"An invalid," Sophia said again, very quietly. "They had already decided what you would be by breakfast."
Kit swore, low and with feeling, in the language of a ship's gun deck. Ogilvie, the surgeon, had gone still over his folded cloth with a probe in his hand. In the strengthening light Edmund saw that his round, prosperous face had turned the colour of suet.
Edmund looked at the black chariot. It had not moved. The blinds had not moved. The postilions sat their horses and looked at the trees, the way servants look at the ceiling during a family quarrel at dinner.
"Who is in the carriage?" he said.
"Mr. Garrow—"
"Lady Sophia. Who is in the carriage?"
She looked at him with something close to pity, and he could hardly bear it.
"I think you know," she said.
He did. He had known, he understood now, from the moment he saw the lacquer catch the light. Something in the shape of the vehicle had told him: its weight, its plainness, the expense of it with no crest to show for the money. His father had never bought a coat of arms, though he could have afforded fifty. *Arms are for men whose grandfathers did something,* Sir Josiah Garrow liked to say. *Mine kept a pig.*
"My father," Edmund said.
V
Stannard told the rest himself. Nobody asked him to. He gave his pistol to Darnell, and Darnell took it with both hands as if it might go off on its own. Then Stannard walked forward to the middle of the ground where Sophia stood, and stood beside her, and spoke to Edmund across the six paces that were left.