Chapter Text
It took him longer than Kate had expected. Richard, grave, dutiful Richard, had called a day or two after the news of Gideon’s death had reached Midculter. He’d waited for Kate in the hall of Flaw Valleys, illuminated by dusty spirals of sunlight and rather crowded with ghosts, offering his condolences and a note from Sybilla that Kate still carried in her gardening apron.
Francis, when he arrived late one evening, found her in the kitchen, angrily kneading dough. Philippa was crouched under the table, trying and failing to coax Gideon’s greyhound to take some food from her hand. Kate straightened and realized, halfway through mustering the sapped remains of her tenacity and good sense and disdain for sentimentalism – everything that had carried her through all the conversations that had come before – that just this once, nothing was expected of her. Francis, lips chapped from rough riding, taut and careful, walked towards her on soft soles and kissed her brow. Then he placed his light burden on the low stool next to her.
At the sight, Kate bit her flour-crusted thumb to stifle the sound clawing up her throat. It had seemed an unreasonably cruel twist of fate that they should lose – without warning, premonition, or the subtle, sluggish signs of decline that sometimes announced disease without cure – husband and father, and that, losing him, they should be deprived even of a body to bury because the men who’d attacked Gideon’s small riding party had thrown his lifeless body into the Tweed. Francis, clearly, had hunted them down. Kate found that she had no desire to learn what he had done to Gideon’s murderers. What mattered was what he’d brought back.
“Father’s coat!” A small hand with bitten-down fingernails shot out from underneath the table and snatched the bundle from the stool. A moment later, Philippa emerged and the astonishment that lit up her drawn little face darkened into betrayal. “You!”
Before Kate had found something to say, her daughter took off, the coat hugged to her chest, bolting through the door leading to Kate’s herb garden.
They talked then, both of them exhausted and neither of them sitting down. The pain that had snuck into Kate’s breast like a shy and persistent tenant when they had first told her about Gideon didn’t fade. But in Francis’s quiet, collected presence that pain softened and spilled outwards, no longer buried deep but shared and becoming just a little more bearable in the process.
“Will you”, Kate pushed herself to ask eventually, “stay for a day or two?”
Francis’s gaze grazed the door leading into the herb garden. “There’s an inn at Hexham. I’ll return in the morning.”
***
Philippa was glad that Mr. Crawford had brought back her father’s coat and irritated beyond measure when he returned the next day. She fanned her anger, bringing Somerville discipline and persistence to the task. It was a welcome distraction from the queer pressure inside her chest, a spool being wound tighter and tighter still. Since they’d brought the news, she had not cried, not once. She was wondering abstractedly if she’d ever be able to cry again when she heard someone cross the corridor with light, assured steps. Philippa had been hiding in father’s study since first day light, leafing through the last book they’d read together. Tucking Ludovico di Varthema’s hefty Itineario under her arm, she rushed into the corridor and blocked Mr. Crawford’s way.
He’d always had an eerie way of holding himself very still, blue gaze unreadable, that made Philippa think of a predatory cat lazily contemplating if it was in the mood for toying with the prey. Lifting her chin, her back turned to the music room, she planted her feet a little wider. The memory was a living thing, thrumming just underneath her skin: the exuberant notes of the harpsichord calling to her; the hot relief of knowing father safe; careening on stockinged feet down the corridor, Kate’s laughter in her ears; throwing open the door to the music room and --
“You need not fear,” Mr. Crawford said quietly. “I wouldn’t.”
“Then why are you up here?”
“Your mother,” he said, “wants Fogge. Apparently she’s cleaning the grandfather clock in the music room. Though by the sounds of it she’s resting from her toil.”
Philippa strained her ears and could just make out the soft snores. “She doesn't take kindly to being roused unexpectedly. I hope she swats you with her apron.”
“Neither do I and I’m confident that I can sidestep this hazard.” He glanced at her book. “Planning to pitch your tent at Tripoli and wander through the souks of Stamboul?”
Philippa felt angry heat crawl up her throat. “Who says I can’t?”
“Not I. Come along – let’s see what the formidable Fogge can do with that fabled apron.”
After this encounter, Philippa went straight back to her father’s study and compiled a list of things for Mr. Crawford to do, all located at a safe distance from the house. Her suggestions were thoughtful and practical: the gate to the sheepcote really was abysmally rusty; Trotty Lockwood’s roof needed fixing; the mouldy planks of the little bridge crossing the brook just behind Flaw Valleys were about to become a public hazard.
And, to be fair, Mr. Crawford set himself to work on these chores, but that didn’t keep him from spending time with Kate, who surely had no use for the conceited Master of Culter lurking at her shoulder as she made herself familiar with Flaw Valley’s leases and charters. But when Philippa marched into the library to rescue her mother, she found that the line of attack she had prepared didn’t quite work because just now Mr. Crawford wasn’t holding forth and Kate didn’t exactly look distressed. Kate was slowly walking up and down the room, dictating, and Mr. Crawford sat in the window seat, one leg boyishly drawn up, and covered the last of several quarto-sized papers in his neat handwriting. He looked up when Philippa entered the room and smiled absentmindedly, as if she was the house cat come to beg for a scratch behind the ears.
Philippa turned on her heels and marched to the kitchen to see if cook was willing to teach her how to make kidney pies. She was fully aware that her plan was both childish und unlikely to work. And so it was with surprised pleasure that she realized that evening during dinner that among the three golden pies cook had sent up was the slightly pear-shaped specimen which Philippa had prepared, and Philippa’s favourite footman, following her insistent request, was neatly setting it on Mr. Crawford’s plate.
Mr. Crawford reached for his fork when he had arrived at the middle of an admittedly rather funny story about the time he and Richard had snuck up the cupola of the Sorbonne Chapel and slept under the Parisian stars while they were both attending university in France. The story paused.
“Are you quite alright, Francis?” Kate waved the footman over. Mr. Crawford’s freshly drained wine glass was refilled. “Cook’s singing voice is not for the fainthearted, but life would be a sorry affair without her pies.”
Mr. Crawford’s eyes, a little more liquid than usual, lingered briefly on Philippa.
“Should I ask cook to write out the recipe for the kitchen staff of the Dowager Lady Culter?” Philippa asked demurely.
Mr. Crawford took a dainty bite. Chewing slowly: “That would be most kind. She could serve these pies next time Lady Catherine of Ballaggan visits.”
Kate laughed. “Just be careful. These pies might melt her stony heart.”
“Or, that failing”, Mr. Crawford offered, “pickle it.”
Philippa was walking back from the apple orchard when she bumped into Mr. Crawford, who was inspecting, rather single-mindedly, the wild poppies growing behind the stable. Retching, he put a hand against the stable wall.
“Good night, Mr. Crawford.”
“Good night, Agrippina.”