He found, going down to the stables, that he was not counting pounds at all. He was counting the hours until evening.
* * *
The next morning, Mrs. Puit cornered her in the linen room with a stack of pillow slips and no intention of using them.
"That fire," she said. "The chair. You think it was me?"
"Was it not?"
"I have not lit a tablet room fire in my life. I am 60. I have a knee."
Hester put down the sheet.
"His grace laid it himself. Every morning at 5, before anyone stirs. He has done it since the first day you were sent in. I found him at it and told him to stop, and he told me to mind my ledgers."
"But he said that room's door has not been locked in 3 weeks."
"It was never locked. Sutherby has the only key, and he lost it in the second week and blamed the maids."
Mrs. Puit squared the pillow slips with a smack.
"And those four girls? His grace sent every one of them away with a character, a year's wages, and a place at a good house. Not one was dismissed. It was said in front of the scholars, the way it was said to you."
The pillow slips went blurred, and clean again.
She saw the tablet room as it had been on her first day. The Duke by the fire, the cold voice, his head turned away.
He had not turned it away out of contempt. He had turned it so that Dr. Sutherby, who watched a man's eyes for weakness, would have nothing to see.
The cruelty had never been meant for her. It had been a coat thrown over her shoulders in front of a hostile room.
She had misread him. She had read a stone in three weeks and misread a man in three.
* * *
That night, she was at the table when the door opened.
Judge came in first. The Duke followed, and shut it, and stood with his back to the wood as if he expected it to be pushed.
"Mrs. Puit has been talking," said Hester.
"Mrs. Puit talks with her whole face."
"You laid the fire."
"I did."
"You could have said so."
"I could have," said the Duke.
He crossed the room and stopped a yard from her chair.
"I have something to say, and I would like you to hear the whole of it before you answer."