"Indeed."
The single word boomed through the air like a cannon shot. Emilie jumped, spilled her coffee, and whipped around.
The Duke of Ashland filled the open doorway, his hand on the latch, his white hair glowing above his masked face.
* * *
The taut room snapped into panic at Ashland's appearance, like a platoon caught malingering by a sergeant. A useful skill, this ability to move and observe without being perceived. He owed Olympia that, at least.
Freddie leapt to his feet; his chair toppled to the floor behind him. "Sir!"
On the other side of the table, Mr. Grimsby set down his coffee cup and rose. His fingers curled around the edge of the table: shaking, probably. Poor fellow. "Good morning, Your Grace," he said, in his gruff little voice.
Ashland stalked into the room, closing the door behind him with a decisive click of the latch. The sound helped to quell the sick feeling in his chest.
They were most spectacularly in love at first.
"I see your studies are proceeding apace, Frederick," he said.
Freddie picked up his chair, righted it, and sat down. "Oh, don't be cross and sack poor Mr. Grimsby, Pater. Was only making conversation over coffee. I assure you, he was putting me through my paces at a smart clip a few minutes ago."
"No doubt." Ashland angled his body over the table and ran over the papers and books clustered about the coffee tray. He picked up a sheet. "Are these your Latin conjugations, Frederick?"
She bolted, pure and simple.
Ashland locked his fingers to keep them from crushing the paper.
"Hideous, I know. I've already been broken to bits by Mr. Grimsby. On the other hand, he's quite impressed by my maths."
"He should be." Ashland laid the paper back on the table. "Well, Mr. Grimsby? What's your assessment?"
Grimsby's face still glowed pink beneath that startling bush of wheat-colored whiskers. He cleared his throat. "Lord Silverton is immensely clever, Your Grace, as I suspected, but he will need to study with a great deal more discipline over the coming months. He's not yet sixteen, and his education has been haphazard at best; meanwhile, he will be competing for places against older public schoolboys who have been drilled in Latin every day for the past eight or ten years. I suppose his name will help him slide through . . ."
"I say," Freddie muttered.
". . . but I doubt his lordship wishes the lucky accident of his birth to nudge out some better-qualified young man from the chance for advancement." Grimsby's eyes gleamed as he said this, as if he actually cared about the fate of that deserving schoolboy shunted aside for the son of a duke.
Ashland raised his eyebrows. "Well phrased, Mr. Grimsby. Frederick? Do you agree?"
"When you put it that way," Freddie said sulkily. "I'm not a complete rotter, after all."
"I believe Mr. Grimsby is quite right. Britain's great strength is her ability to discover and encourage boys of exceptional ability and allow them to better their condition in life through hard work and application to duty. Nowhere else in Europe can a talented boy of little or no social connection advance himself to prominence, and the result on the Continent is stagnation, decadence, and tyranny." Ashland tapped his finger against the topmost book in Grimsby's stack, a neatly bound edition of Newton's Principia.
"I say, Pater," Freddie grumbled. "That's coming it rather thick."
Grimsby's face had flushed to an even more furious shade of red. "That is not altogether the case, your lordship. I would not go so far as to say tyranny."
"Tyranny and disorder," Ashland said. "Take the recent case of this principality in Germany, this Holstein-Schweinwald. A trifling, backward state, to be sure; quite second-rate and of very little interest to the world at large . . ."
"Backward!"
"Yet even there, an absolute ruler, a despot, attempts to rearrange the succession to suit his own interests, to prevent the natural growth of a democratic form of law . . ."
"Was it fair, Your Grace, that the succession must die out because the prince's children happened to be girls instead of boys? Britain herself, and by extension half the world, is ruled by a woman." Grimsby's voice shook with passion.
"Your views are admirable, Mr. Grimsby, but I beg leave to remind you that Great Britain is ruled by her people, as you well know. Queen Victoria, God bless and keep her, has only a ceremonial role in governing our country. But we are not here to discuss political theory, after all. We are here to discuss Lord Silverton's application to his studies, and his duty to earn his place at university by merit alone." Ashland picked up the book and gave it a little slap.
Grimsby dropped his eyes to the papers in front of him. He squared them neatly. "We are quite in agreement on that point, Your Grace. I shall do my best to ensure that his lordship is prepared."
"Very good." Ashland took a chair, the sturdiest available, and drew it out from the table so that his right side would be shadowed from the window. The adjustment was so instinctive, he hardly noticed he made it. "Carry on, then," he said, with a wave. "Simply pretend I'm not here."
Grimsby's large blue eyes blinked slowly behind his spectacles. "Your Grace?"
"I have arranged my schedule to allow an hour or two of quiet observation." Ashland smiled benignly at them both.
"Pater, it's not possible. You're about as easy to ignore as a bull elephant."
Ashland fingered the edge of his empty cuff. His stump was aching more than usual this morning; perhaps the weather was changing, winter was coming on. "Nevertheless," he said.
"Don't be ridiculous, Pater . . ."
"Your lordship's father is perfectly welcome to stay and observe," said Mr. Grimsby. "He is, after all, paying for your instruction."
Ashland folded his arms and studied Grimsby. He had always considered himself a decent judge of character, with a few glaring exceptions, but he could not quite make out the young man. He had a certain freshness about him, a dewy innocence. His fair hair gleamed beneath a layer of sleek pomade; his skin still radiated surprise at Ashland's unexpected entrance. Were it not for those whiskers, curling luxuriously about the young man's jaw, he might have seemed like a youth, hardly older than Freddie himself.
And his eyes. Ashland angled his head, watching the two of them. Grimsby was explaining some point of Latin conjugation to Freddie's bored and sloping body, and his blue eyes narrowed with seriousness, causing a few lines to invade the skin between his eyebrows. An old soul, Ashland's mother would have said, nodding her head. Old and wise.
Again, Ashland thought of Grimsby in the taproom last night, brandishing his chicken leg, face ablaze with determination.
Grimsby, straightening his lapels a moment ago, as Ashland observed them noiselessly from the doorway. Speaking in his sturdy voice: Then she is a fool.
An older fellow, Freddie's last tutor. Seventy at least, with thinning hair and a querulous tone, complaining about Frederick's lack of attention here and Frederick's lack of discipline there. I cannot be expected and these conditions and that sort of thing.
Ashland adjusted his arms at his chest, keeping his empty cuff hidden, relieving the slight pressure on the stump from his opposite forearm. Grimsby's voice was low, a bit gruff, almost intentionally so, as if he were making up for his lack of years with a manufactured resonance. Determination, patience, intelligence. This young man was nothing like the other tutors, who had left after two days, a week, three weeks, fed up with Freddie's quicksilver brilliance and the incessant howling bleakness of the landscape.
Which begged the question: Why had Olympia sent Grimsby to Ashland Abbey, instead of putting the young fellow to use himself?
Olympia, after all, did nothing without reason.
Ashland rose abruptly. "Thank you, Mr. Grimsby," he said. "I shall leave the two of you in peace."
He walked from the room and back down the stairs to his private study. He had a great deal of estate business to work through before venturing out tonight.
FIVE
By afternoon, Freddie's restless body was nearly bursting through the walls of the schoolroom, and Emilie, sensing opportunity, prescribed a spell of outdoor exercise. A message was sent down to the stables, and in short order they were trotting from the stable courtyard, wrapped up against the weather in coats and woolen caps.