"A low standard," he said. "I shall attempt it."
"And Pewsey?"
"Pewsey is circulating a milder story now—that he found us too irregular for his taste. Let him. Taste is a coat. He may wear it." Sir Ridley covered the wooden horse again. "Leonora. If in spring you still want Harrow, I will walk with you to Mr. Tolleson and I will not sneer in the vestry. If you do not, I will not ask you to want him for my conscience's sake. My conscience is my own animal to feed."
She nodded. Dust motes turned in the thin light. "Spring is fair. Winter first."
"Winter first," he agreed, and for the first time in many years offered her his arm in a room with no witnesses, as if practicing a courtesy he had forgotten he owed his own blood.
XIII.
Winter did its work without asking leave of plots.
There was a night when the cottage chimney smoked the wrong way and Raff arrived at the kitchen door smelling of soot, and Leonora laughed until she cried, and Mrs. Glynn made them both drink something hot and forbade romance until the flue was cleared. There was a morning when a colt took sick and Raff stayed with it forty hours, and Leonora brought broth and silence, and the colt lived, and something in Raff's face eased as if a private jury had acquitted him of an unnamed charge. There was a letter from Bath in which Mrs. Crowle asked whether the crown mark had done its duty, and Sir Ridley wrote back, to Leonora's surprise, Yes — late, but yes, and kept a copy in the pocket-book beside Mathias's scrap.
There was also a hard hour in December when Leonora's doubt arrived, not as Pewsey, not as parish, but as her own voice in the dark.
She lay awake and thought: What if I love the story more than the man? What if the tattoo made him luminous and ordinary days will dim him? What if I am my father's daughter in the worst way—hungry for debts and oaths and the drama of honour—and Raff deserves a woman who wants him when there is no Corunna in the room?
She rose, wrapped herself in a shawl, and sat by her window until the cold made the question smaller and more honest. Then she waited for daylight like a person waiting for a verdict she alone could deliver.
At noon she went to the cottage. Raff was mending a bridle by the hearth. She stood on his threshold with frost on her hem and said, "Tell me something dull about yourself."
He blinked. "Dull."
"Dull. No war. No marks. No rescues. Something that would never make a ballad."
Raff thought. The fire clicked. "I cannot sleep if a door is ajar. I eat apples from the blossom end first. I am afraid of deep ponds though I can swim. I think Cowper sentimental and listen anyway because of your voice. I want, someday, a dog that is of no use except to lie on feet. I lose my temper at crooked nails. I—" He stopped. "Is that dull enough, or shall I go on until you are sorry you asked?"
Leonora's eyes had filled. She wiped them with the heel of her hand, impatient with herself. "It is perfect. I was afraid I loved a legend. You have kindly provided a man who hates crooked nails. I can build on that."
He set the bridle aside. "Come in before Mrs. Glynn freezes to the stile. She has been out there ten minutes pretending to count twigs."
Mrs. Glynn's voice floated from the lane, unrepentant. "Twelve twigs. Mind you leave the door open a hand's width. I have ears."