"Miss Neave. How long were you on that road?"
"An hour and a half, perhaps two."
"And your driver has gone back to Marsden?"
"Yes."
"Right," said the Duke of Ravensworth. Charlotte noticed that he had put the unopened letter into his coat pocket, which struck her as very strange indeed.
The blue room had a fire going properly within four minutes, which Charlotte later learned meant that somebody had run. She sat on the edge of a chair with her hands in her lap and her boots steaming, trying to work out what was happening. A housekeeper, a broad, brisk woman of fifty who introduced herself as Mrs. Ives, had taken the wet shawl away over Charlotte's objections, come back with a dry one that was plainly not a servant's, put a footstool under her feet without asking, and gone out again.
The Duke came in ten minutes later. He had not opened the letter. She could see the corner of it still in his pocket. He did not sit down opposite her. He went to the tray, which had come up with the fire, poured a cup, put two lumps in it without asking, brought it to her, and stood there holding it out.
"Your Grace, I ought to say why I've come."
"Drink that first."
"I'm quite—"
"Miss Neave," he said gently, not moving the cup. "You have been in the cold for two hours, and your hands are the wrong color. Whatever is in that letter has waited eleven miles and can wait four minutes more. I am not going to discuss anything with you until you have had that. Please."
Charlotte took the cup. She had not eaten since seven that morning, and the tea was very hot and very sweet. She got about half of it down before she realized she was crying, which was appalling. She put the cup down, pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, and said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't do this."
"I should think you don't," said the Duke. "Or you'd not have got here at all."
He sat down then, but not opposite her. He sat sideways in a chair by the fire, looking at the fire and not at her—which she understood after a moment he was doing on purpose so that she could cry without being watched. Nobody had ever done that for her, either.
When she had stopped, he said, still looking at the fire, "Now, before I open that letter, I am going to ask you three questions and I would like you to answer them exactly. Do you know what is in it?"
"No."
"Did your stepfather tell you what he wanted?"
"He said there was an old obligation between your family and my father's people. He said it would take an hour to explain and I'd not follow it." Charlotte heard how it sounded, and her face went hot. "I assumed, Your Grace... I assumed he was asking you for money and had not the face to come himself."
"And the third," the Duke turned his head. "Did he arrange for the gig to wait?"
"No."
"Did you know it wasn't going to?"
"That's four questions," Charlotte said. "And no, I did not. He told me to wait for an answer however long it took."
The Duke of Ravensworth looked at her for a long moment. Then he took the letter out of his pocket, broke the seal, and read it standing up in front of the fire. Charlotte watched his jaw go tight and then, oddly, loosen, as though he had been braced for something and it had come in worse, but not differently. He read it twice.
Then he folded it, holding it in one hand, and stood looking down at the coals.
"Miss Neave," he said, "I am going to tell you something and I am going to do it badly, because there is no good way, and because I have decided that you being lied to for another hour would be worse than hearing it from a stranger."
Charlotte set the cup down in the saucer very carefully.
"There is no obligation between your father's family and mine. I have never heard your father's name in my life." The Duke turned round. "This is a letter proposing that I keep you."
The fire moved. Somewhere out in the passage, a clock was going.
"I beg your pardon?" Charlotte said.
"It is very well written. It does not use one word that could be shown to a magistrate." His voice had gone flat and hard, and it was not aimed at her. "It observes that you are of an age to be settled. It observes that your stepfather's circumstances are strained and that he has two young sons to provide for. It says that he has heard I am a solitary man and that a great house wants a mistress, and that he would rather see you comfortably placed with a gentleman of standing than badly married in Marsden. And that he is confident I will know how to make such an arrangement agreeable to all parties."
He held it out to her. "You may read it. I think you probably should."