"Let the Widow Eat in the Kitchen," Her In-Laws Said — The Duke Carried His Plate Down to Join Her
Chapter 18
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The whole taproom heard it: 40 sailors and a dozen old soldiers of the 49th, silent with their tankards halfway to their mouths.Grace looked at her mother-in-law for a long moment—at the proud, gray, frightened face under the snowy bonnet. Then she held out her hand."Come through," she said.They sat at the long kitchen table by the range while the snow fell past the window and the noise of the taproom came muffled through the door. Grace gave her a bowl of pepper water, and Lady Ashdown ate every drop of it, and asked for more.And then she put down her spoon, took a small object out of her reticule, and laid it on the table. It was a miniature in a small oval gold frame: a fair-haired boy of about seven in a blue coat, laughing."He was the only one of my children who ever laughed at me," said Lady Ashdown. "Reginald was afraid of me, and Lavinia was too like me. But Freddy laughed. He used to come into my room in the mornings, and climb on the bed, and tell me I was too grand for my own good." Her voice broke. "When he married you, I wrote him a letter I've been ashamed of every day since. He never wrote to me again. I told myself it was your fault, that you'd taken him from me. It was easier than knowing I'd sent him away myself."She pushed the miniature across the table."I want you to have it. It's the only picture of him I have, but you knew him better than I did at the end. You made him happy. I never did." She looked up, and her eyes were full. "I'm sorry, Grace. For the kitchen, for the attic, for the letter to the duke, for all of it. I have no right to ask you to forgive me. I only wanted you to know that I know what I did."Grace picked up the miniature and looked at it for a long time—at the laughing, fair-haired boy who had walked into the Anchor out of the rain, and eaten two bowls of mutton stew, and told her he was going to marry her."Keep it," she said at last, and pushed it gently back across the table. "You need it more than I do. I have his letter, and I have this." She waved her hand at the kitchen, the range, the copper pans, the sea outside the dark window. "He gave me all of this. He gave me back my life."Lady Ashdown put her hand over Grace's on the table, and held it. And the two women sat together in the kitchen of the Anchor while the snow fell outside, and neither of them said anything for a long time.She stayed three days until the road was clear. She ate every meal in the kitchen. On the last morning before she climbed into her carriage, she kissed her daughter-in-law on the cheek in front of the whole of Broad Street and said loudly enough for every fishwife on the quay to hear, "My son had better taste than any of us."