"Oh," said Hester softly. "Oh, Rose."
"I could not look at her," the Duke said. "For months. Every time I saw her I thought, she lived and Caroline did not, and I was not here, and I hated myself so much for thinking it that I could not stay in the same room. So I gave her to nurses. And then to governesses. And they left, one after another, because this house was a tomb and I was the man who kept it shut. And I told myself I was doing my duty." He lowered his hands and looked at his daughter. "She has had no one, Hester. Four years. No one stayed. Until you."
It was the first time he had used her name. She did not think he noticed.
She wanted very much to comfort him. She wanted to put her hand over his on the dusty carpet and tell him that grief made everyone a coward for a while and it was not his fault. But Rose lay between them with her tear-streaked face and her mother's hairbrush, and Hester found that there was something else in her, under the tenderness, and it was anger.
"You are not a tomb, sir," she said. "You are her father. You have been her father every day of those four years, whether you were in the room or not, and every day you were not, she knew it." Her voice was shaking now and she let it. "She doesn't need me to stay. Not most of all. She needs you to. She needs you to open these doors and tell her who her mother was and what she liked and what she sounded like when she laughed. She needs you to say the name. I can't do that for her. Nobody can, but you."
He looked at her across the sleeping child, and she saw the words land, and saw that they hurt.
"I know," he said. "God help me. I know."
Rose stirred then, and opened her eyes, and saw them both, and her face crumpled with relief and guilt and exhaustion all at once.
"I wanted to find something of Mama's," she said. "To give Miss Bennett. So she would stay. Because things stay if you have them."
The Duke gathered her up, shawl and hairbrush and all, and held her against his muddy coat. He did not hand her to Hester. He did not ring for Nancy. He held her himself.
"That was your mother's shawl," he said, into her hair. "She brought it from her grandmother's house in Devon. She wore it every winter morning at breakfast, because she said this house was colder than a church. She was right. She used to sing while she brushed her hair. Badly. She could never keep a tune." His voice broke and he did not stop. "Her name was Caroline. She loved you more than anything in the world. I should have told you that every day. I'm sorry, Rose. I'm sorry."
Hester picked up her candle and went quietly out, and left them there together among the ghosts.
VII.