Then money began disappearing from the fund. Receipts emerged bearing William's signature for sums he had supposedly collected and never delivered, and the estate steward announced that William could no longer be trusted with charitable accounts. He protested, wrote letters, and requested an examination of the original ledgers, but the examination never came. William died the following spring after a long illness, leaving his daughter a small box of books and a reputation she could not repair with tears.
“People will tell you a signature is the same as a man,” he told Eleanor near the end. “It is not. Sometimes a dishonest man learns to write the name of an honest one.”
Eleanor had kept those words with her as faithfully as his little brass ruler. They were the reason she accepted the invitation to become governess to Thomas Wycliffe, even though Greymere was the last place anyone expected William Finch's daughter to seek employment. The letter offering the position had come from Mrs. Tully, the housekeeper, who had once studied under William and remembered his patience with children who learned slowly. She had written that Thomas needed someone who could teach him without demanding speech he was not ready to give.
Thomas's mother, Lady Margaret, had died of fever the previous autumn. His father had been lost at sea several years earlier, leaving the boy in the care of his mother's family, and Margaret's brother Adrian had become his guardian. Since the funeral, Thomas had lived among hushed conversations and closing doors. He could write his name, count birds, and recite whole pages of a book in a whisper when alone, but whenever an adult asked him a direct question, he folded into silence.
Eleanor met him in the schoolroom on a bitter Monday morning. He sat at a table arranging wooden horses in a careful line, with one horse turned toward the wall. She introduced herself, placed a small book about birds beside him, and asked nothing. For nearly an hour she read quietly while Thomas moved the horses forward a few inches at a time. When she finally rose to leave, he pushed the horse facing the wall toward her, as if offering her permission to return.
Their lessons began that way: with a horse, a book, and the absence of questions. Eleanor discovered that Thomas loved maps because rivers always led somewhere, and he liked the mechanical drawings in old encyclopedias because every wheel had a reason to turn. She allowed him to answer by pointing, drawing, or choosing one of three cards she had made for him. Slowly he stopped flinching whenever he heard boots in the corridor.
Adrian, however, was seldom home long enough to notice. He had inherited the earldom the previous year, after his father's death, and spent most of his days traveling between Greymere, the bank in York, and a solicitor's office in town. His steward, Silas Fenwick, presented him with reports of worsening estate income, unpaid obligations, and petitions from tenants who could no longer pay their rents. Adrian signed what he believed were necessary notices and persuaded himself that practical decisions sometimes required cruelty.