"No," Leonora said.
Three men turned. Sir Ridley's face warned her. She ignored the warning.
"No sum," she said. "No removal. No acknowledgment that I was Mr. Pewsey's property in understanding. I was not. He knows I was not. If he wishes to take his fog to a jury, he may. I will say under oath what I did and did not promise. I will say that a man who sends attorneys to harvest a refusal is not a man I would have married if he had been the last roof in Hampshire."
Pewsey's fair skin flushed. "You speak very freely for a young woman in a fragile position."
"My position is only fragile if I agree to treat it as glass," Leonora said. "I am done agreeing."
Keddy looked at Sir Ridley. "Control your daughter, sir."
Sir Ridley's silence lasted long enough for the hall clock to sound a single note. Then he said, "My daughter appears to be controlling herself. You will leave this house. If you file so much as a whisper in Winchester, you will find that I still have friends who remember what fog looks like when it is made by men with too much leisure. Pewsey—you once ate at my table. Do not make me regret the beef."
When they had gone, Sir Ridley turned to Leonora with an expression in which anger and unwilling pride fought for the same chair.
"You might have let me speak first."
"You might have been about to purchase my quiet," she said. "I could not risk it."
"I was not." He exhaled. "But I understand why you thought I might. That is my doing. Very well. We will not purchase. We will endure. Endurance is an old Ashbrook talent. Ask the portraits."
Jemima, from the doorway, said, "The portraits look bored. I prefer Leonora's method."
Sir Ridley gave her a look that would have frozen a less Crowle-ish young woman. Jemima smiled. Somewhere in the structure of the week, something braced.
X.
Raff heard of the attorney from Hobb, who heard it from the kitchen, which heard it from Deane's unsettled mouth. He put down the currycomb and walked to the house without asking leave, because leave was a luxury for men who were not being named in legal fog.
He found Sir Ridley in the library with Leonora and Jemima and a map of the parish open for no clear reason except that maps made men feel as if ground could be managed.
"I will go," Raff said from the doorway. "If my name is the handle on their knife, pull the handle out. I can work at Lydeard. I can work further. I will not be the excuse that lets a man like Pewsey put paper around Miss Ashbrook's throat."
Leonora stood so quickly her chair scraped. "Do not you dare decide my throat for me."