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“This is true, he said as much at breakfast,” Charlotte insisted. Arthur joined his duchess—
Whose duchess?his bear wondered.
—joined Madam at the front of what appeared to be the majority of the household except for that bloody fox.
“Only see,” he said as they took in the devastation. The fence around the garden was little more than kindling. What had been neat furrows with pea sticks ready to train growing shoots was the picture of wanton destruction, the lengths of wood broken, the strings tangled, and the earth was churned as if there had been a great battle.
In the center of the chaos lay a dead deer: its neck was quite obviously broken and its belly a mass of blood and entrails.
“Children? Oh, where is your sister?” Madam turned to Bernadette and Tarben. “Do find her, if you will. And then back into the kitchen for refreshment, as your perfect application of my lesson earns you first choice of Ciara’s latest treats.”
They winkled their sister out of a hedge, and Tarben led them cheering to the house with Ciara in their wake. Charlotte followed them at a nod from Madam.
“A word of warning would not have gone amiss, Your Grace,” she said and turned to the nearest footman. “Coogan, if you would ask Mr. Todd to join me?” Brosnyn’s instructions ensued. “If the men who saw to this initially are not presently intent on a task, do summon them to set this to rights, with my apologies that their hard work was undone.” Arthur was next in line. “If you would grant me a moment of your time, Your Grace?”
Her tone boded ill. “Come, let us repair to the footstool room.” Arthur offered her his arm, which she eschewed. “It has been set aside for disputations, has it not?”
Madam led the way, past feasting children and gleaming wainscoting. “We shall paint it your favorite color, you have only to say so,” she said.
The sunlight from the sparkling-clean windows of the foyer shone upon her hair. “Golden, perhaps?”
“Golden is not a color.” She stopped to straighten a painting.
Arthur rolled his eyes, safely behind her back. “By all means, let us argue about what constitutes a color.”
Down the hall they proceeded and into the room, which was still lacking the door. She stood next to the footstool and folded her hands at her waist. “I must insist if you have an issue with the work, you apply to me directly and in private.”
“Apply to you directly.”
“And in private. There was no need for the children to have seen that poor animal.”
Arthur scoffed. “The children have a better idea of the cycle of life than you imagine.”
“Nevertheless.” She stood before him and displayed no fear. “It was unnecessary, and in future—”
“Infuture!” He spat the word like an epithet. “What can the future hold if the simplest of tasks cannot be concluded successfully?”
“Osborn.” What had he said that softened her tone? At least she left off addressing him as the scathing “Your Grace.” “It is a minor setback, the fault of which can be laid at the door of the natural world.”
He swept his arm in the general direction of the garden. “Nothing about that was natural.”
Madam searched his face as she would an encyclopedia from which she sought knowledge. “Shall we put the footmen on guard?”
“The footmen!” Alfred’s bloody letter! “I would like to know what Lowell was thinking, sending us so many mouths to feed.”
“It was the work of the duchess, as the letter informed us. Which I perceive remains unread.” He shrugged, recalled Ben’s words about being treated like a child and the inference he acted like one. Madam carried on. “I shudder to think what would become of Arcadia without them. They are integral to the reconstruction of your crumbling manse.”
“Our crumbling manse.” He looked at the ceiling, freshly plastered, at the curtains, cleaned and properly hung, everywhere but at her, as only then was he able to inquire: “I would assure myself of your ease after the events of last evening.”
“I am well.” Was she? Her cheeks were flushed. Would the room look absurd with blush-pink walls? It may be his new favorite color.
Madam cleared her throat. “And you?”
“I?” Of course he was well. Why would he not be well? Last night had gone…well. “Yes.”
“Yes?”
“I am well.” They took a step forward toward one another and then backed away as from a hot stove. She pretended to inspect an impeachable swag of curtain, and he inspected her.
