He cast her a baleful look. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t do what makes me happy. You’re always running away to the pond. No one stops you from going.”

“I wish you’d come with me.”

“In this?” He made an impatient gesture at his wheeled chair. “No, thank you.”

“Yardley can carry you down, and then we—”

“Don’t be daft. Yardley can barely carry himself up and down the stairs. He’s pushing seventy.”

“He’s not a day over sixty,” Laura said. “But I take your meaning.”

John Yardley had worked for the Hayes family for as long as Laura could remember. He was butler, footman, and manservant. Capable enough for most things, but not as able to perform his physical duties as once he had.

“It’s the rheumatism, Miss Laura,” he’d confided to her only last week. “It does give me a twinge on occasion.”

Laura leaned back in her chair, regarding her brother with a thoughtful frown. “There’s no use dithering about it any longer. We must simply hire another footman. Someone younger and stronger who can be more of a help to you.”

“How do you propose we pay him?”

“Let me worry about that.”

Teddy gathered his sketches into a pile, shuffling them straight before thrusting them into a drawer and slamming it closed. “I wish you would confide in me.”

“I do confide in you.”

He snorted. “You don’t.”

“Would it set your mind at ease to know every miserable detail?”

Teddy bent his head, his mouth pressed tight. “Our circumstances are miserable, then.”

“I have it all in hand.”

“Do you?”

“As near as can be.” She reached to smooth a lock of Teddy’s hair from his brow. “You need only concern yourself with getting well.”

Teddy drew back from her touch. “You’ll speak with Weatherwax tomorrow?”

Laura’s hand fell to her lap. “I will.”

“And if he—”

“He won’t. He can’t. The law is on our side.”

“The law is an ass,” Teddy muttered. “That’s what Shakespeare says.”

“I daresay he’s right,” Laura replied. “But it’s all we have at present.”

Alex didn’t drink to excess. Didn’t do anything to excess, really. When one had only one’s wits to rely on, one couldn’t afford to have one’s senses addled. Fortunately, Squire Talbot wasn’t the sort of gentleman to press food and drink on his guests.

Indeed, as dinner progressed in the cavernous dining room at Edgington Park, the squire seemed to cede the whole of his duties as host to his daughter.