Morning light fell in pale slants through the mullioned windows of the study, catching motes of dust that drifted over the towers of leather-bound books and the cluttered surface of a desk that had clearly not been tidied in some time. A stack of correspondence lay unopened at one corner, ribbons trailing. A half-drunk cup of tea had gone cold beside a brass inkwell shaped like a lion's head. The room smelled of beeswax, old paper, and faintly of Turkish tobacco, though no pipe or cheroot sat in evidence.
Charlotte Winslow stood just inside the threshold, her gloves still in her hand. She had come straight from the breakfast room, where the Dowager Countess had only this morning complained that her porridge was too thick and her maid was too thin, a complaint Charlotte suspected the old lady of enjoying for its own sake. Now the summons echoed in her ears, the words of Mrs. Pembury delivered with the housekeeper's usual crisp efficiency: His lordship requests Miss Winslow's presence in the study at half past nine.
His lordship. Lord Nathaniel Ashworth. The new Marquess, returned from Vienna or Paris or wherever Continentals went to avoid their duties, now holding the reins of an estate that seemed to groan under his inattentive hand. Charlotte had glimpsed him twice since her arrival yesterday. Once in the corridor, where he had passed her without acknowledgment, his gaze fixed on some middle distance beyond the wainscoting. Once at chapel yesterday evening, where he had stood at the back while the Dowager held court in the front pew, his profile sharp against the candlelight, his expression unreadable.
And now he wished to speak with her. The governess. The paid companion. The middle daughter of a man whose debts had scattered his family to the four winds of genteel employment.
"You may sit."
The voice came from the depths of the room, near the window. Lord Nathaniel sat in a leather armchair beside the fire, one long leg crossed over the other, a small leather-bound volume open in his lap. He did not rise as she entered. He did not look up immediately. Instead, he finished whatever passage had arrested his attention, turned the page with a deliberate care, and only then lifted his gaze to her.
Charlotte lowered herself into the chair opposite, the one clearly intended for supplicants. The leather was cracked and cool through the fabric of her morning dress. She smoothed her skirt, set her gloves in her lap, and waited.
"Miss Winslow." He closed the book, though he did not mark his place. A finger remained inserted between the leaves, the gesture of a man accustomed to interruptions. "Thank you for coming."
"My lord." She inclined her head, the proper degree. Not too deep. She had learned that much from her mother.
Lord Nathaniel set the book aside on a side table and regarded her for a long moment. His eyes were a pale grey-blue, the color of a winter sky just before snow, and they held none of the languid warmth she had been told to expect from gentlemen of his station. Instead, there was a kind of measuring quality to his attention, as though he were cataloguing her the way one might catalogue a new acquisition for a library.
"You have been in my grandmother's service for," he consulted a paper on the desk beside him, "four months."
"Nearly five, my lord. I arrived in late March."
"And before that?"
"Before that, I was at home in Gloucestershire, with my family." She kept her voice level. There was no shame in it, not anymore. There had been shame, once, in the selling of the silver and the dismissal of the horses. Now there was only the practical matter of survival, and the quiet determination to do well at whatever task fell to her.
"Your father is Mr. Edward Winslow, I believe. A small estate near Stroud."
"Yes, my lord."
"Which is no longer his." It was not a question.
Charlotte said nothing. She had learned, too, that silence was often the better part of valor in conversations with the aristocracy. They disliked having to repeat themselves, and they disliked even more being answered when they had not truly asked.
Lord Nathaniel's mouth twitched. It might have been annoyance. It might, just possibly, have been the ghost of amusement. "I do not enjoy extracting information by force, Miss Winslow. I find it tedious in the extreme, and it makes everyone in the room uncomfortable. If you would be so good as to answer my questions directly, we might conclude this business before the tea grows any colder."
A small breath escaped her before she could stop it. The man was not at all what she had been led to expect. "Forgive me, my lord. You asked about my father."
"I did. And you confirmed what I already know. Now I am asking about your qualifications. My grandmother's previous companion was, I am told, a woman of singular incompetence. She could not read, could not hold a sensible conversation, and had a marked tendency to misplace the salts. You, I understand, are somewhat different."
