"Sir."
"If Mrs. Glynn asks what is happening, tell her the master is correcting a theft. Horses go missing in stories. Daughters do not. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Sir Ridley."
When the door had shut, Sir Ridley stood alone among his books and looked at nothing. For a moment—only a moment—he smelled gunpowder and wet wool and the sweet rottenness of a Spanish road in winter. He pushed the smell away with the practice of eight years. Then he walked out toward the hall to do what fathers did when the world threatened to become untidy.
III.
Leonora was in the morning room with a piece of embroidery she despised when Deane found her. She had been stabbing the silk as if it had offered her Pewsey's hand.
"Miss," Deane said. "Your father requires you in the hall. At once."
She rose. Something in his face told her the day had broken open. She did not ask questions. She followed him through the corridor that smelled of beeswax and last night's coal, past the portraits of Ashbrooks who had all, in their painted way, approved of order, and into the hall where the black-and-white tiles always made her think of a chessboard on which she was not allowed to be a piece that moved itself.
Sir Ridley stood by the open front doors. Beyond him the carriage court was brightening as the mist thinned. The family chaise had been brought round. Hobb sat on the box with his mouth set. Two yard men lingered near the mounting block like men who had been given an ugly job and meant to be done with it.
"Father," Leonora said.
"You will go to your aunt in Winchester for a fortnight," Sir Ridley said, without looking at her. "You will take the small trunk. You will speak to no one in this house before you leave except Mrs. Glynn, and to her only about linen. When you return, you will receive Mr. Pewsey as a woman who understands her duty. Do not argue with me in the hearing of servants."
"I will argue with you in any hearing that will have me," Leonora said. Her voice shook once and then steadied. "I have done nothing that requires Winchester."
"You have done enough."
He took her by the upper arm. His grip was not cruel; it was absolute. He walked her down the steps as if she were a chair being relocated. The air outside was cold and clean. Gravel gritted under her boots. She tried to plant her feet and found that dignity and balance were not the same thing.
"You will not manhandle me like a sack," she said.
"I will do what keeps this house from becoming a byword," he answered.
Then Raff came.
They brought him from the yard between Deane and a thick-shouldered groom named Burl. Raff's coat was gone. His shirt was open at the throat. He was not struggling in the theatrical way of men who want witnesses; he was braced, walking because walking was better than being dragged, his jaw locked so hard a muscle jumped in his cheek. When he saw Leonora on her father's arm his eyes flared—not with shame, she thought, but with a fury so clean it looked like light.
"On his knees," Sir Ridley said.