Page 1 of Charming the Headmistress (Spinsters and their Suitors #3)

CHAPTER ONE

T he house had the hush of a tomb, but outside, spring pressed insistently at the windows.

Sebastian Moreland, now the new Marquess of Camden, stood in what passed for a study, though it bore more resemblance to a storeroom for neglect.

Dust coated the shelves. A low fire burned in the hearth, casting a steady warmth into the room.

Heavy drapes hung over the windows—not to block the cold, but to keep the heat from slipping away.

This allowed little sunlight to filter into the room, a lingering habit from the winter just past.

The entire estate, like him, seemed caught between seasons—neither grieving properly nor beginning again.

It wasn’t the estate’s fault—it had been uninhabited for years.

He tried to push that fact aside and stay focused on the rest of his work.

He didn’t want to spiral down the guilt of making a wrong decision by moving here.

It would not help him stay focused on the tasks that desperately clamored for his attention.

He turned from the ledgers piled across the desk—ledgers he barely understood—and looked out the tall window.

Outside, the early spring sun struggled against a sky still streaked with clouds.

The formal garden near the east wing had once been elegant, but the topiary had gone wild and weeds sprouted through the gravel paths.

The stable roof sagged near the back corner, and the old greenhouse—once a point of pride—was choked with dead ivy.

Boxwood hedges bulged past their lines, and crocuses had sprung up like survivors in the cracks of the flagstone path.

The landscape, once formal and manicured, was in revolt.

Near the base of the hawthorn tree, a solitary figure sat on a blanket with a sketchbook in her lap.

Helena.

She only moved a little. She was much too solemn for a girl of twelve.

Her dark chestnut braid was tucked neatly down her back, and she hunched slightly over her work, entirely focused.

The ribbon at the end of her braid fluttered in the breeze.

She pulled her shawl tighter around herself and looked toward the house, her gaze landing on the study window.

Camden lifted a hand in a tentative wave.

She did not wave back.

Instead, she gave a single, solemn nod and glanced away. Then she returned to her sketching as though nothing else in the world mattered.

He let his hand fall to the windowsill.

Camden returned to his study and picked up a cracked ledger from the stack that had been dumped on the massive mahogany desk.

He stared at his late brother’s looping, flamboyant hand.

The numbers bled into the margins. There were annotations about tenants and repairs, and something about a bridge that “probably won’t collapse this year. ”

Probably .

He shut the book.

In front of him, the study door creaked open.

“Lord Camden?”

He turned. The house steward, Mr. Blakely, hovered with an apologetic expression. “I’ve brought the rest of the ledgers, my lord.”

“There are more?”

Blakely hesitated. “Yes, my lord. Several years’ worth. I’ve taken the liberty of marking the pages that are particularly troubling.”

“Thank you. How generous of you,” Camden murmured.

He dismissed the man with a nod and turned back to the desk, staring down at the ruins of what had once passed for estate management.

His brother had been a charming man. That was the problem.

He had charmed his way through society and apparently also through running this estate like a gentleman gambling on the weather.

Camden reached for a glass of brandy, only to find it empty. He considered refilling it, but thought better of it. It was not even noon.

He leafed through the ledgers Blakely brought in, sinking deeper into the chair behind the desk, seeing the numbers and the words on the pages, but not really absorbing any of the information.

He shifted his focus upward toward the painting over the unlit fireplace—an oil of his grandfather on a horse, looking valiant and vaguely disapproving.

It was absurd, really, to think that anyone expected him to carry on the legacy of this place.

He hadn’t been raised to manage land or legacies.

He was the second son who had endless experience in drinking and flirting and generally doing whatever he pleased in the moment.

But the last six months had changed that reality.

Now he was playing nursemaid to a grief-struck child, landlord to fifty-odd tenant families, and reluctant custodian of a title he’d never imagined wearing.

Sure, he’d been an earl before, but the title was more courtesy than anything else.

Since the funeral, everyone had started calling him “my lord” in a way that felt different from previous times.

There was an air added to it now that he was the marquess—now that his title meant something deeper.

