Sussex, April 1813

  Dearest Mother—

  I wish you my utmost condolences on your loss, and am myself staggered by this terrible news.Father was irrepceable and I am certain that the world will mourn his absence—but not so much as you or I.

  As for coming home—unfortunately my studies are in a delicate position that cannot be abandoned. I wish I had been more forthcoming with you on the details of my work, here. I am eager to share with you what I have uncovered; I have been too intent on continuing the work to properly report on it. But you have long impressed on me the importance of finishing a task, so I cannot come home: I want only to live up to the standards you instilled when you taught me so many years ago.

  In my stead I am sending my man of business, Julian Crk. He has my complete confidence and I hope that he will soon earn yours, as well. I have instructed him to meet with our agents, organize the estate, manage it in my absence, and send me regur reports.

  Mister Crk will also either arrive with or shortly be joined by a Miss Amelia Wright, who will serve as governess for young Eustace and Gregory. Eustace has little more than a year before he begins his studies at Eton and I do not want him to arrive unprepared. I have instructed Miss Wright that the boys’ first object lesson will be to accompany Mister Crk as he meets with the various agents.

  Please put Mister Crk in the Lionheart Room, and Miss Wright in Rosedale. Afford them both every hospitality in my stead.

  If conditions are favourable, I should be able to return in time to sit in the next session of Parliament. I am eager to see you again and bestow upon you every comfort it is in my power to offer. Until then, my heart is with you.

  —Your Youngest

  The dowager's face darkened as she read the letter, until it all but matched her head-to-foot mourning bck. She folded the letter, gave Julian little more than a gnce, and focused her attention on Amelia, standing pensively beside him.

  "Are you pregnant, Miss Wright?"

  "What?" the girl gasped, struggling to stifle the ugh that threatened to explode out of her. Affronted. She should be affronted. "No, midy."

  Her mother gave Amelia a look that said she was neither mollified nor convinced. "You wouldn't be the first mistress that some dilletante blueblood sent to the family’s country manor to avoid embarrassment. Perhaps you were the sister of one of Youngest's school friends and met when you visited Oxford… but then you said you don't have family, didn’t you Miss Wright. No brothers."

  Amelia tried and failed to keep the hurt from her voice as she answered. "I had a brother, actually. He was taken from us too soon."

  That, at least, stalled her Mother's temper. She looked away, scowling at the closed doors to the te Duke's study. "Well, this household knows something about that."

  Without another word, she started walking away towards the stairs. A beat ter, Amelia and Crk realized that they were supposed to follow.

  Upon entry to the house all she had wanted to do was wrap comforting arms around her mother, hold her and be held by her, cry with her. They hadn’t done anything of the sort for more than a decade, but the intended gesture pulled at her like a magnet. Mother’s temper had decisively quashed that impulse. Perhaps it was for the best. She couldn’t hug her mother, but she intended to help the Dowager through her mourning period as best as she could.

  “This is the Lionheart Suite,” the dy of the house expined a few minutes ter as she pushed open the double doors. “Pntagenets have slept here. I assume my youngest wishes to make your importance clear to the house staff, and to the agents with whom the staff will no doubt talk, and probably also to me.”

  That was, in fact, exactly what Amelia had intended, even though she had always hated the Lionheart Suite. It was entirely too rge (it had been half this size when Pntagenets slept there) and dismally decorated in dark teal and burnished mahogany.

  It also had the benefit of a rge desk, upon which Crk set down his valise. “I am of course quite honoured, midy.”

  Her mother nodded curtly and gestured to Amelia. “Come along, Miss Wright, let’s find you your bed.”

  Amelia hardly needed to be shown the way, of course, but followed after wide-eyed. “Your home is magnificent, midy.” And it was: spacious and tastefully decorated in the way that only absurd wealth used to pretend to hide its own pedigree. The walls were tiled with paintings curated across centuries.

  “Thank you, but the keeping of my husband’s house does not bring me a great deal of joy at present,” the dowager returned, still scowling. Amelia had expected Mother to be miffed at her not coming home (even though she was, in fact, coming home), but her choice to let her temper show to strangers was surprising. But then withholding her apparent presence was just another shock for her mother, following after a series of them.

  “I don’t think I have yet been able to share my condolences with you, midy,” Amelia said gently. “I think I only shared a few dozen words with the duke at Malvern House, but your husband cut an impressive figure, and I recall with what pride and love you spoke of him. I cannot imagine the magnitude of your loss.”

  “My advice, Miss Wright: do not try to imagine it,” her mother responded curtly, and turned to face her at another door. “This is yours.”

