
“Yes,” she said again. “She is not a woman easily fobbed off with partial glimpses.”
He rose and went to the window.
Outside, the sky was low and grey. The carpenters’ ladders leaned against the house. From here, he could see one of the repaired sections of roof, slate new and dark against the old.
“You ask,” he said, “that I open my house to a stranger. That I invite her to peer into its cracks. Into the ways I have failed to keep it as it ought to be. And into the arrangement by which her daughter—a gentlewoman—is employed in my nursery.”
“I ask,” she said, “that you allow my mother to breathe air that does not smell of sulphur and boiled cabbage. And that you allow me to see her before…” Her throat closed briefly. She forced the words out. “Before whatever comes next comes.”
His shoulders twitched.
“Do not,” he said roughly, “speak as though death is lurking at every Pump Room corner.”
“It is,” she said. “But I will avoid using the word if it pleases you.”
He turned.
“It does not please me,” he said. “Nothing about death pleases me.”
“You are not alone in that,” she said softly.
He paced once, twice, along the length of the rug.
“How ill is she?” he asked.
“Weak,” Martha said. “Prone to coughs. Tiring easily. The doctors call it ‘a tendency to the lungs.’ As if the rest of her were entirely incidental.”
“She will require a ground-floor room,” he said, more to himself than to her. “South-facing, if possible. Away from draughts. Not too far from the kitchen, so hot water may be brought. Pritchard will have conniptions. Cook will complain. The maids will be agog.”
“You have not yet said no,” she observed.
He stopped pacing.
“I have not yet decided,” he said.
“You are already thinking about where to put her,” she pointed out.
“That is what one does,” he snapped. “When faced with a logistical problem.”
“Logistical,” she repeated. “That is one word for my mother.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face.
“Your brother will come also?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “To escort her. He will not stay long. He cannot afford to.”
“And your mother,” he said, “will not pay for her keep.”
“No,” she said flatly. “She cannot.”
“And you,” he said, “can certainly not.”
“No,” she agreed. “I send them almost all I earn as it is. The rest evaporates in stockings and postage.”
He exhaled.
“I would not ask for payment,” he said, a little sharply. “Do you take me for a landlord who charges his tenants for every breath?”
“I did not know,” she said honestly, “how you would feel about—”
“About charity?” he demanded.
“About additional mouths,” she said. “And about the invasion of your… hermitage.”
He flinched.
“It is not,” he said sharply, “a hermitage. It is a house fallen on hard times.”
“And its owner,” she said gently, “fallen into habits of solitude.”
His glare did not entirely disguise the way his mouth quirked.
“You are relentless,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “You knew that when you hired me. Or you ought to have.”
He went to the sideboard, poured himself a small measure of port. It was barely eleven in the morning.
“Is it that serious,” she asked, brows lifting.
“This is medicinal,” he said.
“That is what all men say of their wine before noon,” she replied.
He tossed it back anyway, winced.
“I do not like,” he said, “the idea of being under scrutiny.”
“You are under mine already,” she said. “And the girls’. Mrs. Pritchard’s. Cook’s. The house has opinions too, you know. It creaks judgment.”
“My vanity,” he said, “is not soothed.”
She stepped nearer to the table, carefully keeping it between them.
“My mother,” she said, “is not a dragon. She will not storm your library and demand you justify your existence. She will sit by a window and knit and cough and ask, very politely, if she may see the room in which I sleep. She might—if she is feeling particularly sprightly—ask if you treat me fairly. You may answer as you see fit.”
“I treat you,” he said, “with more honesty than is politic for either of us.”
“Yes,” she said wryly. “We might perhaps tone that down for her visit.”
He almost smiled.
He set the glass down.
“How long?” he asked.
“A few weeks,” she said. “Perhaps a month. As long as the spring air agrees with her. If it does not, Thomas will whisk her away again.”
“And when is she to arrive?” he asked.
“Thomas writes that they plan to leave Bath in a fortnight,” she said. “Allowing for stopovers, perhaps the twenty-eighth.”
He did a quick calculation. Three weeks.
Repairs would be complete by then. Or nearly. The nursery ceiling no longer dripped. The south roof over the morning rooms had been patched. The house was—if not restored—at least less openly decayed.
He thought of a small, fragile woman in black, of bright eyes like Martha’s narrowed by pain. Of a son with a violin and opinions. Of his own house, long closed to the wider world, opening its doors to strangers who would see the cracked paint and the wary children and the marquess who could not bring himself to leave.
He thought—unwillingly, sharply—*What will they think of me?*
He thought, just as sharply, *What does it matter?*
He met her gaze.
“Yes,” he said. “She may come.”
Her breath left her in a rush she had not realized she was holding.
“Thank you,” she said simply.
He waved a hand as if batting the gratitude away, but his ears had gone faintly red.
“I do not do this out of… generosity,” he said roughly. “I do it because you have become… necessary. To this house. To my daughters. To—”
He stopped.
“To the continued existence of Corbyn Hall as something other than a cautionary tale,” he finished, a touch too briskly. “If your mother’s comfort buys us a few more months of your presence without gnawing concern, I consider it a bargain.”
She stared at him, heat prickling behind her eyes.
“You are a very bad liar,” she said.
“I am an excellent one,” he retorted. “When I choose to lie.”
“You are lying to yourself,” she said.
“Be that as it may,” he said. “We will prepare the blue room on the ground floor. Mrs. Pritchard will see to the linens. You will write to your brother and inform him that Corbyn Hall is about to host a vicar’s widow. Tell him to bring any medicines your mother needs. Our village apothecary is… limited.”
“She will be shocked,” Martha said, the first hint of humour returning. “To find you so accommodating to non-aristocratic lungs.”
“Do not tell her I read Paine,” he muttered. “Or she will expect me to join hands with her in parliamentary reform.”
“She will expect you,” Martha said dryly, “to attend church.”
He grimaced.
“Is that strictly necessary?” he asked.
“She will not be able to go herself,” Martha said. “Her health. She will wish to know that someone in the house is attending to matters of the soul.”
“My soul,” he said, “is too entangled in hedgerows and roofs to benefit from sermons.”
“Nevertheless,” she said, “I suspect a single hour on a Sunday will not undo your philosophy.”
He sighed. “Very well. I will endure the curate in your mother’s honour.”
She smiled, sudden and bright.
“I will write to Thomas,” she said. “And warn him that you are more tractable than advertised.”
He snorted.
“You are the one who advertised me as ‘crumbling and irascible’,” he said.
“I did not mention irascible,” she said. “I thought it would be apparent.”
He shook his head, but the tension had gone out of his shoulders.
“Go,” he said. “Before I change my mind and decide to barricade the drive.”
“You will not,” she said.
“No,” he admitted. “I will not.”
As she turned to go, he added, almost grudgingly:
“And… Miss Harrow?”
She paused.
“I am… sorry,” he said slowly, “that she is unwell. Whatever else we argue about, I do not wish you that.”
The simple sympathy, unadorned, nearly undid her.
“Thank you,” she said.
Their eyes met, held for a fraught instant in which all the things they could not offer each other—security, certainty, promises—hung unspoken.
Then she left, letter already forming in her mind, ink bottle cool in her hand.
Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the skeletal oaks.
Inside, Corbyn Hall prepared itself, reluctantly, to become not only a refuge for three wild children and their complicated father, but a sickroom for a woman who had given the governess her mind and her stubbornness.
The house, which had been slowly reawakening, braced itself.
It was about to meet Martha Harrow’s past.
And Richard Corbyn, who had spent five years hiding from his own, had no idea how much that would matter.
***