Charlotte permitted herself the smallest of smiles. "I have been known to locate the salts on the first attempt, my lord. I also read tolerably well."
"Indeed." He leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking beneath him. "Latin?"
"Caesar, Virgil, and the church fathers. Some Ovid, though I confess I found his more ribald passages tedious rather than instructive."
"Botany?"
"Rather more than some, my lord. My mother kept a herb garden when I was young, and I spent a great deal of time among her beds. I know the common wildflowers of the Cotswolds, and I can draw them passably well."
"Can you, indeed." For the first time, something shifted in his expression, a flicker of interest that softened the cool mask. "My grandmother has a passion for herbs. She believes in their medicinal properties, some of which are real, and some of which are, shall we say, the product of a vigorous imagination."
"She doses herself with chamomile for sleeplessness, my lord. It is no great harm, though I have suggested valerian might serve her better."
"Valerian." He considered this. "You speak as a woman who has read her Culpeper."
"Among others, my lord. My father had a copy in the library. I confess I borrowed it more often than was strictly proper for a young lady of my education."
Lord Nathaniel regarded her for a long moment, his head tilted slightly to one side, as though she were a botanical specimen of unusual interest. "What is your opinion of the doctrine of signatures, Miss Winslow?"
The question caught her off guard. It was the sort of thing one asked at a learned society, not in a country study on a Tuesday morning. "I think it is charming rather than scientific, my lord. That a walnut should resemble a brain and therefore cure headaches is a pleasing fancy, but it does not bear scrutiny. Nature is not so obliging as to advertise her remedies in so convenient a fashion."
"Yet the doctrine persists."
"It does, my lord. As does belief in the four humors, and the influence of the planets on human temperament. People prefer explanations to mysteries. It makes them feel safe."
Something crossed his face then, too quick for her to read. "You are a dangerous woman, Miss Winslow."
"I am a governess, my lord. We are seldom dangerous. Mostly we are ignored."
"Mostly," he agreed, and the faintest hint of dryness entered his voice. "Tell me of your teaching philosophy. If you were to take a pupil, what would you have them learn?"
Charlotte hesitated. This was not a question she had been asked before, not in so many words. In her interviews for the position, she had spoken of decorum and needlework, of letter writing and the keeping of a modest household. She had not been asked what she believed. "I would have them learn to observe, my lord. To look at a thing closely enough to see what is truly there, rather than what they have been told is there. A child who can observe can learn anything, because they have trained themselves to attend."
"Attend to what?"
"To everything, my lord. The shape of a leaf. The tone of a voice. The quality of light in a room. The way a person holds their hands when they are anxious, or the way a horse cocks its ear at a sound no one else has heard." She paused, aware that she was saying more than she had intended. "Forgive me. I am speaking of generalities. You asked for a philosophy."
"I did." He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward slightly, his elbows on the arms of the chair, his fingers steepled. "Continue."
Charlotte gathered her thoughts. "I believe that education ought to suit the child, not the child the education. Some pupils have a gift for languages, some for numbers, some for the observation of nature. A good teacher discovers what the child is, and helps them become more fully that thing. A poor teacher attempts to make the child into something they are not, and produces only misery on both sides."
"You speak as though you have had pupils."
"I have had sisters, my lord. Three of them, though only two survive. I have been teaching them since I was seven years old, with varying degrees of success."
Something flickered in his eyes at the mention of death, a shadow passing across the pale surface. He did not comment on it. "And if the pupil is obstinate? Unwilling to learn?"
"Then I would ask why, my lord. A child who refuses to learn is usually a child who is frightened, or tired, or convinced that they are stupid. None of those conditions require more Latin. They require a different approach altogether."
The clock on the mantelpiece ticked softly into the silence that followed. Lord Nathaniel's gaze remained steady on her face, and Charlotte became acutely aware of the small imperfections in her appearance, the way her hair had begun to escape its pins at the temples, the faint ink stain on the cuff of her sleeve that she had not noticed until this moment. She resisted the urge to tuck the loose strand behind her ear. To do so would be to acknowledge that his scrutiny troubled her, and she was determined it should not.
"You may go, Miss Winslow." He reached for the book he had set aside. "I will summon you again if I have further questions."