The butler, the steward, and the tenants had all taken to it.

He had never hated it before, but it had never meant something so significant before.

Not because he disliked the title, but because it reminded him that his brother was gone.

And worse, that his brother had left behind such a tangled mess of obligations that even death hadn’t settled them.

Had his brother known? Had he realized how badly the accounts had rotted? Or had he truly believed he had more time?

Camden didn’t know which possibility was worse.

He was halfway through debating whether the leaking roof or the caved-in carriage house deserved attention first when a familiar voice interrupted his thoughts.

“Camden.” Lord Kensington’s voice broke through the fog. He had entered without a knock or introduction.

Camden looked up. “Kensington. I was not informed you were arriving today.” Kensington strode into the room like he owned it—which, if things continued in this fashion, he might.

Lord Kensington crossed the threshold with his usual air of practiced elegance.

Cravat tied with careless perfection. Gloves tucked under one arm.

There was a lightness to him that made Camden feel heavier by contrast.

“Still brooding?” Kensington asked, surveying the room with a slow turn of his head. “I’d say the gloom suits you, but you’re making it worse.”

Camden offered a humorless smile. “I inherited the shadows.”

“I see my presence is needed more than I realized. It’s a very good thing for you that I have several weeks at my disposal.” Kensington poured two glasses from the decanter and handed one over.

Camden took the glass, but he didn’t drink.

He stared down at the swirling amber inside and muttered, “What have I done, Kensington?” He gestured to the surrounding room and the ledgers.

His whole life had been turned upside down in the last six months.

The weight felt hard, intense—and suffocating. “Haverton is in shambles.”

Kensington looked up from his glass with sympathy. “Camden. You did the best you could,” Kensington said, not unkindly. “You had weeks—maybe less—to decide what to do with everything. You were mourning, creditors breathing down your collar.”

Camden rubbed the back of his neck. “I shouldn’t have sold the others to live in this place, sight unseen,” Camden said. “I should have inspected the properties. Chosen with care.”

“You didn’t have that kind of time or freedom. You chose the one with tenants still paying rent. The least ruined. That wasn’t foolish—that was pragmatic.”

Camden sighed, gesturing around the room. “And still, look at it. It’s not the house I grew up in, and it’s not the one Helena remembers. She’s displaced on top of everything else. I should have considered this more thoroughly.”

“You’ve had six months of stress, Camden. And you’ve managed to keep the family name off the scandal sheets. You’re standing upright. That’s more than many would manage in your position.”

“I was the second son,” Camden muttered. “I stayed out of the debt—but not out of the aftermath. My brother always had charm and no sense. He ran through money like water, made friends at every club, and left no plan behind.”

Kensington nodded. “He left a mess. But you’re the one who’s here to clean it up.”

“With investments barely holding, an estate falling apart, and a grieving child that I don’t know how to reach.” And he himself still felt the grief of losing his brother and his brother’s wife.

Kensington gave him a long look. “Then let this be the start. A clean slate. For both of you.”

Camden said nothing.

“How did you know Haverton? I thought you said this was just a summer home?”

“It was when Richard and I were boys. But things have changed significantly since then. I think Helena stayed here once when she was very young. There’s a nursery upstairs she didn’t recognize.

Though it’s hard to say for certain, as she rarely utters a word in response. ” He sighed. “I don’t know what to do.”

“To do? About which part?”

Camden moved his arm in a flourish. “Pick your starting place. The roof leaks. The greenhouse is dead. There are three broken windows and half the tenant cottages haven’t seen repair in years.”

“Repairs are easy enough to schedule.” Kensington looked around the room. “And it was all from your brother’s gambling?”

Camden shrugged. “Gambling and mismanagement. Perhaps it wasn’t all intentional. But it will take a lot of work to figure out all the causes.”

“How is the documentation for figuring it all out?” Kensington asked, gesturing to the books strewn all over the desk and accumulating piles on the adjacent floor.

“He was not the most diligent at keeping notes of all the important things, though there is enough writing here to look as if he was faithful in writing—it is just not all useful.”

“You have your work cut out for you.”