"The deserter?"
Both Eloise and Mrs. Severton looked up at once.
"They caught him? Where? When?"
The deserter had been the prevailing anxiety of Cambon and the surrounding villages for weeks now. What had begun as petty theft—potatoes taken from passing farm carts—had grown steadily uglier, until the attack on the elderly gentleman north of Cambon had finally pushed the local vigilantes into organizing a proper search of the surrounding woods.
"This afternoon, apparently—in the forest north of Cambon. He denied everything when they took him, naturally. As though anyone would believe a word of it."
Emily gave a decisive sniff and expressed the view that such people ought to be hung upside down in the square. Then she stopped, nostrils flaring.
"What is that smell? Did someone bring flowers?"
"Try some." Eloise was already lifting the lid of the jar. "It's the tea Sergeant Thornton sent for Mother."
Emily watched with open curiosity as the preparation departed from every method she knew. Then the flower opened in her cup, and she tasted it with the careful expression of someone who takes such things seriously.
"Well? Good?"
"I have never," Emily said, with great solemnity, "tasted such a *beautiful* taste."
Eloise laughed—at the word, and at the face that went with it. Emily, not finding any better description for something so outside her experience, had reached for *beautiful* and planted her flag there.
She drained the cup and poured herself more hot water without asking.
"I am very glad to work in this house."
She said it simply, as a statement of fact, and went back to her tea.
It was true, and she knew it to be true in the particular way of someone who has known the alternative. The work of a maid was the same in every house—it was the house itself that made the difference. The Cambon girls envied her the Severton household, though Cambon was by most measures a more desirable posting than quiet Feltham. They envied her this: that she was never spoken to harshly, never went to bed hungry, never slept in a storage room or a leaking attic.
When Emily had first arrived, Eloise had shown her to a room on the ground floor with the excitement of someone presenting a gift. A proper bed—sturdy wood, clean linen that smelled of sun. A chest of drawers. A wardrobe. A desk of her own.
Emily had slept in her own room for the first time in her life that night. She had grown up sharing a bed with more siblings than there were hours of sleep, and she had not known, until that evening, that a room could feel like something that belonged to you.
The Severtons did not shout. They did not dock pay for accidents. When Emily ruined a dish she'd been too nervous to prepare properly, Eloise had brought cookbooks and read recipes aloud and treated the whole business as an interesting problem to solve together. Mrs. Severton, even when displeased, expressed it quietly.
Emily was now the best cook in Feltham, and occasionally called upon for events at Blissbury. She was aware of both facts and grateful for both.
"Emily, when you've finished—let's sort all this out."
Emily set down her empty cup and turned to survey the table.
"What is all this? Potatoes—carrots—is that an entire bag of peas?"
"From the road to Cambon."
Her face lit up. She began moving things into the kitchen with the purposeful energy of someone who already knows what she's going to do with all of it—and called back over her shoulder as she went:
"On my way home I stopped by the Ogilvy house. My friend there says Miss Julia has been in a terrible temper lately."
"That's hardly unusual for Julia."
Eloise hadn't seen her recently, and found she had no particular wish to remedy that.
"Worse than usual, apparently. Even Miss Abigail, who normally manages to calm her, locked herself in her room today and wouldn't come out. And whenever I passed, Miss Julia was at the second-floor window looking down at me as though I'd done something."
"At *you* specifically?"
"Yes!" Emily said, with feeling.
Eloise thought she understood well enough.
*She said she would be mistress of Blissbury.*
Julia had been waiting, presumably, for an invitation from Sergeant Thornton that had not arrived. He had not asked after any of the Feltham girls—not once. And now the Severtons, who had appeared to step back from Blissbury entirely, were there every day. Julia, watching from her window, had arrived at conclusions.
---
While Eloise and Emily worked through the kitchen, Mrs. Severton transferred some of the gifted tea into a smaller jar for keeping. Even that small amount scented the room—something light and warm, like a summer garden.
She looked at the jar with quiet satisfaction.
*He's not simply Baron Stanford's protégé.*
Military salaries were not, as a rule, generous. Men who lived comfortably on them were either born to money or had risen fast enough to accumulate it through rewards and decorations. Sergeant Thornton, she had decided, was the second kind.
*And men like that don't rise alone. There are people behind them.*
She still wanted to know who those people were.
"Eloise!"
Eloise appeared in the doorway.
"Will the sergeant be bringing any friends to the summer ball this year?"
"He hasn't mentioned anyone. I don't think he's invited anyone."
"Ask him anyway. Men always leave these things until the last moment and then announce additional guests with three days' notice."
"I really don't think there'll be anyone."
Mrs. Severton looked at her.
"How is it that you know so much about the sergeant's private arrangements?"
Eloise was quiet for a moment.
Her mother had a point. She had been spending a great deal of time with him in Blissbury, but that didn't mean she understood the shape of his life outside it. And yet she'd said *there won't be anyone* with complete confidence, as though it were simply a fact she was reporting.
She wasn't sure where that certainty had come from.
She gave some answer or other and went upstairs.
---
The day had started before dawn and filled itself entirely. Her body registered this the moment she sat down.
After washing and changing, she settled onto the sofa and let her eyes find the portrait on the wall.
Golden hair. Blue eyes. The familiar painted smile of Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Wilgrave.
She had looked at this portrait every evening for years—had talked to it, in the way you talk to things that can't answer back, when the day had given her something she needed to say aloud to someone.
Now she looked at it and realized she couldn't remember the last time she had.
It wasn't only tiredness, though she was tired. It was something else.
*I talk to Sergeant Thornton all day.*
He was often aggravating. She had not changed her position on that. But he was also—she searched for the right word, and found only *interesting*, which was insufficient but accurate.
He answered questions completely, without performing patience. He remembered everything she said, which she'd discovered by accident when he referenced some detail she'd mentioned once in passing, weeks later, with perfect accuracy. He waited until she'd finished speaking before he spoke himself—even when they disagreed, even when she could see he had an objection forming. He simply waited.
Only her father had ever done that.
*Ha.*
She pulled the covers up and reached for the lamp.
She didn't especially want to dream about Lieutenant Colonel Wilgrave tonight.
Lately, she had noticed, reality had become more interesting than the dream.