She watched him set it down. "Is that your concession?" she asked.
"It is heavier than an apology."
She nearly smiled. "Then I shall record it as one hour."
Two days later, rain came hard off the downs and turned the chalk on the route board to paste. Ma's careful local detour became a strip of mud. A yarn cart sank to its hubs halfway between the barn and the ridge road. Her first impulse was to go after it herself. She was already gathering her skirts when Valentine's voice stopped her.
"No, not another body in the mud. The yarn must reach the cottages before the light goes."
"Then tell me which yarn matters first."
She did.
Valentine turned to the yard foreman. "Two empty carts. One waits at the high ridge, one at the crossroad. Unload the stalled cart to pack horses. Take the yarn to hard road, then transfer it. No one drags a loaded axle through that mire."
Men and horses moved before Maud had finished wiping rain from her face. It was an expensive solution: extra teams, extra hands, and spare capacity she had never possessed. Yet within the hour, the first baskets were crossing the ridge.
The drenched carter rode back into the yard. "Final drop, your grace. Your relay or Miss Marsden's board?"
Valentine did not hesitate. "Miss Marsden's board."
Her gaze caught on the rain darkening his coat. His rank had not chosen the yarn. It had made her choice move faster.
"I am forced to admit," she said, "that your straight lines occasionally have uses."
"I shall have it carved over the gates."
That pulled the laugh out of her before she could stop it. He glanced toward the cottages where loom knock had begun again. "Can you scale three cottages to 12?"
"Give me the wool."
Winter settled over the Sussex Downs. The clack of shuttles and the scrape of chalk became as ordinary at Elmsworth as harness bells in the yard. Ma's work grew from one estate lot to several, but the first weeks refused to become simple merely because she had survived the gate.
During the third week, a great load of washed wool would not dry. Damp air sat stubbornly under the barn roof, and Valentine entered to find the racks still heavy with moisture.
"Four more braziers," he ordered around the racks.
Maud dropped her shuttle. "No."
He stopped. "More heat will dry the outside first," she said. "The fibers will turn brittle while the inner wool stays damp. Then the yarn snaps on the spindle."
Two servants had already lifted a brazier toward the door. Valentine's gaze moved from the coals to the wool, then to Ma's hands on the loom frame. "Halt the braziers."
He faced her. "What does the wool require?"
"Air. Open the upper vents. Put the wooden screens there and there to draw the current through the racks. Turn every rack in two hours."
"Two. Not three."
"Two."
Valentine nodded once. "Open the vents. Set the screens. Turn every rack on Miss Marsden's two-hour mark."
The order traveled down the barn in his voice, but he did not improve her interval, shorten it, or make it his own. Ma returned to her shuttle. The simple fact that she could do so—that she did not need to stand over every man at the racks—felt more dangerous than the argument had.
One support bowed under the weight of wet fleece with an ugly wooden creak. Maud was off the stool at once. "Stop. That rack comes down before it breaks."
They lost nearly an hour bracing the support. Valentine did not complain about the lost time. The wool dried evenly by morning.
Edwina met Ma the next day with a different complaint. The widow sat by her fire with Ma's piecework slate propped against a chair.
"This is a handsome set of figures. It also assumes this house belongs to your loom."
Ma frowned. "My daughter sleeps beside the wide loom with the baby. Your heavy afternoon work wakes the child. Then nobody works until dusk."
The objection was enough. Ma watched the room for a minute, asked when it stood empty, then wiped the slate and rebuilt the allotment: heavy weaving to the quiet hours, finer spinning to Edwina's afternoon, lighter work to the slower cottage. The total on paper fell; the number of hours people could actually work rose.
When Maud returned to the barn, Valentine looked at the changed slate, but did not ask why she had failed to keep the higher total.
"Edwina corrected the room I had invented in my head," Maud said, "and you corrected the plan."
"That is what plans are for."
He held her gaze a fraction longer than necessary. There was no flattery in it, only recognition so exact that warmth moved unexpectedly beneath Ma's ribs. He had not praised her for being clever. He had noticed that she could surrender a neat answer when the work itself contradicted her.
She looked away first and reached for the chalk.
The first full-length bolt lay across the main worktable by the end of the week, even and firm under her palm. For a moment she forgot the next allotment entirely. Two servants crossed behind her, carrying wicker baskets of raw wool. One nearly stepped over the hanging edge of the finished cloth.
Ma seized the chalk. "Raw wool stays behind this line. Finished cloth stays at the table." She marked a thick white lane across the boards.
Valentine came in while she was finishing the arrows. He motioned his own footman around the line rather than across it, then placed the toes of his polished boots exactly behind the mark.
Ma noticed. Of course, she noticed. He had remembered where she said the workspace ended.