Rose ran ahead along the gravel and then came back, and ran ahead, and came back.
"Are you going on a ship?" she asked on the fourth return.
Hester stopped. "Who told you about a ship?"
"Nancy told James that Mrs. Ormsby sends people on ships. To India. Where the tigers are." Rose's chin was trembling and she was furious about it. "Are you?"
There were many things Hester had been taught to say to children: that it was not a matter for little girls, that grown persons would decide, that she should run along and look at the fishpond. She had never been able to say them. Her father had never said them to her.
"I don't know yet," she said. "That is the truth, Rose. I have been offered a place, and I have not decided. When I decide, I will tell you myself, before anyone else, and I will not tell you on the stairs or through Nancy. I promise."
Rose thought about this. "Mama went away and didn't say."
The words were so quiet that Hester almost did not hear them.
She knelt down on the gravel, regardless of her skirts. "She didn't choose to go, sweetheart. She was very ill. If she could have said goodbye to you, I am quite sure she would have."
"Papa didn't say either. He went to London and then he came back and then nobody said anything. Ever." Rose kicked at a stone. "Nobody says anything in this house."
"I know," said Hester, and put her arms around her, and over Rose's head saw the Duke standing at the gate in the old wall, and understood from his face that he had heard every word.
He did not come forward at once. He waited, very properly, until Rose had wriggled free and gone off to look for frogs at the edge of the lily pond. Then he walked down the gravel path and stopped a yard from Hester, and for a moment neither of them spoke.
"I owe you an apology," he said.