He was quiet for a moment. "No," he said, "I don't usually have reason to."
They sat in what was, for the library in that hour, a fairly companionable quiet, while the rain came down outside and Lord Pemberton explained the tariff situation to my uncle across the room. And my grandmother sat near the fire doing needlework with the expression of someone who is not in the least surprised by anything she is watching.
I went to stand near her under the pretense of warming myself. "You planned the rain," I said quietly.
She did not look up from her stitching. "I am elderly and moderately clever. I did not plan the rain."
"You planned everything else."
She was quiet for a moment, pulling a thread through. "She is exactly what he needs," she said at last, in a low, even voice. "He has been managing himself for 12 years. He has done it very competently, but competence is not the same as living. And I am 81 years old, and I would like to see him live before I cannot be present to appreciate it."
I had nothing to say to that.
"He has been choosing between things that don't matter for 12 years," she said, setting down her work for a moment and looking at the fire. "The appropriate match, the desirable alliance, the advantageous family. He considers them and declines them all, and he is right to decline them, but he doesn't know why he keeps declining. He thinks it is because the candidates are insufficient, but it is really because he has never been offered the thing that would make him want to stop considering and simply choose. He needs someone real." She picked up her needle again. "Merryn Fairfield is real."
"And if he doesn't see it?"
She gave me a look that communicated without any words that she found this question unworthy of the situation. "He will see it," she said. "He is not foolish. He is simply accustomed to looking at the wrong things. I am giving him the right thing to look at."
I glanced over at the window. Edric had leaned forward slightly—the posture of a man in an actual conversation, not a managed one. Miss Fairfield was gesturing at something in the book with the direct unselfconsciousness of someone who has forgotten to perform composure because they are too interested in what they are saying.
"She doesn't want anything from him," my grandmother said. "Not his title, not his position, not his approval. She is simply herself. For a man who has spent his life watching everyone want something from him, that is rather bracing."
She returned to her needlework. I returned to my wine. The rain continued.
The trouble, when it came, arrived in the form of Lady Carston.
Lady Carston was the sort of guest who arrived at a party with the practiced instincts of someone assessing the field before committing to a position. She was handsome, polished, and had been angling toward Edric for the better part of two seasons with an intensity that managed to be both determined and graceful, which I regarded as a technical achievement. She had been pleasant enough all weekend, but she had been watching, and now she had drawn her conclusions.
At dinner on the second evening, she positioned herself near Miss Fairfield at the sideboard and said, with a smile that did not reach her eyes: "What a long way from Atterstoke to come for a garden party. You must be very resourceful, managing the journey."
It was a lovely bit of condescension. It acknowledged the distance without naming what it implied: that a clergyman's daughter from a small parsonage had no natural business at Drevenmore Park, and had presumably required some effort to arrange it.
Miss Fairfield looked at her with an expression of mild interest and said, "It is about two hours by post, entirely manageable. Are you far from home this summer?"
Lady Carston blinked. "I am at my cousin's estate in the next county."
"How pleasant," Miss Fairfield said. "I find county visiting very agreeable. There is always something to see."
She moved down the sideboard to look at the jellied dishes without any hurry or awkwardness. Lady Carston's smile had not recovered its earlier smoothness.
I glanced at Edric. He had been at the drinks table six feet away. He had heard all of it. His face was absolutely still, the way it got when he was paying very close attention.
My grandmother at the head of the table said, "Edric, will you carve?"
He turned toward the table. As he passed Lady Carston, he said pleasantly and with great clarity, "Miss Fairfield, will you take the chair by the window? I find the light is better there."
It was a small thing, but it was also a public preference stated in front of a dining room full of guests—the sort of preference that positioned its object unmistakably. Miss Fairfield thanked him and took the chair. Lady Carston took a different one.
The dinner was otherwise entirely unremarkable, and I spent much of it watching my grandmother, whose expression of tranquil satisfaction remained precisely level throughout.
I found Miss Fairfield in the morning room before breakfast the next day. She had her traveling bag in the chair beside her. She was writing a letter at the small desk, and there was a folded note on the corner of the blotter.
She looked up when I came in, and I could see, even from across the room, that she was composed in the way a person is composed when they have made a decision and have accepted it.
"You are leaving," I said.
"The early coach is at seven," she said. "I hope you will convey my thanks to your grandmother. It has been a lovely visit."
I sat down because I intended to understand. "Something was said to you."