She felt Rose's hand tug in hers, not pulling away but reaching. Rose had taken her father's hand with her other one. She stood between them, a small bridge in a white smock, holding on to each of them as though they were the two ends of a skipping rope and she meant to make them turn it.
"Then why," said Rose, in the clear, carrying voice of a child who has been keeping something for exactly the right moment, "was Papa asking Grandmother if you could stay forever?"
Hester looked up.
The Duke of Ashcombe, who sat in the House of Lords and was said never to lose his composure, had gone red to the edge of his cravat. He did not deny it. He did not look away. He looked at her as if she had caught him with something in his hands that he had not been ready to give her and could not now put down.
Forever. Hester's breath would not come properly. She was aware of a terrible bright thing opening in her chest, and of every single reason it must be shut again.
"Rose," she began.
A shadow lay across the threshold.
The Dowager Duchess of Ashcombe stood in the open door. She was dressed as she had been dressed every day of the eleven months Hester had known her, in a gown of so dark a grey it was nearly black, with black lace at the throat and black gloves on her hands. Her grey hair was drawn up so tightly it seemed to pull the skin of her face smooth. In one gloved hand she held a sealed white envelope.
She did not look at her son. She did not look at her granddaughter. She looked at Hester, and her face was as cold and still as the frost that had not yet come to the beech walk.
"Miss Bennett," she said.
II.
Nobody moved. Then the Dowager crossed the room, her skirts making a dry whisper on the boards, and held out the envelope.
"This came for you by the afternoon post. I took it up myself."