"Let the Widow Eat in the Kitchen," Her In-Laws Said — The Duke Carried His Plate Down to Join Her
Chapter 8
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Lady Margaret Ashdown received her son's widow in the morning room, standing. She did not ask her to sit down. She looked at the thin young woman in the wet black dress for a long moment, from her muddy boots to her cropped hair which had been cut short in the fever. And then she said in her cool, beautiful voice:"I suppose you had better stay. I won't have it said in the county that we turned Frederick's widow away from the door. But you'll understand, Mrs. Ashdown, that you can hardly expect to be received as one of the family under the circumstances."So, Grace stayed for 2 years.She was given a small room at the top of the house under the eaves that had once belonged to a nursery maid. She was given no allowance. In return for her board, she was expected to make herself useful. She read to Lady Ashdown in the afternoons, mended the household linen, kept the stillroom, and ran errands to the village.And when there were guests, she was not seen. When there were dinners, she ate in the kitchen. When the neighbors called, Lady Ashdown told them that her daughter-in-law was not strong since India and preferred to keep to her room.Sir Reginald was not unkind. He was simply indifferent, the way he was indifferent to most things that were not horses. Lavinia was too young and too busy with her own future to notice her sister-in-law at all.The worst night was Lavinia's 18th birthday ball in the spring of 1820: 200 guests, an orchestra from London, a supper laid out in the long gallery. Grace was not invited. She spent the evening in the stillroom alone making the syllabubs that would be carried upstairs.At 11:00, a party of young ladies came down the back passage giggling, looking for the cloakroom, and found her instead. One of them, a tall, pretty girl in yellow silk, stopped in the doorway and stared at the thin young woman in black with her hands in a bowl of cream."Oh," she said brightly, "is this the tavern girl, the one Captain Ashdown married?" She turned to her friends. "Lady Ashdown says she smells of gin. Do you think she does?"They all laughed and went away.Grace stood in the stillroom with the cream dripping from her fingers and did not move for a long time. She never told anyone about it. There was no one to tell, and Lady Ashdown never once, in two years, spoke her son's name in Grace's hearing.Grace bore it. She had buried her husband and her father, lost her home, and nearly died. She had no fight left in her. Over and over, she told herself that this was what she deserved for marrying above her station, that Frederick's family had every right to despise her, that she should be grateful for a roof.What she did not know, in all that time, was that in the autumn of 1819, a letter had come to Ashdown Park.