"Let the Widow Eat in the Kitchen," Her In-Laws Said — The Duke Carried His Plate Down to Join Her
Chapter 13
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Lady Ashdown was in the morning room. She had not slept either. She was sitting by the cold grate in a gray wrapper without her tiara, and she looked, for the first time in Grace's memory, like an old woman. When Grace came in, she stood up. She did not seem to know what to do with her hands."You're leaving?" she said. "Yes, ma'am." "Where will you go?" "Home," said Grace. "To Portsmouth, to the Anchor." "The Anchor was sold. You told me so yourself." "It was bought back." Grace laid her hand flat against the front of her dress where the letter was. "Frederick bought it for me with his godmother's legacy. The 800 pounds you always said was wasted on a younger son. The deed's in my name. It's been waiting for me for two years."Lady Ashdown sat down again quite suddenly, as if her knees had given way."He never told me," she said. "He never told me anything. He stopped writing to me the day he married you." She looked up. Her eyes were red. "Will the duke tell everyone about the letter I wrote him? About last night?""I don't know what the duke will do, ma'am, but I've no intention of telling anyone anything." Grace paused. "I don't think I'll need to. Half your servants were in that kitchen last night."Lady Ashdown flinched.Grace looked at her for a long moment—at the proud, elegant woman who had sent her down the back stairs every time there was company for 2 years and never once said her son's name. And she found, rather to her own surprise, that she was not angry anymore. She was only tired and sorry and ready to go home."He talked about you, you know," she said quietly. "In India, on the veranda in the evenings. About the garden here when he was a boy, and the lake, and the way you used to read to him when he had the measles. He kept your miniature in his writing case. He was looking at it the week before he died." She took a breath. "He loved you, ma'am, even after the letter you wrote him. He never stopped."Lady Ashdown put her hand over her mouth. She did not say anything at all.Grace curtsied to her, as she had curtsied every day for 2 years. Then she turned and walked out through the front door of Ashdown Park in daylight for the first time since she had come.The duke's carriage was waiting at the Swan in Alresford as he had promised. Grace walked straight past it. She bought an inside seat on the Portsmouth coach with the last of the £4 she had got for Frederick's sword. And she left a note for the duke with the landlord of the Swan:"Thank you for keeping your promise to Fred. I am going home to keep mine. You will know where to find me. G. A."Mr. Ezra Hobbs, attorney-at-law of the High Street, Portsmouth, was 71 years old and deaf as a post, and he nearly fell off his stool when Grace walked into his office that afternoon and told him who she was.