He watched her hands. In the drawing room she had kept them folded and still, the gesture of a woman who had been taught to sit in parlours. Here they were quick, sure, filthy, and entirely her own.
A door opened at the back of the house. The man called Kit came out carrying a pail in each hand. He set them by the wall and stood with his arms crossed, surveying the garden as if he considered everything in it his responsibility. His gaze moved to the low wall where Henry stood. Henry stepped back. He did not know how long he had been standing there. Longer than any sensible man would stand watching a woman who did not know she was being watched.
He waited with his shoulder against the wet hedge and the damp of it soaking through his coat. After a moment he lookedagain. Kit had gone to the far bed. The baroness was showing him something on a stem. Poppy was still talking. Miss Linton was still kneeling.
There was nothing more to see. A kitchen garden, a working household, a woman on her knees in the dirt. Nothing that altered the terms of their agreement or that a solicitor’s document would not render beside the point within the week.
He walked back down the lane toward the carriage. The ground was softer now and his boots left deep prints in the mud. He did not look back at the house.
The coachman straightened when he saw him coming.
“Home, Your Grace?”
Henry climbed in and sat with his hat on his knee. The carriage moved off.
He thought of the younger sister’s hand on Violet’s shoulder, how neither of them had flinched or remarked upon it. He could not remember the last time anyone had touched him without first asking permission or bracing for the consequences.
He thought of her hands in the soil. The cutting held up to the grey light, the roots exposed, turned slowly in her fingers. She had been deciding what would take in new ground and what would not.
The thought sat with him, uninvited, for the rest of the drive home.
Chapter four
The Eve
Henry
The road to Thornwick took the same hour it had taken before, but the rain had stopped some hours ago and the lanes lay heavy with the afterthought of it. The trees were as he had left them. The brass plate was still green. There was, this time, a single candle lit in the window of the lower drawing room, making a small yellow square upon the wet gravel.
Mr Brigg, who had occupied the seat opposite Henry these past forty minutes in a conversation Henry could not now recall, gathered up his case. He had been Henry’s solicitor twelve years. He had drawn up two of the three previous marriage contracts. He did not, this evening, ask his client whether he was certain. He had asked it twice in the past week and twice received the same answer.
The special licence had been procured from the Archbishop’s office three days ago. The ceremony was arranged for ten o’clock tomorrow morning at St George’s, Hanover Square. There was nothing left to do but sign.
The door was opened on the first knock, this time, by the same man in a clean shirt.
He still did not bow. But he stepped back from the door and held it for them, which was, Henry suspected, the most he was willing to offer.
“They’re in the drawing room,” the man said.
The corridor was as cold as before. The drawing room had been lit by three candles and a fire that burned beyond its usual modesty. Violet stood by the window in a grey day dress. Mr Wickham of Wickham & Brown sat at a small writing table that had been moved into the room for the purpose of this meeting. The four sisters were not in the doorway across, but Henry could hear the murmur of young women who were unhappy about the banishment behind the door.
By the fire sat the Baroness Thornwick. She was small. Her grey hair had not been put up. Her dress of a pale colour had no ornament whatever. Her feet were bare beneath the hem. She did not rise when Henry entered. She tracked his movements with unnaturally intense attention.
“Your Grace,” Violet said, “may I present my mother, the Baroness Thornwick. Mama. His Grace.”
“Lady Thornwick.” Henry bowed.
The baroness did not speak. She inclined her head a fraction. The fraction was small enough to be almost an insult and large enough to constitute an acknowledgement.
Mr Brigg took the small chair at the writing table beside Mr Wickham. The two solicitors exchanged a greeting and a cautious smile. The reading commenced.
Henry stood by the mantel through the reading. He had read the document himself the night before. He listened now not to the terms but to the room, which was an old habit of his, and to the silence in which the baroness sat.
When Mr Wickham came to the clause concerning the irrevocability of the trust, the baroness shifted in her chair.
“Wickham.”
“My lady.”