I.
The mist that morning hung so low over Ashbrook Place that the lime avenue looked cut off at the knees. Beyond the gravel sweep the park fell away toward the Lydeard water in a grey softness, and the house itself—brick the colour of old port, with white sashes and a pediment that had always seemed to Leonora Ashbrook a little too proud for the size of the place—stood half erased, as if the county had decided to forget it for an hour.
Leonora had left her gloves on the dressing-table and her bonnet on the chair. She had told Mrs. Glynn she meant only to walk as far as the shrubbery for air. She had not lied exactly. The shrubbery was on the way.
The stable yard smelled of wet straw, horse, and the iron bite of the pump. A brown mare stamped in the near stall. Somewhere a boy whistled three notes and stopped. Leonora's half-boots clicked on the cobbles, and she hated the sound of them, because they announced her as clearly as a bell.
Raff Harrow was in the tack room with a bridle across his knees and a rag that had once been white. He did not start when she appeared in the doorway. He only looked up, and the look was the same as it had been for six weeks now: careful, bright, and a little angry at itself for being glad.
"Miss Ashbrook," he said.
"You need not Miss me when there is no one to hear it," she said, and shut the door behind her with a care that made the latch sound louder than a slam.
He set the bridle aside. His hands were long and nicked, the nails scrubbed, the knuckles permanently reddened by cold water and leather soap. He wore no coat indoors; his shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow, and the left forearm showed a pale seam of old scar and, higher, near the hollow of the muscle, a mark she had glimpsed once and not spoken of—a small dark crown, no larger than a thumbnail, inked under the skin.
"If your father finds you here—" he began.
"Then he will find me here," Leonora said. "I am tired of arranging my courage for times when he is absent. I came to say I will not go to Pewsey Park on Thursday."
Raff's mouth tightened. "Mr. Pewsey has asked for you."
"Mr. Pewsey has asked for my father's acres and my mother's portion and a wife who will sit at the head of his table and not contradict him about drainage. He has not asked for me. I have ears. I use them."
"And what do you mean to tell Sir Ridley?"
"The truth, if I can make it small enough to fit into a room he will enter." She came further in. The tack room was narrow, lined with hooks and the dark shine of saddles. A single high window let in the misty light. "Or I mean to tell him nothing, and simply not go. Silence is a kind of speech. Women are taught it early."
Raff stood. He was taller than she had first thought when he arrived in March with a letter from a Hampshire horse-jobber and a quiet way of calming a nervous colt. He had dark hair cut short as a soldier's, a mouth that did not smile easily, and eyes the colour of wet slate. He looked at her now as if she were a horse that might bolt and also as if she were the only solid thing in the county.
"You should not come here for my sake," he said. "It is not safe for you. It is not honest for me."
"Is honesty only what can be spoken in the drawing-room?" she asked. "Then half the world is a lie, and the stables are the only place left with air in it."
He almost smiled then. Almost. "You talk like a book."