  Amelia stepped past her into the small bedchamber, which glowed pink. The walls were papered in rose print of pastoral scenes—hence Rosedale—and the windows seemed to catch more than their fair share of the afternoon light. She smiled nostalgically. She’d never slept here, but she had pyed here, and snuck away to read by that window, throughout her childhood. “Thank you, midy. It’s a lovely room.”

  “I might have put you in Nanny’s old room upstairs,” the dowager remarked sourly, “but I believe it’s filled with chairs at the moment, anyway.”

  “This is much better than a governess might usually expect,” Amelia smiled back to her hostess. “And I appreciate it a great deal.”

  Her mother looked back at her with a calcuting expression, almost certainly deciding whether or not to discim responsibility and confide that “Youngest” had made the decision, not her. But she merely nodded. “The dinner bell is rung at seven.”

  “Begging your pardon, midy,” Amelia said, lifting a tentative hand. “Do the children eat then, as well?”

  “They do not,” was the answer, and her mother paused, considering. “I believe Lady Marbury took the children to the fishing pond this afternoon, if you should like to find them before dinner.”

  “I would, and thank you, Mo-midy,” the girl answered, and blushed at her near misstep.

  But Mother did not seem to notice, and swept down the hall.

  Amelia waited for the footman to deliver her luggage and put a shilling in his hand. She’d asked Julian to supply her with a hefty pouch of the coins, and fully intended to systematically buy the loyalties of the house staff. It felt silly doing so in a house where she was also managing all the wages, but the staff hardly knew that and, if all went according to pn, never would.

  But the footman held the coin in his hand and considered her for a long moment. “Begging your pardon, midy—”

  “I’m just a ‘miss,’” she demurred with what she hoped was a gentle smile.

  “Miss, then,” he accepted the correction with a nod, hand still open and out, the coin sitting there. “I appreciate the gesture, but aren’t you employed by the house as much as I am?”

  She sat down on the bed. “I am,” she admitted. “I hope I don’t appear to be putting on airs. I only wanted to recognize your hard work. My bags aren’t light.”

  “That they are not,” he agreed, and closed his fingers over the coin. “We’ve not had a governess before, not while I’ve been in service. I’m not sure how it works. Because— you are a dy, not just a common servant like me, and yet you’re in their employ. Are you part of the house staff, or…?”

  Amelia couldn’t help but smile at the boy, who was probably still looking forward to his twentiest birthday. “What’s your name?”

  “Ah, Henry,” he replied. “Most people call me Hank, but upstairs, I’m Henry.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Henry,” she smiled, and tipped her head, thinking. “I am not part of the house staff. But to illustrate… when the Duke’s wyer visited, I imagine he tipped you? Or any of his business agents.”

  He grinned. “There’s a reason we look forward to those visits.”

  Trust the middle css to try and buy their way to respect—not that she was doing anything else, herself. She shrugged. “Then it’s the same as that, I suppose. Just that I’ll be staying for a bit longer.”

  “Until those two rascals chase you out of the house,” he chuckled, and then realized what he’d said. “Uh, that is—”

  But Amelia ughed. “Are the boys a bit of a handful?” She hardly knew them, even if they were her nephews. She’d always wanted to visit with them longer, but both her mother and their mother struggled to keep them separate.

  “More like two cats in a sack,” he admitted ruefully, and finally pocketed the coin.

  “Well I’m off to go meet them. I’m led to understand they’re at the fishing pond.” She rose to her feet. “Could you point me in the right direction?” she asked for appearance’s sake.

  He bobbed his head and stepped aside for her to exit before him. “Out the front doors and a half-turn to the right, across the wn. The tallest bunch of trees stand over where they’ll be, I’d wager.”

  It was a short, pleasant walk across the wn, and then the grass sloped down towards the brook. The shade of the trees along its length enveloped Amelia; the sound of spshes and peals of children’s voices invited her closer. She smiled in anticipation. The fishing pond: her childhood refuge.

  She came down the fern-shrouded bank and into the cool, damp air, pushing aside a low-hanging branch so she could spy the children.

  They were trying to murder each other.

  Eustace had Gregory pinned, the younger boy’s arms twisted behind him and filing, his fingers bared not to grab but to scratch and cw. Eustace’s face was already bleeding freely, the blood flow accelerated by the water, but he paid it no mind. Instead he was intent on holding his brother’s head underwater and shouting at him. Their muddy, sopping shirts were both pink with blood.

  “Boys, boys!” Amelia shouted, and ran down to spsh into the shallow end of the pond. Her skirts dragged behind her in the water, but she pushed forward.

  Eustace rexed his grip enough for Gregory to look up, and they both stared, gobsmacked, at her approach.

