Caroline was the first to admit that his music, his soul, had been tainted by the war, even though the English claimed victory.
For her father and, she suspected, the Duke of Havoc – the Duke of Nidderdale, she mentally corrected herself – the victory was, indeed, a hollow one. Arthur still would not speak in detail about his service. Only time would tell if he ever would.
Now, the situation was quite dire for the Sedgwycks.
These days, members of the ton preferred to send their children or wards off to expensive schools or to stay in the City where they could be taught a variety of topics, including music. Arthur’s few patrons consisted of those who could not afford such educations. As such, he earned very little. While he was always kind to Caroline and had, at first, endeavored to obscure the extent of their circumstances, that they were close to sinking into debt, she was intelligent and could not mistake the deteriorating house for a sign of his professional and financial success.
After many evenings of cajoling her father into telling her the truth, Caroline finally knew what the thin scrapes of butter upon their toast, the dwindling household items – sold, as it transpired, to attempt to meet some of their expenses – and her threadbare dresses all signified.
Living on little means did not frighten her, but the consequences of becoming a debtor did.
The Duke of Nidderdale’s unexpected letter felt unreal. As a girl, Caroline had never quite believed that her education, insisted upon by her mother long before her death in childbirth, then faithfully carried out by her father, would matter in a material way.
Now, she had the opportunity to put it all to use. While she’d always appreciated being so well read, a rarity in many girls and women, she never knew exactly what use it might serve.
Husbands, for example, did not generally wish for wives who could talk circles around them in conversation or knew as much about political affairs as they did. Caroline was not particularly bubbly or gregarious, but she was not afraid of having her own views.
Perhaps Lord Malliston wasn’t a desirable employer, but that couldn’t be helped.
I shall have to take what I can get, thought Caroline.
“The duke thinks highly of you,” she said after a moment. “He seems kind. His words are thoughtful.”
Arthur took the missive back from her when she offered it. His light hazel eyes skimmed the graceful penmanship.
“I think highly of him,” he said. “Reeve… Lord Malliston… was a fine man when I knew him. He even told me to disregard the use of his title, although I would never do so now. The battlefield does strange things to men, but I cannot say that all of them are bad.”
His words contradicted the slight unease she read in his careworn face. He had read the letter first, alone in his dreary little study, and then called her into the dining room so that she could read it, too. Since that moment, Caroline had sensed an uncharacteristic disquiet, an underlying hum of anxiety that she only associated with her father’s manner when she was roused from her own sleep by the sound of his shouting.
He had terrible nightmares of things he would never divulge to her, no matter how much she begged.
When she succeeded in waking him, he often possessed the same air of uneasiness that he had now.
Arthur had only mentioned Lord Malliston once or twice and, in those cases, had never related very much about him.
Most of what Caroline had heard had been the rumors that milled through York and its surrounding towns like unruly stray dogs. What she’d heard about the duke did not flatter him. She did not necessarily believe any of it, though, and would not until the rumors were proved true. If they were true.
“He will offer a very generous amount for a tutor. I am certain,” she said, attempting to draw out a more telling comment from her father, who seemed to be mired in thought. “Don’t you think?”
Arthur nodded at last. “He appears to be in quite a haste to find a tutor for his girls,” he said. “His wife died most suddenly. Although they are still very young, I imagine their children’s education must have suffered drastically amidst all that upheaval.”
Caroline shook her head with pity. “It is such a sad thing about Lady Malliston,” she said. “Those poor children, losing their mother at such a young age.”
That, at least, I can understand well, she thought.
She was finding it difficult not to think about her potential charges more than her potential employer. She had lost her mother at birth. While she never knew her affections, her father’s praise and love for his late wife gave Caroline a clear sense of who she had been. Arthur exalted Lily Sedgwyck to the heavens and her portrait still hung against the wall in the drawing room.
It was almost, fancied Caroline, a reverent shrine. The portrait was treated as an image of a long dead saint or an ethereal angel. Arthur could never bring himself to move it, just as he could not bring himself to sell all of Lily’s old possessions. Caroline had been given several, though none were terribly costly. Among them were a comb and a rosy silk ribbon that had faded with age.
Many times, Caroline had faced that portrait, believing, hoping, that her mother watched over her and that the painting really was an icon. It captured Lily’s warm smile and, somehow, the painter had conveyed wisdom and kindness through her green eyes. Many swore they were exactly like Caroline’s, and she was proud of the association. Proud that it tied her to a mother she had never known, a woman her father never quite seemed to stop grieving.
As a widower, he could have remarried but never had. This wasn’t lost on Caroline, who was no great romantic but acknowledged how fortunate her parents had been in their love. Her father’s loss was tragic.
Despite the fact that Lord Malliston himself inspired such loathing and scorn, Caroline found herself drawn to his daughters’ predicament.
I just need to know a little more about the truth behind these rumors.
