Lady Honora gave a curt nod, satisfied. "See that you are not." She swept from the room, leaving behind a trail of expensive funereal perfume. Prudence dipped her pen in the inkpot.
Her hand was small, but her script was perfect. Clear, precise, and utterly legible. It was the only thing about her anyone had ever praised. Her uncle, a scholar who had loved his books more than people, had taught her.
He had valued her mind, if not her presence. Since his death six months ago, no one valued either. She was simply a tool, a means to an end. An unpaid cataloger, an invisible accountant, a silent witness to the slow-motion collapse of her world.
She picked up a heavy volume of botanical prints. Its spine was cracked, its cover stained. With gentle, expert fingers, she opened it, smoothing the brittle pages. She would save what she could.
It was all she knew how to do. The distant sound of carriage wheels on gravel announced the Duke's arrival. Prudence did not look up. She simply turned the page.
Gideon Devereux, Duke of Blackwood, was not a man who enjoyed social niceties. He had endured the Great War in the trenches of France and had endured the loss of his young wife to influenza two years after his return. He now found himself in a state of perpetual weary endurance. He had come to this crumbling house for one reason: the land.
Sorrel Down would straighten the southern border of his own estate, Kestrel Chase, and give him control of the river access. It was a practical matter. Business. He was met by Lady Honora Lockhart, a woman whose desperation was as pungent as her perfume, and her daughter Felicity, a girl who had clearly been coached to within an inch of her life.
She smiled too brightly, laughed too readily, and offered opinions on the weather that were both breathless and inane. Gideon's gaze, gray and flat as a winter sky, passed over her without a flicker of interest. He had seen a thousand Felicitys. He was immune to them.
"Perhaps Your Grace would care for a tour of the gardens?" Lady Honora suggested, gesturing toward a set of French doors that revealed a landscape of weeds and neglect. "No," Gideon said. His voice was not loud, but it had a quality of finality that cut through the chatter. "I am here to see the land and the survey maps."
A flutter of panic crossed Lady Honora's face. "The maps, of course. They are somewhere in my late husband's study, or perhaps the library. Felicity, dear, do you recall?"
Felicity looked blank. "Maps, Mama? I'm sure I wouldn't know." Gideon's patience, a finite and dwindling resource, was nearing its end.
"The library, then," he stated, and began walking in that direction, leaving them to scurry in his wake. The library at Bramblehurst Park was its only remaining glory. Two stories of books, a universe of paper and ink, now layered with the dust of neglect. And in the middle of it, a figure on her knees, surrounded by stacks of ledgers and leather-bound volumes.
For a moment, he thought she was a servant who had neglected her duties. Her dress was gray. Her hair was bound in a severe knot. Her hands were dark with ink.