  A moment ter they realized that she was about to stop them, so they hurried to get their best licks in before she could.

  In the end she had to take the two of them by their colrs and drag them out the opposite bank. It took all she had to hold them both at arm’s length and keep them separated. It did not happen often, but for a brief, bzing moment, she missed the muscle stength that used to come so easily to her a year before.

  She was shouting at them, remonstrating about proper behaviour and brotherly love, until she finally wound down and demanded, “Where is your mother?!”

  Saucer-eyed, Gregory pointed up the embankment. As she hauled them both uphill, he asked shakily, “Who are you?”

  “I’m Miss Wright. I’m your new governess.”

  By contrast, Eustace continued to fil and roared, “Unhand me, woman!” The performance was a rather good impression of his te father. At least he was still small enough that Amelia could keep his feet scrabbling for purchase across the ground.

  Iris was at the top of a low hill, sitting before an easel and staring off into the distance. Against the bright and colourful ndscape, she was an inkblot of mourning bck. The woman did not turn as Amelia and the boys made their noisy approach. Only when Amelia’s shadow fell onto her canvas did the dy’s attention and scowl fall upon them.

  Amelia could only imagine what image she herself presented: skirts soaked up to her thighs, hair knocked askew, Iris’ two squirming boys held out like rabbits brought in for dinner. Betedly she thought to worry that she might look mannish, or worse, recognizable as the woman’s brother-in-w.

  “Boys, I only ask for a few hours a day of uninterrupted quiet so I can capture the light,” their mother sighed. “And now you are dragging strangers into your squabbles and then they bring you to me, and I really just… cannot tolerate this level of interruption.”

  “She’s not a stranger,” Gregory piped up, “she’s our governess!”

  Iris looked confused, then annoyed, and didn’t mind sharing the details of either. “Enid would never hire a governess for me,” she mused. “So you must have been retained by ‘Youngest.’”

  Amelia nodded. “That’s correct, midy. I would offer you my hand, but—” she lifted the boys minutely to indicate her present problem.

  But Iris only sighed. “Which means I am expected to stay here,” she concluded sourly. “Trapped: no allowance, no home of my own, reduced to subsistence on family charity.” She put on a tight smile that did not mask her frustration so much as emphasize it.

  Carefully considering if the boys were still murderous enough to be released, Amelia rexed her grip and let them stand on their own feet. She flicked water and pond scum off her hand and put it forward. “Midy, I am Miss Amelia Wright. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  Iris considered the hand for a moment, and then deigned to touch it with only three fingertips. “I’ve never had a governess before,” she mused, looking Amelia up and down. “Well. I did. When I was young. But never for the boys. You might be somewhat useful to me, Miss Wright.”

  “That is my hope.”

  The boys’ mother gestured vaugely across the ndscape before them. “There aren’t many vantages from which to paint here, but I am determined to make the best use of my time while I am trapped on this gaudy wreck of an estate. The boys have been a constant distraction. You’ll take them off my hands.”

  Amelia bobbed her head. “And prepare Eustace for Eton.”

  Iris lifted an eyebrow. “Is Youngest footing the bill for tuition, too?”

  “That is my understanding, as my instructions are to prepare him.”

  “Eustace, you get what you can out of her while we have her,” his mother instructed with a conic wave of her hand at Amelia. “I won’t be so foolish as to trust in promises, but you take what’s offered you, understand?”

  Eustace glowered a nod; Gregory piped up: “But what’s a governess give us, anyway? I thought they were in charge of colonies.”

  “That’s governors,” the elder spat, and tried to reach around Amelia to smack his brother. She barely caught his wrist in time.

  Seeing that no answer was coming from Iris, who had turned back to her ndscape, Amelia expined, “I’m a tutor. We’ll spend some time together every day, reading books, working maths, talking about natural philosophy and history—” The boy’s attention was wandering away. “—by which I mean different animals in faraway pces, and the march of armies across the map. And we’ll read some adventure stories and perhaps, if you have a mind, we’ll make up some of our own.”

  Gregory grinned at her rephrasing, but Eustace only pouted. “I don’t like books.”

  “Perhaps you have not found the right ones yet,” Amelia offered in response. “I’d like to help you look.” He did nothing more than look away, crossing his arms. “Let’s gather in the green drawing room tomorrow after breakfast, hm?”

  Gregory nodded excitedly; Eustace made no response at all.

  Amelia was beginning to see the outline of the task before her. Best fall back on letting them show her what they knew. “In the mean time, can the two of you show me how to get back to the house without wading through the fishing pond?”

  “There’s a bridge!” Gregory decred excitedly and started pulling her down the hill by the hand.

