Chapter 17

"People will have opinions about a Marquis and a schoolmistress.""They will," he said. "They have been having opinions about my presence in Rothbury since October. The increment from visiting regularly to intending to marry will be manageable.""I am not concerned about manageable," she said. "I am telling you that I will not be managed by the opinions; that I will continue to run this school and make my own decisions about it, and argue with you when I disagree with your decisions about other things.""I know," he said. "This is not a condition. This is a description of what I am asking to be part of."She looked at him for a long moment with the gray eyes that had assessed him in the doorway on a September Thursday and had been building a case ever since. He sat across the desk from her and let the assessment complete, because it was her method and he had learned to trust her methods."Yes," she said: plain, direct, the whole answer requiring nothing added."Yes," he said.The wedding took place in the Rothbury church in March, in a service attended by the village with the unified enthusiasm of a community that had been watching the situation develop since October, and had been in complete agreement about the appropriate outcome since November.Hartley attended with the careful expression of a solicitor who had managed the legal arrangements for a Marquis's marriage to a schoolmistress and found the documents entirely in order.The foundation's trustees attended and shook hands with both parties with the warmth of people who understood that the morning ceremony had made the foundation permanently safe in ways that the endowment alone could not.Thomas Buley attended because Agnes had told him he might, on the condition that he remained in his seat throughout. He remained in his seat throughout, and was observed by the village to produce and consult a map of the church during the service, which the village found entirely appropriate.Nell Hartley attended and sat in the second row, and afterward told Agnes, with the composed directness of a twelve-year-old who had learned her directness from somewhere specific, that she was glad and had known it would happen.Agnes had asked her when she had known.Nell had said, "When he read the composition books."Agnes had said, "That was the first day."

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