Charlotte rose, smoothing her skirt with hands that were steadier than she had any right to expect. She had been dismissed, and dismissal from a marquess was not a thing one questioned. "My lord."
"Miss Winslow." His voice arrested her at the door. "The chamomile. You suggest my grandmother should try valerian instead."
"Yes, my lord."
"See that she does. She has been restless at night of late, and I find the sound of her bell most disruptive to my reading."
She did not know what possessed her to turn back. Charlotte had her hand on the brass door handle, the cool metal pressing into her palm, and the sensible thing would have been to dip a curtsy, murmur something appropriately deferent about being grateful for His Lordship's time, and withdraw. Instead, her gaze snagged on a sheaf of papers spread across the corner of his desk, half-tucked beneath a leather-bound ledger, and the words leapt up at her in a hand she recognized.
Not the hand itself, precisely. Not the fingers that had formed the letters, nor the years of practice that had shaped them. But the slant of the script, the particular way the descenders curved beneath the line, the slight forward lean of each character as though the words were impatient to be finished. She had seen that hand only twice before, once in a vicar's study when she was nine, and once in a bookshop in Cheltenham where the proprietor had shown her a discarded commonplace book left behind by some melancholy curate.
"Marcus," she said, and the name escaped before she could stop it. Not Marcus. Not the man. The poet. "That is your translation."
Lord Nathaniel did not look up immediately. He was still turning a page in the volume he had taken from the pile, his long fingers moving with a deliberation that suggested he had heard her and was deciding how to respond. When he did lift his gaze, his expression had not changed, but something behind his eyes had sharpened, the way a hound's ears prick at a sound its master has not yet noticed.
"I beg your pardon?"
"The Eclogues. Virgil's Eclogues, in your hand." Charlotte gestured toward the papers, the movement small and involuntary. "You have not finished the fourth eclogue. The line where the child is supposed to arrive is missing, and the meter of the preceding stanza suggests you have not yet decided whether to keep the original's sapphics or attempt something freer."
The room was very quiet. Somewhere beyond the heavy oak door, she could hear the muffled sound of a clock striking the quarter hour, the creak of a board in the corridor where some servant was passing. Lord Nathaniel set the book down, and this time he did look at her fully, his grey eyes intent and unblinking, and Charlotte felt the weight of that attention like a hand pressed to her sternum.
"You read Latin," he said. It was not a question.
"After a fashion. My father believed a young woman's education should include the dead languages, so that she might appreciate the living ones better." The words came out steadier than she felt. "I was particularly fond of the Georgics. The descriptions of the beekeeping in the fourth book."
"You prefer the technical to the pastoral."
It was such an unexpected observation, so precisely tuned to the truth of her preferences, that Charlotte could not immediately frame a reply. The silence stretched, and she watched his mouth, watched the faintest flicker of something at the corner of it that was not quite a smile.
"Forgive me," he said. "That was impertinent. I am not accustomed to speaking of such things with anyone. The habit has atrophied."
"With respect, my lord, the habit is clearly not atrophied. You have translated a significant portion of the Eclogues. You have opinions about meter. You have, if I may say so, an exceptionally fine italic hand that any writing master would envy." She paused, then added, because the boldness was upon her now and she could not seem to call it back, "And the missing line is a difficult one. I would be curious to know what you intend."
He studied her for another long moment, and the quality of his attention changed. It was no longer the appraising gaze of a man conducting an interview, weighing her suitability for a position in his household. It was the gaze of one scholar recognizing another, and the recognition carried with it a sudden, surprising vulnerability, as though he had been caught doing something private and was not yet certain how to feel about being seen.
"I had thought," he said, slowly, "to render it as an invocation. The original is, in effect, a prophecy of a golden age, and prophecy is a strange mode for a man of my temperament to attempt. I find myself drawn to the imagery but skeptical of the sentiment. The child who is to be born does not, in the end, arrive. Or if he does, he arrives in a manner that disappoints everyone who has been waiting for him."
Charlotte felt the floor tilt very slightly beneath her feet, the way it had once when she had stood too quickly in a hot greenhouse. She knew that tone. She had heard it in her own voice when she spoke of her father, of the estate at Longford, of the years before the creditors came. The tone of a person speaking of something that had failed them, carefully and without self-pity, in the hope that the carefulness would disguise the wound.