  Mister Grant was an older man, with a body that had once been spare and had with age gained the qualification of stolid. He wore a single-breasted tailcoat, dark brown, and long breeches of the same colour. Both were made out of a material more rugged than Amelia expected, but then he spent his days criss-crossing the estate, and not always by road or cut trail.

  Amelia remembered him from her life before: a taciturn man focused on his duties and with little time for the master’s children. But the way he smiled at both Eustace and Gregory made her wonder how accurate her memory was. He seemed genuinely excited that the boys were attending his meeting with Crk and eager to share his work on the estate.

  “Between rents, livestock sales, and the odd spot of lumbering, the estate provides about one part in five of the house budget.”

  “Is that all?” Eustace asked, scowling softly. “Father always said the nd paid for the house.”

  “When I started here, apprenticing my predecessor, it was more like four parts in five,” Grant expined. “But that was more than fifty years ago, young master.”

  Amelia leaned forward as much as she could with Gregory on her p. “Where does the other four-fifths come from, Mister Grant?”

  “Jamaica,” he answered readily and with some relish. “Not all of it, but most of it, as I’m led to understand. Outside of my bailliwick, properly speaking. But the interior of the house is made entirely of spun sugar.”

  “Really?” Gregory gasped, saucer-eyed.

  “Mister Grant is speaking metaphorically,” Amelia expined hurriedly, her head filled visions of Gregroy trying to take a bite out of the furnishings. “Not really made out of sugar, but paid for by profits from sugar pntations. Which are in Jamaica.”

  “Oh,” the boy said, crestfallen.

  She looked to him. “Do you know where Jamaica is, Gregory?” When he shook his head, she looked to his brother. “Eustace?”

  “America,” he growled, grudgingly. She got the distinct impression that the boy’s desire not to answer at all was superceded only by his desire not to be seen as ignorant.

  “Yes indeed, the Americas,” Amelia nodded. It was not the level of specificity that she would have preferred, but she’d give him a minor victory. Let him take some pride in knowing things; perhaps that would lead him to wanting to learn more. “Later we’ll go into the library and find it on the globe.”

  Gregory looked conflicted. “Mother told us not to go into the library.”

  “You can go with me,” she moderated, giving him a slight squeeze. She’d ask ter if that restriction had been Iris’ idea or from Mother herself. If she was to tutor them, they’d need access to books, and Father had an extensive library.

  “Can we raise the rents?” Eustace asked, with a pointed tone that clearly communicated his disinterest in invading the library.

  “We can,” the agent answered slowly, “but there’s consequences to consider in that decision. We want our tenant farmers to be able to enjoy a good living, else they will find a better arrangement elsewhere. And it’s quite easy, as I understand it, to gain a reputation as a miser, squeezing your tenants for rent, which your peers may think less of.”

  Amelia remembered hearing a simir justification growing up, but she had never seen anyone ostracized for such behaviour. If anything, she’d heard whispers of how Lord Such-and-Such hadn’t raised his rents in fifty years, and wasn’t that a travesty. But, Amelia thought, studying young Eustace, the boy might benefit from some gentle pressure towards generosity.

  “How many tenant farmers work ducal nds?” Amelia asked. “And other workers, actually. Their families? How many souls does the duchy support?”

  Grant squeezed one eye shut. “Well I can tell you we have twenty-six tenant farmers and their families,” he began. “As to other workers, I’d have to go through the books. But if I were to estimate, I’d say at least twice that. Plus the house staff. Perhaps a hundred people directly employed, and if we tally up their families, that must be north of five hundred souls.”

  Amelia looked over to the older boy, eyebrows lifted. “That’s quite a rge responsibility,” she observed, a little more archly than she’d intended. But the boy was looking away, focused on the agent, so Amelia could not judge how impressed he might be at the numbers.

  She did not want to think of Eustace as her heir. The w might insist that she was the master of these estates, but she preferred to consider herself a steward. She still bore a familiar love for the pce, and wanted to do right by the nd, the people who lived here, and even its stuffy noble heritage. Pntagenets had slept here, after all.

  And in time, the w would make Eustace the master here. As much as Amelia intended to turn over the estate in good, functioning order, she hoped for more. She hoped that she might teach Eustace kindness, generosity, perhaps even nobility. Make him the kind of lord that this pce deserved, and the kind of lord who deserved a pce like this. She hoped, in short, that by the time he finally assumed the nds and title that were coming to him, that he might be a better man than his predecessor, her father, had been.

  The boy took that moment to gnce her way and immediately sneered at the sight of her.

  But in response Amelia could only chuckle to herself. Perhaps she had set herself an impossible task, but that was nothing new for her any more. She’d win him over yet.

  miriamrobern