Chapter Text
The Earl of Penwood takes three years to die.
Nobody is idle during this time, either. The Countess of Penwood spends the first year finding physicians, the next year finding opportunities for his heir to be pushed toward her daughter Rosamund, and the third congratulating herself.
Not only that, she finds time to constantly shoo her husband’s ward away, downstairs, anywhere out of sight, contemplates daring to send her away entirely. But no, she thinks magnanimously, better the girl should learn her new station sooner. Perhaps she will keep her on, after.
Sophie spends the years in the old schoolroom, the kitchen, the edges of the grounds, the Earl’s sickroom. She helps Posy with her sewing, coaxes tasks to manage from Irma, steals afternoons on her old pony with Alfie’s help, reads books in Korean and English and French to the Earl.
Neither he nor Sophie are at Rosamund’s grand wedding. Sophie is in the kitchens with Irma and Maria. The Earl sends for his solicitor.
=
Everyone is at the funeral.
Sophie serves tea while the solicitor shuffles his papers into order the next afternoon. The Countess —Dowager Countess— dismisses her with a flick of a single finger.
The solicitor clears his throat as Sophie glides away to cry in peace.
Instead, the solicitor calls, “Miss— er, Baek?”
Sophie turns back, unbalanced. “Sir?”
“The tea is barely warm, Sophie,” Araminta informs her, mouth pursed. The Countess had kept the solicitor waiting the better part of an hour, but Sophie simply nods, turns again.
“No, that is— Miss Baek— this involves you too,” the solicitor says, almost apologetically.
She feels a lightheaded mixture of relief and dread at the news. He had provided for her—and she would no longer be welcome in her home, among the only people she had ever known. Where was she meant to go? Unless— but that was too much to hope f—
“If you would like to take a seat?” she realises he’s asking. She glances between the cold displeasure of Araminta and the flat, unimpressed face of Rosamund next to her yawning new husband, chooses a narrow, decorative chair in a corner, half-hidden behind a screen.
The solicitor studies her for a moment, and Sophie’s eyes drop.
He starts reading, and Sophie’s stomach drops.
=
“Have you heard about the new Countess?” Hyacinth asks Benedict, pouring his tea like a proper little hostess, adding a splash of milk just like he usually takes it.
“Mmm?” he asks, accepting the teacup with a nod of thanks that only jogs his aching head a little. Last week she had told him all about a ballet dancer.
“She’s the youngest Countess for hundreds of years,” Hyacinth informs him, a little bounce on the settee that betrays her real age.
Benedict’s brows furrow. “So she’s your age?” What Earl is marrying some fifteen, sixteen year old? he wonders dubiously. “Is it Canwick who’s gotten married?” he asks. He’d always seemed a questionable sort of man.
“No, of course not,” she rolls her eyes at her older brother. “The youngest Countess in her own right, I mean. The new Countess of Penwood?”
He’s tries to place the title as Hyacinth pilfers the last chocolate macaron from the plate beside her. She must consider her ‘hostessing’ duties over, he thinks amusedly. Or else they come after chocolate macarons.
“I wonder if she’ll host a ball?” Hyacinth muses aloud, nibbling on her favourite confection.
“I wonder if she’ll have the sense to stay in the country and toss all the offers of marriage into the fire?” Eloise mutters from her prone position across the room, reading a book Benedict’s too far away to see the title of.
“I didn’t realise the Earl of Penwood had a daughter,” Benedict says, preemptively defusing the brewing argument as he finally pins down the late Earl in his mind. “Isn’t he the one who married— must have remarried— a widow, presumably in hopes of an heir?”
“Oh, no, that’s what makes it so scandalous!” Hyacinth says, leaning forward, macaron briefly abandoned. Benedict hopes there are no mistresses or anything unfit for Hyacinth’s ears in this scandalous story. “Everyone thought he was going to leave it all to one of his cousins, Mr Dalrymple—“
“That’s why so many ladies were after him last year,” Eloise contributes, dropping her book and levering herself upright.
“Exactly,” Hyacinth says. “But, he left it to a different cousin’s daughter, his ward! And nobody knows exactly why!”
“Well, Dalrymple is… a rather… unattractive specimen of an English gentleman,” Benedict offers, a sip of tea. Eloise grimaces in agreement, coming to select a raspberry macaron. “With his habits, perhaps the Earl thought he’d run the estate into the ground.”
Hyacinth continues on her original line of thought, undeterred by her siblings. “Anyway, the new Countess is coming to London for the season! And no one’s seen her before, because she’s grown up mostly in the country.”
“The poor girl is going to be the diamond of the season,” Eloise says, as if she can’t think of anything worse. “She’ll be hounded.”
“But, no one’s even seen her—” Benedict objects, laughing. His sisters turn to him with eerily similar looks of exasperation.
“She’s an unattached young Countess. Men will be foaming at the mouth to become the next Earl,” Eloise tells him.
“She has eighteen thousand a year,” Hyacinth nods. “And everyone says she’s very pretty.”
“Despite everyone never having seen her before?” Benedict scoffs.
Eloise throws a cushion at him, flops down beside Hyacinth. “She has more income per year that some debutantes have as a dowry. And a title! It doesn’t matter if she looks like a gargoyle. She’s the equivalent of Simon before he married Daphne, idiot.”
“Simon wasn’t the Diamond,” Benedict jokes of their brother-in-law. Hyacinth and Eloise look at each other in mutual commiseration.
“You know,” Eloise says thoughtfully, eyes moving to Benedict. “The gentlemen will be out in force, especially the second sons.”
He has just enough time to feel alarmed as Eloise’s mouth curls up. “Mother is sure to toss your hat in the ring,” she decides, satisfied. “And with such a prize, no gentlemen will bother looking anywhere else! Mother will have you down the aisle before you know it, I will come and stay with you, Benedict— I am sure the Countess’s library is good, she’s said to speak at least three languages— and when Hyacinth comes out next year,” she adds graciously, “she can be the diamond.”
“Thank you,” Hyacinth says primly, gratified by the theoretical fulfilment of all her hopes, while Benedict is still open-mouthed at Eloise’s betrayal.
He throws the cushion back at her.