Pewsey arrived at noon in a chaise the colour of new money, with a coachman in cockaded hat and a pair of matched bays that made Hobb spit privately into the gravel. He was thirty-four, fair, carefully handsome, and the owner of Pewsey Park three miles west—good land, drained, and stocked with opinions. He had been dangling after Leonora since Easter with the patience of a man who believed patience itself a form of purchase.
Sir Ridley received him in the library. The library smelled of leather, pipe smoke, and the damp that no amount of fire could quite drive from an old Hampshire house. Sir Ridley was fifty-two, still upright from years in the saddle, grey at the temples, with a magistrate's mouth and eyes that had learned to look past people when looking at them was inconvenient. He wore a dark coat and a white stock and the expression of a man who expected the world to arrange itself into order if he waited long enough.
"Ashbrook," Pewsey said, after the wine had been poured. "I will be plain. I have spoken to your daughter twice this month about a date for reading the banns. She answers me with weather and poetry. I am beginning to think the difficulty is not the poetry."
Sir Ridley set down his glass. "Leonora is young. Young women take fright at the altar the way colts take fright at a gate. It passes."
"Does it pass into a stable yard before breakfast?" Pewsey asked, gently.
The fire popped. Outside, a rook called from the elms.
"Explain yourself," Sir Ridley said.
Pewsey did, with the particular neatness of a man who has rehearsed an unpleasant service and means to be thanked for it. He had ridden over early, he said, hoping to catch Sir Ridley before the sessions papers. He had seen Miss Ashbrook leaving the stables by the side door. He had seen, through the tack-room window, a young man in shirtsleeves standing too near her for any honest errand. He named no names. He did not need to. There was only one young man in shirtsleeves at Ashbrook Place who was not family and not Deane.
Sir Ridley's face did not change. That was worse than if it had.
"You are certain," he said.
"I am certain of what I saw. I am not certain of what it means. I prefer to believe it means nothing that cannot be corrected by a firm hand and a timely marriage." Pewsey smiled, thin as a cut. "I am still willing, Ridley. More than willing. But I will not take a wife whose name is already being tried in the servants' hall."
"There will be no servants' hall," Sir Ridley said. "There will be no talk. There will be a carriage at three, and my daughter in it, and you may consider the matter settled in principle. As for the boy—"
He stopped. He had nearly said the boy's name, and found he did not know it cleanly. Harrow. The jobber's letter had said Harrow. A common enough name. A name that stirred nothing he cared to examine.
"As for the boy," Sir Ridley finished, "he will learn his place before sundown."
When Pewsey had gone, Sir Ridley rang for Deane.
Deane was the first footman: tall, pale, loyal in the way of men who mistake fear for virtue. He came with his hands behind his back and his eyes on the carpet.
"Find my daughter," Sir Ridley said. "Bring her to the hall. Then take two of the yard men and fetch the stable lad—Harrow. I want him in the carriage court. On his knees. If he resists, make him sorry. Do not mark his face. I may yet need him able to speak."
Deane bowed. "Yes, Sir Ridley."
"And Deane."