Page 60 of Claiming the Tower
“I have no desire to marry a man, never mind a Pulverton. I like my life with you. I expect to be exploring a life with you for years to come. I dare say decades. No time to fit a man in for the scraps.” Hereswith made it a little teasing, but her eyes were gleaming, and she was angled forward, as if to make her insistence more direct.
Bess let out a breath. Before she could say anything, Hereswith was taking the chocolate cup from her fingers and setting it aside. “What would you do in the first case? If they were aiming at me, in specific?”
“If I had my way? Find something else to keep them busy. Whoever might make a good nemesis. It doesn’t even need to be aimed at them, just something that could absorb their attention. Madam Delongue, perhaps, she has been coming back into society now that her grandchildren are at school.” Both Madam Delongue and her son had lost their respective spouses a few years ago, and she’d focused on the little ones. But before that, she’d been hostess of one of the more notable salons of the better families. Her praise could make someone’s season, or break it in a matter of moments.
“And you’d organise until the Pulvertons were overwhelmed with other things to be doing with their time. Other directions for their energy.” Hereswith was beaming now. “I like that idea. You should do that. In this particular case. Whether that’s Madam Delongue or not. Then you should tell me about it.”
Before Bess could actually do more than begin to nod, Hereswith reached for her hands, before falling back on the bed and bringing Bess along in a tumble beside her. “Now, though. Now we should do other things than talking. There were more things you’d wanted to show me, weren’t there?”
“Quite a lot more.” Bess managed to keep her wits around her for that long. But Hereswith was already reaching to nudge her gown off her shoulder and trace fingers— a little ink-stained, Bess noted— along skin. The ink didn’t matter.
Chapter 40
November 10th
Hereswith resisted the desire to rub her forehead. Barely. She had been listening to a discussion for the last two hours, with no chance to ask a question. And, worse, many of the details were going entirely over her head.
She was certain it was not some fundamental lack on her part. Rather, it was that everyone was talking in what was near enough code. They had patterns to how they interacted that seemed like the worst parts of custom and tradition, and not any of the better ones. Hereswith had been directed to a seat at the end of the table, with the people most involved in the discussion at the other end.
It was the patterns that caught at her, as much as anything. Gervase had been chairing the meeting, of course, as expected of a meeting he was at. Blanch had been present, but quiet. Actually quiet, not people talking over her. She’d watched and listened, with a bare two comments in the course of ninety minutes.
The argument at hand was not about the ritual negotiation that was rapidly approaching in ten days’ time. Instead, it was about an entirely other matter, problems on one of the borders between the demesnes of southern Nottinghamshire and southern Derbyshire. There was an argument about who should have access to water from a particular well on a property.
Hereswith followed that part of it easily enough. The hall in question had passed from childless brother to married sister the previous year, when the brother had died. The well was on a notable estate, though not the Lammington demesne estate, of course. In this case, the demesne estate was a little north of Derby, rather than southwest. The trick was, of course, the political prominence of the sister’s husband. Not only had they made their home elsewhere, in Hampshire, but no one had been sure how to gain the proper permissions.
The well in question stood on the hall’s grounds. The Lammingtons had had charge of the arrangements, but the Herricks had, for more than a century, the right, due to some ancient negotiation, to a certain number of pitchers of water from the well. And it was, apparently, one of those wells that everyone agreed was magical, but no one was sure why. More than one person today had made comments about the sulphur. But Hereswith had been more caught by the piece of poetry over the well, especially the quatrain that said, “There’s virtue in the draught, for health that flies, From crowded cities and their smoky skies, Here lends her power from every glade and hill Strength to the breeze.”
The problem, though, at least to Hereswith’s ear, was that everyone had their own idea about how to solve the problem. None of those solutions seemed efficient at all, and no one seemed to be trying the idea of talking about it. Not amongst themselves, not with the Lammingtons or Herricks, and certainly not with Lord Palmerston or his wife.
Hereswith did not know the man directly. He moved in circles beyond what she’d had access to. But she certainly knew a great deal about his policies, both good and ill. For all the problems, she had rather suspected for a year now that events in the Crimea might be different if he’d still had charge of the Foreign Office. Not that she could say that, either.
Instead, she’d listened, biting her tongue half a dozen times. There must be some reasons for how Gervase was handling matters. The whole situation actually made her think of Britain’s government, which suffered the same sort of odd isolation of the current discussion. Each person was like a dog with a bone, none willing to share or lend their expertise to some common goal.
As the others finally made their curt goodbyes and filed out, Hereswith stayed where she was. Blanch was next to last to leave, with a raised eyebrow but no comment. Hereswith wondered if the older woman had expected her to speak up, or judged her for not doing so. She was still sitting there several minutes later, staring at her notes, when there was a slight knock on the door and she saw Anselm Davis.
He was not that much older than she was— five years, he’d have overlapped with Bess at school. He was quiet, the sort who only spoke when he had something to say. And Hereswith thought he cared little for the larger meetings. He went to where he’d been sitting, and rummaged for a piece of paper that had fallen to the floor, and then disappeared again, back to his own little office. Hereswith sighed, once she was sure no one was nearby, and then decided she would go home herself.
An hour later, she was in her own rooms, snug and comfortable, and there was Bess to talk to. Bess had been thinking hard, furrowing her forehead. “What was it you expected to be different?”
“Oh, I expected everyone to have their own pet projects and preferences and all that. People do that, they will keep doing that. It’s not as if wishing it otherwise made any different. I have my own such things too, and I do try not to be a hypocrite. But it felt as if the shapes were rigid, somehow, no room to step out of line of the expected. It made the arguments more like a military parade than a dance. Certainly more like a fixed rule than a negotiation. And surely we need negotiation.”
“People like their straight lines,” Bess said, quietly. “Their tidy containers. People behaving as they ought. There’s been gossip about you, of course, several ways around. Challenging in the first place, doing so when you’re of Horse House and ought to know better.”
“Assumptions. People making assumptions. And it’s the assumptions that get us in trouble. Though also, the assumptions that can protect us. Did you know I got a note from Hildegard Warren this morning thanking me for whatever it was you did on Monday?”
“Made an introduction by letter to Amelia Hopkirk,” Bess said promptly. “No bother for me to do it. I could do it from here. And now Mistress Warren might be more favourably inclined to at least hear me out if I need something in the future.” She added after a moment, “It may be of some relevance with the Delongues, actually, but I don’t know yet.”
“There, see? That’s building a connection.” Hereswith suddenly had a thought of another way around the problem. “I could— I should— put out a word with the White Horse and see if any of them have a connection. To an estate steward, or an excuse to gather some water, or something of the kind.” Then she turned back to the larger topic. “I’m used to the idea of all those little boxes. That doesn’t mean I like it.”
Bess opened her mouth, closed it, and then tried again. “I would have thought you were someone who did like them. You’re certainly traditional enough in some ways.” She gestured at the house, broadly. “The way you present yourself, overall.”
“Traditional enough to not have a great deal of patience with the sort of faux show of it, I suppose,” Hereswith said, after considering. “Why?”
“Well. Take your situation in general, before the Council. A younger daughter staying unmarried to tend to a widowed father is traditional enough. Though a fair number of people would have encouraged a marriage. Or perhaps assume you will now find some widower with children needing a matronly figure.”
Hereswith wrinkled her nose. “I rather like children, or at least some of them, but no. Not like that. That’s the sort of thing I mean, maybe.”
Bess considered, then said, carefully. “Mind moving to the bedroom?”
