He did not say why. He did not say he had seen a maid on her knees in the frost feeding a dying dog with her own bread and asking nothing of anyone for it.
He thought of it for three weeks before his birthday came and went unmarked by anyone but a stub of candle and a boy with a wooden button. By the time Iris lit that candle, he had already decided, without quite admitting it to himself, that she was the only honest creature left in his house.
He did not know then that his decision would be tested a good deal sooner than he expected, and by someone considerably crueler than a head groom with an order to fill.
Lady Honoria Vail returned to Kestwick Hall four days after the birthday no one attended, trailing an apology so thin it did not survive the front hall.
She was the Duke's aunt by his father's blood, widow of an earl, and she moved through his house with the settled certainty of a woman who believed she had been managing it, in all the ways that mattered, since the accident had made her nephew, in her private estimation, no longer capable of managing anything himself.
She had brought with her, as she often did, her nephew by marriage, Roderick, a mild young man with soft hands and a habit of agreeing with whoever had spoken last.
Her plan for him was not subtle to anyone who troubled to look. He was to be made steward, then heir presumptive in fact if not in name, then, God and the courts of Chancery willing, master of an estate that a broken man could no longer be trusted to hold.
She found her nephew, four days after his unattended birthday, unusually settled. She found this suspicious before she found it pleasant.
"You look well," she said, in the tone of an accusation.
"I am well," the Duke said.
"You did not seem so at Michaelmas."
"I was not asked how I seemed at Michaelmas."
"I am telling you now."
Honoria's gaze traveled the room and found, with the particular efficiency of a woman looking for evidence, the low stool by the hearth out of place, a wooden button someone had left on the corner of the desk, and a maid crossing the far end of the gallery with a boy of two on her hip whom she recognized because Honoria made it her business to recognize the children of servants in case they became useful knowledge later.
She said nothing that day. She was patient in the particular way of people who enjoy the waiting more than the striking.
She struck three weeks later in the long gallery before an audience of two visiting families Honoria had specifically invited to witness whatever she intended to produce.
Iris had been sent up with a message for Mrs. Hatch and had, by the ordinary bad luck of household timing, arrived at the same moment the Duke's chair was wheeled through by his valet, with Toby, who had slipped his mother's hand entirely, trotting alongside it and holding onto one wheel as though it were the most natural companion in the world.
"How touching," Honoria said to the room at large in a voice pitched exactly to carry. "The maid's fatherless boy has taken quite a fancy to His Grace."
Iris went very still.
"I beg your pardon, my lady."
"I imagine you do." Honoria's smile did not move her eyes. "What is a broken duke to a woman in your position if not a very comfortable sort of luck? A man who cannot chase you off his lap and cannot, one imagines, chase very much else either. You have found yourself a most convenient sort of gentleman."
Someone in the visiting party laughed, a small, ugly sound quickly swallowed.
Iris did not cry. She had learned not to cry where it showed a long time ago, over a grave considerably harder to bear than this one.
She felt her hands go very still at her sides, the stillness she used instead of tears, and she looked at Lady Honoria and said in a voice that did not rise and did not shake, "My son does not know His Grace is a duke, my lady. He only knows he is kind to him. I had not thought it a fault in a child to love what is kind."
"Insolence," Honoria said, delighted to have provoked it in a maid.
"I am not insolent, my lady. I am plain. There is a difference, though I understand it is not always a fashionable one."
It was the Duke who moved first, or as near to moving first as a man in a wheeled chair could manage. He did not raise his voice. He rarely did, and it was, Iris would learn, precisely why it carried when he chose it to.
"That will do, Aunt."
"I only meant to spare you the embarrassment of not seeing what is plainly in front of you."
"I see a good deal more than you credit me with," he said. "I see, for one thing, that you invited an audience to watch a maid humiliated over a wooden button and a boy's affection. I confess I had not thought even you would trouble to plan it in advance."
The color went out of Honoria's face and came back twice as high.
"You will regret offending me."