For a Year She Read Aloud to a Blind Stranger in the Park — He Was the Duke Who'd Refused Her
Chapter 9
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"Yes," said Aunt Octavia. "That is why I am coming."Lady Danforth's drawing room smelled of hothouse roses and held breath. Thirty people sat in rows of gilt chairs. Lord Loxbourne sat at a small table with an ear trumpet. Mr. Gaunt stood beside him with a folder and a face of sorrowful courage."My Lord," he said. "It grieves me to say it. His Grace has been blind for more than a year. He has been seen at dawn in the park in company with a woman of no connection. I have kept the household together from pure loyalty. I ask only the power to continue."The room murmured. Somewhere in the second row, a woman said the word blind in the voice of a woman tasting a sweet. Verity's hands closed in her lap.The door opened. Hobday came in first and stood aside.The Duke of Rayford walked in with one hand on the deerhound's shoulder. He did not stumble. His coat was black, his eyes were fixed on nothing, and he carried himself like a man who had been told his own value and declined it."Your Grace," said Mr. Gaunt. "You should not have troubled yourself. You must see how much I have done for you.""I know precisely what you have done," said the Duke. "I have had it read to me."He turned his head until his face found the middle of the room."Miss Brandreth."Verity stood. She had slipped in behind him with her aunt and taken a chair at the back. Thirty heads turned."Lord Loxbourne has the home farm book," said the Duke. "I should like him to hear it from the woman who reads it best.""Miss Brandreth," said Lord Loxbourne into the trumpet. "Read."She had no book. She did not need one."Mr. Gaunt's summary gave the Rayford rents as £11,400," said Verity. "The columns add to £10,090. The difference is £1,310. Mill repairs at Thorpe: £800 a year. The mill burned in 1812. Wages for five keepers who do not exist: £200. £2,310 in a single year. There are 11 more ledgers. I have read two. Lord Loxbourne has the rest."Nobody coughed.Lord Loxbourne lowered the trumpet. "Gaunt," he said. "Is the mill standing?"Mr. Gaunt's face did something it had never practiced: it collapsed from the top down, like a tent with the pole pulled."It is, in a manner of speaking, a question of timing, my Lord.""Is the mill standing?""No, my Lord.""The woman is a fortune hunter," said Mr. Gaunt. "She would have Your Grace at the altar within a week.""She refused two guineas a week on the first morning," said the Duke. "I have not known her to take money since.""Petition refused," said Lord Loxbourne. "Mr. Gaunt will surrender his keys and his books."Mr. Gaunt did not argue. He had run out of sentences."A letter went out in my name last January," said the Duke. "It said I would not be bound by the plain daughter of a dead man. I did not write it. I have no eyes to dispute the word plain. I have ears, and I dispute it."