"She didn't want to come home. She wanted you to come to her." Harriet's eyes burned; she let them. "She used to sit by the window on Sundays. I didn't know why until I was older. She was watching the road. She thought one Sunday it would be your carriage."
He took it like a blow to the chest. He did not step back. She would remember that afterward: that he did not step back.
"I'll swear to it, Sir Roland," said Thorne from the archway. His voice was hoarse. "What I found. What you told me to say. I'll swear to all of it, before Mr. Greaves or anybody."
"And I," said the Earl. He came forward now, until he stood a little behind Harriet and to one side, not in front of her. "I'm riding to Beverley today to put a sworn statement before the coroner. I'm asking him to apply to the King's Bench to have the verdict quashed and a new inquest held. I've written it out already. It says that I was drunk, that Samuel Wren took my flask from me and sent me home, and that he died recovering my horse. It says that I made no enquiry afterward because I was ashamed. Mr. Greaves will want to know how the flask came to be withheld from the jury, sir. I imagine he will ask you."
"You'll ruin yourself," said Sir Roland. "For a groom."
"For a man who was better than I was that night, and had the decency to act like it. I'd call that cheap at the price." The Earl's voice gentled. "I'm not your enemy, sir. I never will be. But I won't let you carry this for me any longer, and I won't let her carry it at all."
The old man looked from one to the other of them. Then he looked at the lads in the doorways, at the boy with his rope-burned hands, at Thorne with his cap crushed in his fists. Then back at Harriet.
"I could have you put into that carriage," he said. "The law is on my side. You know it is."
"I know," said Harriet. "You'd have to have me carried. In front of all of them."
For a long moment he stood there in the frost with his gloved hand on the carriage door, the same hand, the same door, and she did not know what he would do. She thought he did not know either.
Then he climbed into the carriage alone, and sat down, and said to Hobbs, without raising his voice, "Home."
The door closed. The wheels broke the frozen ruts of the drive with a sound like snapping ice, and the black carriage rolled away down the avenue of limes, and the last of the morning mist took it.