When she had gone, Lady Ivers went up to Theodora's room without a word and opened the writing box on the dressing table, and took out the green notebook, and read it from first page to last, standing by the window, while Theodora watched from the bed. School. Hackney coach, one shilling. Slates, six, two shillings. Proceeds of the Address, the second hundred, five pounds and eight shillings. Then she shut it. She did not shout. Lady Ivers never shouted when things were truly bad.
"He asked you," she said. "Didn't he. This afternoon. And you refused him."
"Yes, Mama."
"For this." She held up the notebook. "For washerwomen's children. For a printing shop."
"For Piers," said Theodora. "And for me."
Her mother looked at her for a long time. Then she said, quite quietly, "We go home to Coldharbour on Monday. Piers goes to Mr. Kinross on the first of July instead of September; I shall write tonight. You will not leave this house until we go." And she went out, and took the notebook with her.
The Dowager Duchess of Calderwood called at eleven the next morning, which was not an hour at which duchesses called on anyone, and asked to see Miss Ivers alone.
She was a small woman, much smaller than Theodora had imagined, upright as a pike, in grey silk and a great many pearls, with her son's dark eyes in a face that had been beautiful and had decided, some decades ago, that it would rather be formidable. She sat down in the yellow chair without being asked. She began to speak before Theodora had finished curtseying, and she did not stop.
She said that her son had told her everything. She said that she had not slept. She said that Miss Ivers was a fool, a proud, clever, impossible fool, and that she, the Dowager, had been exactly such a fool at nineteen and had got over it and so would Miss Ivers. She said that Miss Ivers could not possibly understand what she had refused. She said that a woman of sense would see that it was the best bargain she would ever be offered; that a husband who needed one was a great deal more comfortable than a husband who merely wanted one; that a duchess with her wits about her could manage anything, a house, a husband, a school, a world, so long as she never let it see her stumble. She talked as Theodora had never heard anyone talk, without a pause or a hesitation, without once waiting for an answer, as though she were laying down a carpet so thick that nobody else could find room to put a foot on it.