At the end of the gallery, Stepan stopped at a closed door and did not open it. He turned to the Duke and said something short.
"He says this was the captain's room," Anna said. "He says it is not his to go into."
The Duke put his hand on the door and stood there. Then he took his hand away again.
"Not yet," he said. And it was so exactly what Stepan had said in Grosvenor Street that Anna did not need to translate it; the old soldier nodded as though he understood.
Then the Duke took the dented silver watch from his pocket, where he had carried it all the way from London, and put it back into Stepan's hand.
"Tell him he carried it to me," he said to Anna. "Tell him to keep it until he has made his report."
The next morning, Anna opened the shutters. Nobody told her to. She got up at six, before anyone else was stirring, and put on her oldest gown. Then she went from room to room along the whole south front of the house, unbarring the tall shutters and folding them back.
The sea light came pouring into rooms that had been dark for six years. The dust came up off the floors in bright clouds. A bird that had gotten in somewhere flew out through the library window in a panic of wings. By the time the household woke, every long window on the front of Larktarn was open, and the house was full of the sound of the sea.
She did not stop there. That day, and in the days that followed, she took the house in hand. She walked down to the village and found women who wanted work, and men to see to the roof of the east wing and the fallen garden walls. She had the damp carpets carried out onto the grass and beaten. She found the linen cupboards with the rot in them, the good china in its crates, the mice in the pantry. She dealt with all of it in her quiet, steady way, as she had once kept a crowded coffeehouse running on too little money and no thanks. The caretaker's wife, who had been frightened of her at first, began bringing her tea at eleven without being asked.
The Duke let her do it. He did not interfere, but she began to find him in the places where she was working, as though by accident. He would appear in a doorway and stand there with his hands behind his back, watching her direct the women with the carpets. He would come down to the garden where the men were mending the wall, take off his coat without a word, and lift stones.