"You write," she said. "In English as well as Latin. The first eclogue has a quality of recent composition, the others feel older. As though you began the project some years ago and returned to it only recently."
For the first time, Lord Nathaniel's composure cracked, and the crack was small but unmistakable. His hand, resting on the desk, turned so that the knuckles showed white, and he looked away from her, toward the window where the winter light was beginning to strengthen.
"You observe a great deal, Miss Winslow."
"It is a fault of mine, my lord. I am frequently told so."
He did not respond to that. He was still looking toward the window, and in the new angle of the light, Charlotte could see the shadows beneath his eyes, the lines at the corners of his mouth that were too deep for a man of his years, the small scar near his jaw that she had not noticed before. He looked, in that moment, exactly like what he was: a man who had lost a great deal, in too short a time, and was holding himself upright by force of will alone.
"Tell me," he said, and his voice had dropped, lost some of its careful edge, "what you would do with the missing line. If it were yours to write."
The question was so intimate, so far beyond the boundaries of an interview between a prospective employer and a governess, that Charlotte almost laughed. Almost. Instead, she felt the heat rise in her cheeks, and she clasped her hands more tightly in front of her, the knuckles pressing into the worn fabric of her gloves.
"I would write it as a question," she said. "Not an invocation. Not a prophecy. A question. Whether such a child could exist, and what the world would need to become in order to receive him. The original's certainty is what makes the disappointment sharper, when it comes. If the poet had only asked, he might have been answered with something other than silence."
Lord Nathaniel turned back to her then, and the expression on his face was one she would remember for a long time afterward, though she could never have named it. It was not admiration, exactly. It was not gratitude. It was closer to recognition, the look of a man who had been speaking into an empty room for years and had suddenly heard, from very far away, a voice that understood.
"That," he said quietly, "is a very modern sentiment, Miss Winslow. My tutor would have been appalled."
"Your tutor, my lord, was not a woman who has spent the last three years translating the observations of one's grandmother's gardener into something the cook might be persuaded to try."
The sound that escaped him was so unexpected that Charlotte blinked. It was a laugh. Short, bitten off almost before it began, but unmistakably a laugh, and it transformed his face for a single instant into something younger, something that must have been very handsome before grief and duty had conspired to harden it.
"Your grandmother's gardener," he repeated.
"A man of considerable opinions and limited formal education. I have learned more from him about the natural world than from any book in my father's library. Although I would not say so to my father, who is very proud of his library."
"No," said Lord Nathaniel. "I imagine you would not."
The clock struck the half hour, and the sound recalled them both to the room, to the awkward fact that they had been standing on either side of a desk discussing poetry like equals, which neither of them was in a position to do. Charlotte felt the heat in her face intensify, and she dropped her gaze to the carpet, where a faded medallion in rose and cream seemed to swim before her vision.
"Forgive me, my lord," she said. "I have overstepped. It is not my place to comment on your translations, or to offer opinions on your methodology. I am here to discuss the education of your daughter, and I have allowed myself to be led astray."
"You have not been led anywhere, Miss Winslow. I asked the question. The fault, such as it is, is mine."
He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice had returned to its earlier formality, but there was a new note in it, something that had not been there at the start of the interview. Consideration, perhaps. Or the beginning of it.
"I will see you again tomorrow, at the same hour. I should like to discuss, among other things, what you understand of the natural sciences. It seems my daughter's education has been conducted in a manner that does not do justice to her curiosity, and I am told that the gardener is, regrettably, illiterate."
"My lord."
"That will be all, Miss Winslow. You may go."
She went. The door closed behind her with a soft, definitive sound, and she stood in the corridor for a moment, her hand still on the handle, her heart beating in a way that had nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with the particular quality of the look he had given her just before she turned away. The corridor was cool and dim, the great house breathing around her in its old, patient way, and somewhere in the distance she could hear the faint clatter of teacups being laid out in the breakfast room.
She was, she realized, smiling. And she could not seem to stop.
