He was in his own library with a stack of the Marchford Courant looking for a notice of the turnpike accounts, and he came instead upon the fourth letter of a series signed Candor, which had been appearing every few weeks for two years, and which he had read every one of, generally with his teeth together, because Candor had opinions about the Arlingham drainage, the Arlingham timber sales, the price of coals at the Arlingham Wharf, and the disgraceful state of the Arlingham almshouse roof. And Candor was invariably, infuriatingly correct.
The fourth letter contained the phrase "a spavined argument walked out in public and called a horse." He had heard that phrase on Monday at his own table applied to something his cousin had said about game laws.
The Duke sat back in his chair and laughed out loud in an empty room for the second time in three days.
He rode down to the bookshop on the Thursday in rain and found her behind the counter with a cloth apron over the gray gown mending the spine of a Bible.
"Your Grace," she got up so fast she knocked a pile of almanacs over. "My uncle is at Marchford, if it is about the bridge."
"It is about a spavined argument," said the Duke of Arlington. "Walked out in public and called a horse."
Philippa Standen went scarlet from the collar upwards. "I do not know what you mean."
"Miss Standen, you have written to the Courant 14 times in two years about my estate, and I have had my agent try three times to discover who you are, on the understanding that when I found out, I should be extremely disagreeable about it."
He set his hat on the counter. "I have found out. I am not going to be disagreeable. I have come to ask you a question, and you may throw me out of your uncle's shop if you dislike it."
She stood with the Bible in her hands like a shield. "Ask it."
"The almshouse roof," said the Duke. "You wrote in April that it had been patched four times in six years, and that the patching had cost more than a new roof, and that the reason nobody would build a new one was that the almshouse trust and my estate each believed the other liable, and had believed it since 1811, and that meanwhile there was a bucket on the stairs."
He met her eyes. "That was true. I read it in April, and I was angry for a week, and then I looked, and there was a bucket on the stairs. I have had the deeds out. You were right about the liability. It is mine, and always was. Then, the roof was begun on Monday, slate from my own quarry."
He picked up his hat again. "My question is this. There are 11 other things in those 14 letters. I should like to know which of them you would do first, and in what order and why, and I should like to be told it plainly, in the way you told the vestry, and I should like it to take about two hours."
He paused. "I am aware that I am asking a bookseller's niece to do the work of a very expensive agent for nothing. If you prefer, I shall have you paid, and you may name the sum."
Philippa Standen set the Bible down slowly on the counter.
"Two hours," she said. "And a pot of tea, and you may not once say, 'My dear Miss Standen,' in that voice. And you are to bring the drainage map, because I have never been allowed to see it, and I have wanted to for four years."
It took five hours. It was, without any question at all, the best afternoon the Duke of Arlington had ever spent.
On the Friday, the county learned three things: that the almshouse was being re-roofed at the Duke's charge; that the bridge scheme had been sent back to the surveyor; and that Arlington's own traveling carriage had stood outside a bookshop for five hours in the rain.
By noon, his aunt Lady Renford had arrived from Marchford in a state of visible enjoyment.
"Julian, tell me it is not true that you have been closeted with the Standen girl."
"Over a drainage map in a shop with the door open and the shutters up and a boy sweeping the step throughout," said the Duke. "You may say so wherever you please. In fact, I should be obliged if you would, since you will say something in any case, and it may as well be accurate."
"She contradicted you at your own table."
"She did."
"In front of two magistrates."
"And a canon who is deaf, and who has since had it repeated to him twice, and thinks it capital."
The Duke rang for the map cases. "Aunt, I have been contradicted four times this week after seven years of not being contradicted at all. And I find that on every one of the four occasions I was in the wrong. It is a novel sensation. I am told that men pay a great deal of money for novelty."
That should have been the end of a very good week. It was not. Because on the Saturday the Duke of Arlington did something high-handed. He did it out of pure goodwill, which he afterwards decided was the worst possible excuse.
He had learned on Thursday, in passing, in 11 words that she had plainly regretted the moment they were out, that the bookshop was held on a yearly tenancy from a man named Pargeter, who had lately raised the rent by a third, and that her uncle had been up two nights over the books.
So, on Saturday morning the Duke of Arlington bought the freehold of the shop, the house behind it, and the yard from Mr. Pargeter for rather more than they were worth, and granted her uncle a lease of 21 years at the old rent, and had the papers sent round by a clerk at 2:00 in the afternoon with a civil note.
At 4:00, Miss Philippa Standen walked up the whole 2 miles of his avenue in the wind, was announced, came into the library white about the mouth, and put the papers down on his desk.
"Take it back."
"Miss Standen—"
"Take it back, or I shall be obliged to leave this parish, and I do not want to leave this parish. My mother is buried here."