Page 8 of The Cold Duke's Hired Bride

“Thomas, when the pay-box fills again, and it will, I should like you to remember you were the first man to tell me it stood empty.” She turned to the shelves before he could decide whether he had been thanked or warned. “It is a useful thing to know which of one’s people will say the hard word to one’s face. The dining plate, Mr. Wells. The good silver. I have seen none of it.”

“Most of it’s travelled, ma’am. To town. We’ve learned not to ask after where.”

“To the pawnbroker. You may say the word to me without flinching.” She moved into the passage. “I have a great fondness for pawnbrokers. They are the only honest men left in a falling house, since they at least will tell you to your face what your dignity is worth by the ounce, and hand you the ticket to prove it.”

“You speak as one who’s had the ticket, ma’am, if I may.”

“You may not, Mr. Wells, but you are not wrong, and I shall like you the better for the guess and not at all for the saying of it. The books. Three sets, I am told.”

Wells gave it up. “Three hands keep them, and the late master’s the worst, may he find eternal peace. No two columns in the house agree on the same morning.”

“That is not theft, then. That is a house that has forgotten how to tell itself the truth, slower to mend than theft and cheaper to begin.” She made a note in her own hand. “The maids. How many, and paid through to when?”

“Four, ma’am. Through Lady Day, and not a farthing since. They stay for there’s nowhere going that’s any better.”

“Which is no kind of loyalty to build a house upon, though it is the kind most houses are built on, and it holds until something better passes the gate.” She wrote it down. “We shall have to givethem a reason to stay that is not merely the want of anywhere else. It is slower than wages, Mr. Wells, and it outlasts them.”

They came at the last to the north wing, a row of doors shut on a year of dust, the furniture beyond them humped grey beneath sheets.

“And through here?”

“Nothing kept, ma’am. Only shut. Closed since before things got bad, and his lordship doesn’t go in.” Wells dropped his voice, though there was none to hear but the dust. “I’d not advise the asking of him why.”

“I shan’t ask him why. When the rest of the house no longer wants its keys more than that wing does, I shall ask him for them, a different question entirely, and I shall know by then whether he is ready to be asked it.” She wrote that down as well. “A house that bolts the doors on its own rooms does to itself only what grief does to a person. I have lived in one. I do not mean to keep a second.”

She had chosen Carrington for precisely this, the disorder and the distance both, a dukedom three counties clear of Lucien’s circle where her face carried no name. The chaos that shamed the staff had let her in without a character or an awkward question.

The linen press on the upper landing had swelled in the damp until its doors would not give, and she set her shoulder to it with no great result while the maids watched and Thomas, passing with an empty scuttle, slowed only enough to enjoy it. A younger footman set his own scuttle down and put his weight to the far door without being asked.

“She wants pulling and lifting at the one time, ma’am. A contrary old thing in the wet, begging her pardon and yours.”

She straightened from the press. “What is your name?”

“Finch, ma’am.”

“Then on three, Finch, and we shall learn whether she has any manners left.”

The doors gave together, and a whole season of trapped damp breathed out into the passage.

“There’s a knack to her, ma’am. I’ll show you of a morning, so she don’t best you tomorrow.”

He had said ma’am as though the word cost him nothing and was owed her regardless. The butler of her own matrimonial house had not managed it in nine years.

By the afternoon she had a housemaid set to help her in the still-room, a thin watchful girl named Annie who did the work with her eyes down and her opinions kept plainly elsewhere.

“You needn’t be wary of me, Annie. I do not dock suppers, whatever you may have heard of the breed.”

“No, ma’am. Only there was a Mrs. Gorse came to see the place a fortnight back, and she said a great deal about supper.”

“I have met Mrs. Gorse.” Renae went on sorting the jars as she spoke. “She would have had you thin by Michaelmas and grateful for the privilege. I am not Mrs. Gorse. I am a good deal harder to please and a good deal cheaper to live alongside, and the two keep company more often than people expect.”

“Mrs. Bellamy was kind, ma’am, when there was a Mrs. Bellamy. We’ve not had kind since.”

“Then you are overdue, and I shall not promise you kind, for the word is cheap and I have heard it lie.” She set a jar into the girl’s hands. “I shall promise you fair, and let you find the rest out by Michaelmas. Now hand me the dried lavender, the blue jar there, and we shall make this shelf smell of something besides its own long neglect.”

Annie almost smiled, caught it, and put it carefully by for later. Renae counted it the first honest wage the house had paid her all day.

By the time the light went amber she had the still-room half cleared and a list in her own hand of every quiet theft the house had committed against itself. She was up the library steps after a dust-furred ledger when Declan found her, and the second meeting came easier than the first.