The library was empty when she returned to it, Lord Ashworth having apparently concluded whatever business had called him away. Charlotte gathered her portfolio and her reticule, checked once more that the lock of hair had not escaped its hiding place, and made her way to the servants' staircase that would take her down to the kitchen corridor. Her legs felt oddly unsteady, as though she had walked a considerable distance rather than crossed a single room.
Mrs. Pembury was waiting for her in the passage outside the stillroom, arms folded, expression unreadable.
"The yellow room is ready for you," the housekeeper said, without preamble. "I've had a fire laid in the grate and fresh water set out for washing. Dinner is at seven, and you will be expected to attend the family at table, as is customary for a lady in your position. His lordship has expressed a wish that you join him and Lady Eleanor in the drawing room at half past six, so that you might be introduced to the household's expectations in a more formal setting."
"I see."
"You do not, Miss Winslow. Not yet. But you will."
Mrs. Pembury's gaze swept over her, taking in the high color in her cheeks, the brightness in her eyes, the almost involuntary curve of her mouth.
"I have been housekeeper at Ashworth Hall for thirty-one years," she said, her voice dropping to something lower, more deliberate. "I have seen four governesses come and go in the time since Lady Eleanor was old enough to require one. The first was dismissed within a fortnight for impertinence. The second lasted six weeks before she received a more advantageous offer elsewhere, or so she claimed. The third departed in the night without so much as a letter of resignation, and the fourth wept continuously for the duration of her employment and was eventually sent away for the child's sake as much as her own. I tell you this not to alarm you, but to prepare you."
"I am not easily alarmed, Mrs. Pembury."
"No. I begin to think you are not." The housekeeper studied her for a long moment, and something in her expression shifted, a minute relaxation of the muscles around her mouth. "Lady Eleanor is a difficult child. She is also a singular one, and I will not have her hurt by someone who cannot see past the difficulty to the singularity beneath. His lordship is attempting to do right by her in his own fashion, but he has been absent for the better part of her life, and he does not yet understand the territory. If you are the sort of woman who can be of service to both of them, I will make your time here as tolerable as I am able. If you are not, I will know it before the week is out, and so will you."
Charlotte held the older woman's gaze without flinching.
"I intend to be of service, Mrs. Pembury. I intend to be very much of service indeed. And I should be grateful for any guidance you might be willing to offer me, as someone who knows the household far better than I could hope to in the immediate future."
Something that might have been the ghost of approval flickered across Mrs. Pembury's features.
"We shall see," she said. "Dress for dinner at a quarter to seven. Nothing too fine. His lordship does not stand on ceremony when he is in the country, but Lady Caroline Beaumaris, his aunt, will be joining you tonight, and she has very decided opinions about what is appropriate. You will find a gown laid out on the bed in the yellow room. I took the liberty of having one of the housemaids air it out. It belonged to one of the previous governesses, and she left it behind when she departed. It should fit you tolerably well, as she was of a similar size."
"I could not possibly wear another woman's gown."
"You can and you will, unless you have a wardrobe of your own that I have somehow failed to notice. The Winslows are not in a position to outfit their daughters in new clothes for every new situation, Miss Winslow. I made discreet inquiries before you arrived. I know who you are, and I know what you are about, and I tell you plainly that I respect a woman who does what must be done without making a production of it. The gown is serviceable and in good taste. Wear it, and consider the matter closed."
There was nothing to be said to that, so Charlotte said nothing. She inclined her head in a manner that she hoped conveyed gratitude without servility, and Mrs. Pembury, apparently satisfied, turned on her heel and disappeared into the labyrinthine passages that constituted the servants' domain.
The yellow room was, as Mrs. Pembury had promised, a comfortable chamber on the second floor, looking out over a stretch of kitchen garden and, beyond it, the darker mass of the woods that Charlotte had glimpsed from her bedroom window the night before. The fire in the grate had been laid with the kind of precision that spoke of long practice, and the flames were already beginning to catch properly, throwing a warm and flickering light across the faded silk of the bed hangings and the well-worn carpet.
