"Send the Plain One, He'll Reject Her," They Laughed — But the Duke Could Not Take His Eyes Off Her
Chapter 12
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"Everyone in this county," he went on, "says I can't take my eyes off you. They're quite right. Shall I tell you why?" His voice dropped. "I have perhaps a year left of seeing faces. One year. And I have spent every single day of these three weeks looking at yours—in the library, at dinner, in the candlelight. I'm learning it by heart. The way you taught me the psalm: not the words, the pictures underneath. So that when the dark comes, your face will be the last thing I lose, and the one thing I keep."The tears were running down Hester's cheeks now, and she did not even try to stop them."I'm not asking you to be my eyes," said the Duke of Halsingham. "I'm asking you to be my wife. Because the dark isn't empty—a very wise old vicar said so. But I'd rather not find out what's in it without you."He held out his hand—not quite towards her, just a little to the side.Hester took it, and she placed it gently against her own wet cheek, so that he would know exactly where she was."Whither thou goest," she said.And Bramble, who had been sitting patiently on the path all this while, barked once, as if to say it was about time.Lady Delphine Marchbank left Halsingham Park at 7:00 the next morning, exactly as she had promised. She told everyone in Shrewsbury that she had saved her darling girl from a dreadful fate, and that her scheming niece had trapped a blind man. But half of Shropshire had been sitting in St. Michael's that Sunday; they had heard her whisper. And from then on, wherever Lady Marchbank went, she was known as the woman who walked out on a blind man in the middle of Harvest Sunday. The invitations grew fewer, and then they stopped.Arabella did marry in the end: a very rich, very dull gentleman who found his mother-in-law so tiresome that he would not have her in the house.Hester and Nathaniel were married at Christmas in St. Michael's, with holly on the pews and snow on the churchyard yews. Sir Giles gave the bride away and wept openly through the whole service. He stayed at Halsingham for a fortnight afterwards and said it was the happiest he had been in 20 years; he never did go back to living quite the way he had before.The Duke's sight went, as the physicians had said, the following autumn. But he laughed every day—mostly at his wife.And every evening for the rest of their long lives together, the Duke and Duchess of Halsingham sat on the bench at the end of the stone terrace: Bramble at their feet, and later Bramble's grandchildren, and later still their own.And every evening he would take her hand and say, "Tell me what it looks like tonight, Hettie."And she would tell him.They had sent the plain one, certain he would reject her. Instead, he looked at her until the last light left his eyes. And long after it was gone, he used to say he could still see her perfectly.