"Let the Widow Eat in the Kitchen," Her In-Laws Said — The Duke Carried His Plate Down to Join Her
Chapter 9
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It was from a man who had come home from India that summer to find that his elder brother had died of a fall from his horse, and that he was now, quite unexpectedly, the Duke of Aldridge. He was writing, he said, to inquire after the widow of his late friend, Captain Frederick Ashdown. He had a letter for her, entrusted to him by her husband on his deathbed, which he had sworn to place in her own hands. It would oblige him greatly if Lady Ashdown could tell him where she might be found.Lady Ashdown read the letter in her morning room. Then she sat down at her writing desk and wrote a reply:"Your Grace,The person you refer to did not come to us on her return from India, and we have had no communication with her. We understand that she has gone to America. We have no wish to hear of her again."She sealed it and sent it, and then she put the duke's letter in the fire.Upstairs, at that very moment, Grace was mending sheets in the linen room, 30 feet away.Lady Ashdown had not invited the Duke of Aldridge to dinner because of Grace. She had invited him because of Lavinia.His estate, Aldridge Court, lay 12 miles away on the other side of Winchester. He had lived there alone for a year and a half since he came home from India. He was 33 and unmarried, with £40,000 a year, and every mother in Hampshire with a daughter of marriageable age had been writing him invitations since the day he arrived. Almost all of them had been refused.He had accepted Lady Ashdown's. She thought it was Lavinia's beauty that had done it. She had told her daughter so that very morning while the maid was dressing her hair.It was not. The Duke of Aldridge had come to Ashdown Park for one reason only: He had spent two years searching for Grace Ashdown in England and in America and found nothing. Lady Ashdown was the last thread he had. He thought if he sat at her table and was charming to her daughter, she might let a word slip.He had not expected to find her in the kitchen.So there they were: The Duke of Aldridge at the end of the long scrubbed table in his black and gold with his plate of roast lamb in front of him. The young widow in black across from him with her face white and her hands gripping the edge of the table. The cook and the two maids frozen by the range. And in the doorway, crowded together like people at the scene of an accident: Lady Ashdown in her tiara, Sir Reginald with his napkin still tucked in his waistcoat, and Lavinia in her white silk and pearls with her mouth open."Major Fane," Grace whispered, "you're alive.""So are you." His voice was not quite steady. "They told me in Madras you'd died. Then they told me you'd sailed. Then I lost you." He looked at her across the table. "I left you a note, Grace, when we marched north. Didn't you get it?"She shook her head.