"Let the Widow Eat in the Kitchen," Her In-Laws Said — The Duke Carried His Plate Down to Join Her
Chapter 10
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"I came home in the summer of 1819," he said. "My brother was dead, and I was a duke, God help me. And the first thing I did, before I'd even unpacked, was write to Ashdown Park to ask where you were."He did not look round at the doorway. He did not need to."Lady Ashdown wrote back that you'd never come here, that you'd gone to America, that the family had no wish to hear of you again."The kitchen was perfectly silent. Even the fire seemed to have stopped crackling. Grace turned her head slowly and looked at her mother-in-law.Lady Ashdown stood in the doorway in her diamonds. Her face had gone from pink to scarlet to a strange mottled white."I did it for the family," she said. Her voice was high and tight. "To spare us a duke asking after a tavern girl in letters for all the county to gossip about. I had every right.""You told him I'd gone to America," said Grace. She did not raise her voice. She said it quite quietly, sitting at the kitchen table with her hands flat on the scrubbed wood. But the way she said it made Lady Ashdown stop."I was in this house," said Grace, "when that letter came. I was upstairs in your linen room mending your sheets. I'd been here 6 months. I'd have been here 6 more and 12 more and 20 more if he hadn't tasted my soup tonight."She took a breath."You never said Frederick's name to me. Not once in 2 years. But he was my husband. He was the best man I ever knew. And his last wish on this earth was a letter to me, and you put it in the fire to spare yourself some gossip.""I didn't burn Frederick's letter," Lady Ashdown said quickly. "I never had it. It was only the duke's.""You burned the only road it had to me."Grace stood up. She was small and thin in her black dress, but she seemed, at that moment, to fill the whole kitchen."Please go back upstairs, Lady Ashdown. Your dinner's getting cold. I cooked all of it. I'd hate for it to go to waste."Behind the range, the old cook, Mrs. Dawlish, made a sound that might have been a cough and might have been a laugh. She turned it hastily into a sneeze.Lady Ashdown looked at her daughter-in-law for a long, long moment. Then she turned without a word and went back up the stairs. Sir Reginald followed her, red to the ears. Lavinia lingered for a second in the doorway, staring at the duke with her lovely mouth open as if she could not understand what had just happened to her evening. Then she fled, too.For a long moment after they had gone, neither Grace nor the duke said anything at all."I wrote to Boston," he said at last, quietly, "and New York and Philadelphia and Baltimore and Charleston. I put notices in the newspapers in every port on the American coast:Information sought regarding Mrs. Grace Ashdown, widow, late of Madras. I paid an agent in New York to search the shipping lists for 2 years." He looked down at his plate. "I came within a week of sailing there myself last spring. My steward talked me out of it."