The answer came in a fortnight—civil, firm, and in a hand that was strange to her: a large, sloping hand with the loops filled in.
She wrote in the March, in the June, and in the September. Five answers came back, all in that hand: the person concerned was in a position of some delicacy; the person concerned wished the matter closed. Four of her letters were never answered at all. None of them was signed with anything but initials.
The last one said something that stayed with her, and she kept it in the same packet as the music: The person concerned is not a person Your Grace would find it useful to know.
The forty guineas went out from Amberley in two payments: December and the following February. They went to Mr. Loveday. Mr. Loveday paid them over at Cleeve Manor and took a receipt, because he was a tradesman and he took a receipt for everything. That receipt is why any of this could be proved afterwards. He did not keep it for that reason; he kept it because he kept everything.
A year went by. It would all have stayed where it was, except that the Duke of Amberley came home.
He was thirty-six, and eleven years in the title. Most of that had gone in London on committees, because Amberley ran itself and his mother liked it better that way. A man can own half a county and hardly ever be in it. By the January of 1816, he was in Shropshire to stay.
He was the sort of man who tidies. Amberley had asked nobody to dinner in three years, and now there were cards going out. At Cleeve Manor, the card came on a Thursday.
Lady Wexford went through it twice over her coffee, then read the second half out loud: "'The Duke of Amberley and the Dowager Duchess. The 11th.' Two names, Lydia. We are asked as a household."
Lydia Callow was twenty-one and had been worked at for four years the way a farm is worked: Italian and the harp until her wrists gave out, and back to the Italian. "Is he handsome?"
"He is unmarried. He is thirty-six and his mother is seventy-one. Attend to what matters."
Cordelia sat at the far end and was not spoken to about it. She assumed she would be left at home as usual. She was not left at home. On the 9th, she was told to come. Why? Because a house that leaves one of its women behind looks like a house with something to hide.
"You will wear the gray."
"Very well."
"You will be civil, and you will be quiet. If you are asked to play, you will be asked out of politeness, and you will answer accordingly."