The gown lay spread out on the counterpane, a quiet dove-gray silk with a modest neckline and sleeves that ended just below the elbow. It was, Charlotte discovered when she lifted it, almost exactly her size, and it had been let out slightly at the waist in what appeared to be a recent alteration, as though the previous owner had possessed a figure very like her own but had required the adjustment for some reason she could not now guess. She held it against herself and looked at her reflection in the small mirror that hung above the washstand, and she saw a woman she barely recognized, someone at once familiar and strangely new, standing at the beginning of an undertaking that might, if she managed it properly, change the entire course of her life.
She thought of the lock of hair in the secret pocket of her portfolio, and of Eleanor's face when she had shown the girl the proper way to hold a brush, and of Lord Ashworth's voice in the library, low and deliberate, asking questions she had not been prepared for and listening to her answers with a quality of attention that had nothing of condescension in it.
She thought of Margaret at home, opening the small brown envelope each morning and finding in it the beginning of a new and better story than either of them had dared to imagine.
When the housemaid came to show her the way to the drawing room at half past six, she was ready, and the gown fit her as though it had been made for her, and the housekeeper's small kindnesses had not been wasted.
Lord Ashworth was standing by the fireplace when she entered, a glass of something amber in his hand, and he turned at the sound of her step. He looked at her for a moment without speaking, and she saw in his expression the same consideration she had glimpsed in the library, the same slow recalibration of some internal measure.
"Miss Winslow," he said. "Thank you for joining us."
He set down his glass, crossed the room to a small writing table that stood beneath one of the tall windows, and took from it a folded sheet of paper, which he handed to her with the deliberate care of a man who understood that documents, even small ones, carry weight.
"Your terms of employment, Miss Winslow, as I believe we discussed. I have had my man of business draw them up this afternoon, and I should like you to review them at your leisure and let me know whether they meet with your approval."
She took the paper, unfolded it, and read. The salary he was offering was, she saw at once, considerably in excess of what she had been led to expect, indeed considerably in excess of what any governess in any modest household in England could reasonably hope to command. The figure stared up at her from the page in neat, unhurried script, and she understood, with a sudden and almost painful clarity, that he was not merely paying her for the work she would do.
He was paying her enough that her family would not have to worry, not for some considerable time to come. He was paying her enough that Margaret's envelope would not be an empty gesture. He was paying her enough that the shadow which had fallen over Winslow Lodge would lift, at least in part, at least for a while.
She looked up at him, and she found, to her considerable annoyance, that her eyes were bright.
"My lord, this is excessively generous."
"It is not generous. It is appropriate. You are an educated woman of good family, and I am asking you to take on a position that has, I am told, a discouraging history of short tenure. I am asking you to live in my house and to care for my daughter and to endure the scrutiny of a housekeeper who, I assure you, is more formidable than I am, and the commentary of an aunt who considers herself the arbiter of all that is proper in this corner of England. The salary I am offering is, I believe, the least I can do."
"I will not pretend that it is not more than I expected, my lord. And I will not insult you by refusing it."
"That is wise of you. I should have insisted, and we should both have found the exchange tedious."
She folded the paper and placed it carefully in the pocket of her gown, where it lay against her hip with the solid, reassuring weight of something that was actually going to happen.
"There is one further matter, Miss Winslow, which I should like to raise before Lady Caroline arrives and we are obliged to be on our best behavior for the remainder of the evening."
"Yes, my lord?"
He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice had lost some of its earlier formality and had taken on instead a quality she could not immediately name, something rawer, something that suggested he was about to say a thing he had been turning over in his mind for longer than she knew.
"You are not, I think, a woman who suffers fools gladly. Nor am I. We are going to disagree, Miss Winslow, you and I, and probably often. I should like to establish, at the outset, that I do not consider disagreement to be a failure of conduct on either side. I have had quite enough of people in my life who tell me only what they think I wish to hear. I am asking you to tell me what you actually think, and I am warning you in advance that I shall hold you to it."
"I shall hold you to the same, my lord."
He looked at her for a long moment, and something shifted in his expression, a minute relaxation, the faintest suggestion that he had heard what he had needed to hear.
"Very well, Miss Winslow. I believe we understand one another. Shall we go in to dinner?"
He offered her his arm, and she took it, and they passed together through the doorway into the long, lamplit corridor beyond, where the rest of the evening, and the rest of her life at Ashworth Hall, was waiting to begin.