Thinking quickly, Caroline decided it would be best to gently coax her father into saying more about his old commanding officer. “What might you say about the duke’s manners and disposition, Father?” Caroline asked. She hoped it would prompt him to speak his mind on both the man and his offer. “Would you say he would be easy to live with and work for? If I go to his home, I shall be spending a great deal of time there.”
But Arthur remained silent following her query. Even before going to battle, he chose his words carefully and would never speak ill of another man. He was deliberate and thoughtful in everything he did. Now, he was almost taciturn.
Although he must have known Caroline was taken with this offer, she could see that he had some reservations.
Come on, Father.
He finally ventured, “Regarding his manners and disposition to those in his employ, you will have to discover that for yourself. My estimation of the man originates from our time in battle. If you would like to know what I learned from that, I found him upstanding, agile, sound of mind, and, despite what others who knew him might have contended, unassuming. I think his natural gregariousness was read as some kind of arrogance. And he was a great favorite of the Duke of Wellington himself. That inspired some spite.”
This was the first time her father had truly mentioned anything specific about his own service. Granted, it was about another soldier, an officer, but that alone marked something significant about the duke. She conjectured that he must have made a good impression upon her father.
Would it not have been insensitive, she might have pointed this out to him.
Best not, she thought. I don’t want to embarrass him.
Perhaps the nasty, pernicious gossip had not tarnished her father’s opinion of him. This hope, paired with what was for Arthur, high praise, made Caroline confident that she would soon be packing her trunk and reticule for Easingwold to begin the new position. Truly, she had no objection to putting her education to such use, especially given the potential of financial help to her father, and that was the greatest lure of all.
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But her eagerness was dampened at the thought of leaving her father alone in the house. Well, not entirely alone… his widowed younger sister, Aunt Lydia, would be there to tend to his needs. She had stayed with Caroline while Arthur was away fighting, and had never quite managed to find her way home after his tour had concluded. This was not wholly unacceptable because Aunt Lydia brought with her a widow’s pension. She was not a drain on their already stretched resources.
She, a woman shaped vaguely like a mantis, Caroline had to note, was a little bossy and definitely flighty, but she was a good, true soul. She adored her brother and loved Caroline dearly.
Aunt Lydia will at least be some company for him.
It seemed like a sound plan. In that moment, Caroline saw no reason why she should not accept the position. Arthur put the letter on the table. Again, Caroline picked it up and studied it, her eyes deliberately pausing over each word in a final bid to find any implicit shortcomings in the offer. Finding nothing objectionable, she mused on his address and title.
The Thornlands – a fearsome name for a place that supposedly hid a fearsome crime. Caroline swallowed. There was no use in avoiding the inevitable. She needed to clarify something.
“Father,” she said. “I must ask you…” she trailed off.
“What is it?”
“We have danced around it. This is the same man alleged to have killed his wife, is it not?”
Arthur sighed, stood up from the dining table, and went into the parlor, where he landed upon a worn leather chair facing the hearth. Caroline followed him to the low flames; she understood this was not his avoidance or a dismissal. He was more prone to the chill at his age, even during daylight hours.
The old chair moved closer to the flames by the day, it seemed.
He moved the chair even closer now as he pondered his daughter’s question. Unspoken, it had been hanging between them like a menacing noose.
Now that I’ve voiced it, he cannot ignore it, thought Caroline with grim satisfaction. Or pretend we haven’t both heard the claims.
“You know that as well as I do. Do not be coy,” he said as he settled back in his chair. “What would you have me say?”
Caroline moved to sit on a little stool by the hearth, her back against one of the chair’s armrests. “You have not mentioned it at all.”
“Must I?”
She sighed, annoyed, but trying not to show her impatience. “Are you saying that the rumors do not matter to you?” she asked. “I seek your thoughts on the matter of the Duke of Havoc.” She deliberately used the abrasive, disrespectful nickname. “Please tell me.”
A smile played on his pale lips as he looked down at her. “Dear Caroline, you must know that an old man like me has to gather his thoughts before spitting out his words.”
He was toying with her; she could see it. Now is no time for sarcasm.
“We have never discussed this… but now we must,” she persisted. “They say the battlefield turned him mad. I am not certain I believe this, unless I am only to believe it drove him to the same blackness of mood as you. Could he have murdered his wife in their very own home? Leaving his children to fend for themselves without a mother and a murderous father?”
She stared into her father’s face, searching for his honest answer.
Arthur shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose with his right thumb and index finger. His brows knit together in consternation.
I have pushed him too far, thought Caroline.
She rarely, if ever, mentioned his nightmares, the chronic sullen silences, the strange sheen his eyes sometimes gained when he gazed into the fire – or at nothing but the peeling wallpaper, which was more unnerving – but they both knew he was susceptible to the darkness that his music, even as faded as it was now, kept at bay.
Aunt Lydia, who was not as quick as Caroline, had never noticed.
But if the duke was mad in the same manner that her father was mad, Caroline was not frightened.
“Do not repeat such morbid things,” said Arthur curtly. “Only small minds latch on to them. I do not believe the tales. I suggest that you discard them, too.”
