Rosamund drank her wine and answered Edwin’s questions and watched the way his eyes moved when she did not respond with sufficient warmth—the fractional flicker, quick and controlled, the recalibration of a man adjusting his approach. Not anger. Adjustment. The expression of a person who had a plan and was monitoring the variables.
After supper, he suggested a turn in the garden.
“It is late,” she said pleasantly. “I should see Clara to bed.”
“Of course.” Warm. Immediate. “Another time.”
She lay awake that night listening to the house breathe—the creak of floorboards in the upper corridor, footsteps that paced with the regularity of patrol rather than the randomness of insomnia, the sound of a door checked and rechecked somewhere below. Clara slept in the next room. Rosamund lay rigid in the dark and added things to her list.
By the second evening, the warmth had already begun to thin.
Not in any way that would have been legible to someone who did not know how to read the gap between what a person said and what their body did when they said it. It thinned at the edges first—in the pause before Edwin answered when Rosamund asked whether she might take Clara to the village the followingafternoon. In the quality of his smile when she mentioned that she had written to Eleanor and hoped the letter would go with the morning post. In the way he saidof courseandcertainlyandwhatever you likeand his jaw held a fraction more than the words required.
At supper he spoke of her future.
Not dramatically. Not with the bluntness he had used in her parlour, months ago, when he had laid everything out with the confidence of a man who believed the mathematics were simply in his favour. This was softer. Oblique. He spoke of the country air, the restorative quality of distance from London, the benefits of remaining somewhere quiet for a period of time whilethings settled. He spoke of Hertfordshire as though it were already decided. He mentioned, as an aside, that a neighbouring family had a son—good family, good income—and that Clara would grow up alongside children of a similar station, which was important for a girl of her breeding.
“I had not considered staying in Hertfordshire,” Rosamund said.
“You have had a difficult time.” Gentle. Compassionate. “There is no rush to return to London. And there is nothing in London, at present, that requires your presence.”
The sentence landed the way Edwin’s sentences always landed—with the appearance of kindness and the architecture of a cage.
She thought about what she had seen on her way to London. She thought about the locked door she had not yet tried. She thoughtabout the letters she had given the housemaid that morning, which she had not yet confirmed had been sent. She thought about the way the youngest footman had looked at her when she mentioned she might write to friends.
“You are right,” she said. “There is no rush.”
Edwin smiled.
She did not sleep again that night.
On the third morning, she tried the front door.
She had risen before the household—before the maids, before the footmen, before the distant sound of the kitchen beginning its work reached the upper floors. She had dressed without ringing for anyone, because she had learnt at nineteen that the ability to dress oneself was the difference between privacy and the complete absence of it. She had come downstairs in the early grey light, crossed the entrance hall, and put her hand on the front door.
It did not open.
She tried the handle. The bolt. Both were drawn from the outside, which meant they required a key she did not have and had not been given.
She stood in the hall and breathed.
The sound in her chest was not panic. She would not permit panic. It was something adjacent to it—the cold, comprehensive recognition that a wall had just materialised around her and that the wall had always been there.
She rang the bell.
A footman came. Young, perhaps twenty-two, with eyes that looked everywhere except at her.
“The front door is locked,” she said.
“Yes, Your Grace. Mr Vale keeps the house secured at night. For safety.” His hands were clasped in front of him. He did not look at her face. “The doors are opened after breakfast.”
“It is half past six. I would like to walk in the park.”
“Breakfast is at nine, Your Grace. The master’s preference.”
“I do not require breakfast to walk. Please open the door.”
“I don’t have a key to the front, Your Grace.” His gaze found the floor and stayed there. “You would need to speak with Mr Vale for that.”
