"Send the Plain One, He'll Reject Her," They Laughed — But the Duke Could Not Take His Eyes Off Her
Chapter 2
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She read him his sermons, his newspapers, his letters from the bishop. She walked beside him to church, counting the steps aloud. And every evening on the bench outside the vicarage door, he would say, "Tell me what it looks like tonight, Hettie," and she would tell him.But he would never let her say, "The sky is pink.""Pink is only a word," he would tell her. "Give me the thing itself."So she learned to look properly. And on a summer evening, she might say something like this: "The sky is the color of the inside of a seashell, Grandpapa. The swallows are cutting it into pieces. And Mrs. Price has left her washing out, and her husband's nightshirt is waving at the church like it wants to confess something."And the old man would laugh until he had to wipe his eyes."You have a gift, child," he told her once. "Most people look at the world and see nothing. You look at it and see everything worth loving. Don't ever let anyone make you stop."He died when she was 22. And Hester—with no money, no prospects, and a face that no one had ever once called pretty—was sent to live with her mother's sister at Marchbank House.It did not take long to learn her place. She was not quite a servant, so the servants did not like her. She was not quite family, so the family did not see her. She was expected to fetch, to carry, to mend, to read aloud to her aunt when her aunt had a headache, and to disappear when there was company.At the assemblies, she sat with the chaperones. At dinners, she was placed beside the deaf old gentlemen. And once, when a young curate had asked her to dance, her aunt had called her away to fetch a shawl and told her afterwards, "Don't make a fool of yourself, Hester. He was only being kind."So she stopped hoping, quietly—the way you let a fire go out when there is no one left to keep warm.She was not unhappy, exactly. She had her books. She had the garden. She had the habit, which she could never break, of looking at the world properly and describing it to herself in her head, as though her grandfather were still listening.The night before they left for Halsingham, her aunt came into her little room under the eaves."You'll wear the brown," said Lady Marchbank. "And you'll stand beside Arabella whenever the Duke is in the room. You will not speak unless you are spoken to. You are there to make up the numbers. Nothing more. Is that understood?""Yes, Aunt."When her aunt had gone, the door opened again. It was Sir Giles in his dressing gown, looking guilty as he generally did. He pressed a small book into her hands—a pocket volume of poems that had belonged to her grandfather, which Hester had thought was sold long ago.