So that was his opinion. Caroline thought as much, but she had needed to hear it from him directly. “As always, I value your thoughts,” she said, worrying her lip gently with her teeth. “But there can be no smoke without fire, as you often say.”
“Yes,” Arthur said, with surprising sharpness. Caroline’s eyebrows rose. “But it is nobody’s business to stoke the fire of another person’s misery. Lord Reeve Malliston was a good man when I knew him. That is all I care to know. I do not believe him capable of murder or cruelty…”
Unless it’s on a battlefield, thought Caroline.
“Therefore, I will leave the decision with you, as well as the freedom to reply as you please. Know that whatever you decide shall bring no argument from me.”
Mutely, Caroline nodded.
“How his lady wife died, I cannot say. But I do not think the duke is responsible for her passing.” Arthur brought his hand to the top of Caroline’s head, stroking it as though she was still a girl and not a woman of one and twenty. He was so gentle that his fingers barely caught on her dark red curls.
“Very well. I did not think he was, either. There must be more to it than the vile stories, must there not?” she said, smiling weakly.
“Yes, my girl. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I must ready some exercises for a pupil. Our unexpected letter has rather interrupted my routines.”
Arthur stood from his old chair and quit the room, leaving Caroline sitting in thoughtful silence.
Caroline was pensive, but she was certain of one thing. For a man to be championed by her father was indicative of his true character.
Not gossip.
Still, the fact remained that her father provided one caveat: all he knew about Lord Malliston came from their time shared within a war. He knew nothing of the man after his return. There was such a great disparity between what Arthur said and what the public keenly whispered. It caused concern, even for a creature so practical as her.
She and her father badly needed the stability this position could offer. But it was equally true that to accept that position at The Thornlands could, in time, subject her family to the same gossip that plagued the Duke of Nidderdale.
That would ruin what’s left of Father’s business, a sneaking, traitorous voice said in her mind. Not to mention any of my own prospects.
Were she in a less serious mood, she might have chortled at the thought. She was next to penniless. She was not of the ton. She had no prospects to speak of. Such things were for other women with lives that were leagues away from hers.
She did not mind being a spinster if that was to be her fate after all, but she could not be a poor one.
And she would not let her father suffer if she could enter employment that could better them.
It remained that Arthur felt there was nothing wrong with Lord Malliston, and he also respected Caroline’s autonomy in nearly all matters. He was an unconventional father and it was why he’d left the final decision in her hands. She trusted him, and he would never knowingly allow her to put herself in peril. This proposed situation, by his measure, was neither perilous nor ridiculous.
Perhaps the money will outweigh any ill effects my association with The Thornlands might bring to our reputations.
Indeed, she decided, she had to be brave enough to take the chance.
Eyes shining with determination, Caroline stood and proceeded to the writing table in her father’s study. So that there would be no confusion between parties, and so that the duke would understand that this was a binding agreement, she put pen to paper, carefully writing out her terms.
Yes, she would accept the position and, yes, his payment was acceptable.
Chapter Four
Three Weeks Later
Reeve was in the best of spirits as he awaited the arrival of his girls’ new tutor. Over a fortnight
had passed since the idea struck him with the force of a hammer’s blow – notable even amidst the pounding in his head – and it was still hard to believe it was coming to fruition.
Today, he had instructed that Sophie and Phoebe both be dressed in their finest attire. He even spent close to three solid minutes in their company to explain to them what was about to happen. Miraculously, neither of his daughters managed to irk him. They looked very presentable. Phoebe was in her favorite color, a forest green, and Sophie wore a blue frock that matched her eyes.
“You will find her most agreeable,” he had promised. “Much more agreeable than Miss Anna.”
They’d exchanged two blue-eyed looks that he thought were laced with skepticism. Given their tender ages, he wasn’t sure if they were capable of such an emotion but, then again, given his behavior toward them in the past, perhaps they were coming to learn that their papa wasn’t always altogether present or sincere when he addressed them.
Neither girl had voiced her enthusiasm, but neither had complained. He took that as a good sign, inwardly praised God for the good fortune of no hysterics, and proceeded to inform them of exactly how he wanted them to behave in Miss Sedgwyck’s presence. They were to be polite and speak only when spoken to.
Reeve ruefully acknowledged, at least to himself, that he had exaggerated his daughters’ praises in his letter to Arthur. In his own defense, they were not troublesome girls, and he was not covering up any spoiled or uncouth habits to lure in the new tutor.
He just didn’t know them as well as he ought to, but what was there to know about little girls?
And I can barely tolerate Miss Ball and Mrs. Humphrey when I see them, myself. I cannot blame either Phoebe or Sophie for their aversion to the bitches.
He nursed hopes that with a new woman, particularly one as young as Arthur’s daughter, in the house to tutor the girls there would be fewer dramatic spectacles and more stability. In theory, Phoebe and Sophie would be better occupied with a minder and educator they actually liked.
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