His attention moved to the route board. "Your heavy carts returned to the upper yard before they reached the Brighton Road."
"They do not. You are reading it upside down."
Valentine rotated the board toward her. "Then why is the east peg still on the west side?"
Ma bent closer. The east peg was indeed on the west side. A servant by the door made a strangled sound and disguised it as a cough.
Ma straightened. "A temporary defect in orientation."
Valentine's mouth moved at one corner. "Strategic, I assume."
"Naturally."
The servant coughed again. This time Maud laughed with him. The mistake did not erase the bolt on the table. It did not erase her wages. It was only a mistake, and the Duke had managed to be right without turning it into a lesson in her place.
By the end of the week, the first real piece payments were distributed. Villagers gathered in the barnyard with bread and cold cheese on wagon boards. The winter sun was bright enough to hurt the eyes. Somebody brought a fiddle and found a country tune in it.
Ma still had tomorrow's warp length in her head. Her fingers had already found the chalk again when Valentine closed his hand over the route board—not over hers, only over the wood.
"All allocations are made for today. For one hour, that is sufficient."
He looked toward the yard. "No new cart orders until the meal is finished. You cannot command hunger into leisure."
"No, but I can keep my foreman from inventing work while people are eating."
Edwina, passing with a cup, said, "A rare use of rank."
Her attention moved across the workers laughing over their first payments. A functioning plan ought to make room for that sound. If it did not, what exactly had she built?
She set down the chalk, crossed the packed earth to Valentine, and held out her hand. "Can a commander follow steps he did not plan?"
He lowered his cup. "Demonstrate."
His palm was warm. They took one short turn to the scraping fiddle, neither of them graceful enough to deserve an audience, and neither inclined to care. When the tune ended, Maud stepped back, breathless and smiling. She had spent weeks proving that useful hours must not be wasted. She discovered, to her annoyance, that this hour had not been wasted at all.
The next warp began after the meal. So did another.
By January, 12 cottages took regular allotments, and Ma accepted a private commission from a Brighton customer whose name never appeared in the Elmsworth account. Then the cart bay stood empty.
Ma had come before dawn to send the finished twill south. The bolt was rolled, wrapped, and ready on the rack. The three textile wagons assigned to her lane were gone. So were the heavy horses that drew them.
She found the yard foreman fastening a trace on another team. "Where are my carts?"
He looked miserable. "His grace called them out at midnight. Retaining wall gave way by the lower drainage ditch. Road was washing. Every sound wagon went to move stone."
Her gaze dropped to the empty hooks where the wagon pins should have hung. Immediate danger to a man or horse, I act. Otherwise, a textile cart is requested through you.
No horse had been trapped. No man had been beneath the wall. Valentine had judged the road urgent, and because he could move the whole estate with one sentence, had never come to ask.
The private customer's carrier arrived within the hour. He had other collections to make and could not wait for the carts to return. Ma stood beside a finished bolt he could not move, counted the customer's deposit back into his hand, and watched him put the coins away.
"I am sorry, Miss Marsden."
"So am I."
His carriage left the yard without her cloth.
Valentine rode in near noon, his horse gray with lather and his coat caked in mud. Maud was waiting by the gate. "You took the carts."
He dismounted. Weariness made his face hard. "The lower road was failing. Three tenant farms would have been cut off."
"I am not arguing that the road mattered."
"Then what are you arguing?"
"That you had a rule for every cart except the one that said my work belonged to me." Her voice shook once and she despised the waste of it. "You did not even break the agreement for immediate danger. You broke it because your need was larger in your own mind."
Valentine looked past her toward the empty bay. "The Brighton delivery?" he asked.
"Gone. The deposit is forfeit. That customer will not come back for an explanation of ducal road repairs."
For the first time since he rode in, he had no order ready. Maud went into the barn.
For 3 days, she took work back into her own hands. She checked Edwina's tallies after Edwina had already checked them. She walked to cottages whose allotments had never been late. She redrew routes that needed no correction and stayed over the account board until the lamp smoked.
On the third evening, Edwina slapped a bundle of completed tallies on the table. "If you mean to do my work as well as yours, Miss Marsden, kindly tell me so. I have better uses for my hands."
Maud stared at the bundle after the widow left. The rebuke was deserved. One man's overreach had sent her straight into her own.
On the fourth morning, Valentine entered the barn and set a small leather pouch beside the route board. "That is the lost deposit and the carrier's fee."
Ma did not touch it. "I do not accept charity."
"Neither do I offer it." His voice was quieter than usual, but no softer in meaning. "My order cost you the delivery. The estate repays the loss."