Lord Edward Crane, the Duke of Ashworth.
He was known in three counties as the most feared landlord in the north, a man whose silences were said to be more punishing than other men's speeches. He was also, if the rumors were correct, the target of a scheme. The bride's elder sister, a Miss Portia Pemberton, had been engineering circumstances all season to have herself placed at his right hand at every conceivable social occasion. The rumor was that she intended to manufacture a compromise situation before the day was out. I had heard this from my housekeeper, who heard it from the Pembertons' cook, which is to say I heard it as gospel.
Ashworth had clearly heard it, too. He stood at the end of our row, surveying the pews with the expression of a man calculating an escape route, and found there was none. Miss Portia Pemberton was already making her way along the opposite aisle with the focused intention of a woman who has rehearsed this moment.
He sat down beside Cecily Hawthorne.
It was so unexpected that I, on her other side, nearly dropped my order of service. He leaned toward her, and I heard him say in a voice pitched to carry no further than her ear, "I find myself in need of a small kindness, Mrs. Hawthorne. If you would permit me to sit with you and your companion, and if you could bear to behave for the length of this service as though we are old acquaintances, I would be deeply in your debt."
I watched her face. She turned to look at him with those steady gray eyes of hers, and I saw her take the measure of him in a single unhurried glance: the discomfort he was hiding, the pride that made it cost him something to ask, and the genuine decency beneath both.
"You know my name," she said.