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Send the Simple Girl Inside," the Duke Ordered — She Was Already on His Horse

Send the Simple Girl Inside," the Duke Ordered — She Was Already on His Horse

Chapter 13

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The candles were lit down the whole table; the silver went on forever. There were hothouse grapes in a pyramid on a stand in November, because the Dowager Duchess of Ravensmere kept a glasshouse and a man to run it, and the room was so warm that Beatrice's breath caught once visibly at the door.Edmund stood up so fast his chair went back against a footman's shins. "Mother—""Sit down, Edmund." Augusta did not raise her voice; she never needed to. "Miss Harrow, how very good of you to come at such short notice."Beatrice stood inside the door with her hands at her sides."Do come in. We are all of us curious about you." Augusta smiled around the table, gathering them, making them complicit. "My son tells me nothing. Lord Mowbray tells me everything. Between them, I have a version of you that cannot possibly be true, and I did so want the original."Somebody laughed. It was not a cruel laugh; that was the worst of it. None of them were cruel: they were only comfortable, and being comfortable in a warm room is its own kind of knife.Now, Augusta lifted her hand, and a footman set a leather book on the table beside her and opened it at a fresh page and laid a pen across it."We keep a book of everyone who comes to this house. It goes back to my husband's grandfather. Everyone signs it. Everyone. And I should be so sorry to leave you out."The room understood before Beatrice crossed the carpet. Edmund saw Lady Clarissa's face change; he saw her look at her own mother quickly and find no help there.He said, "That is enough.""It is a visitors' book, Edmund," said Augusta. "It is not the rack."Beatrice came to the table. She took up the pen. She turned it once in her fingers to feel the nib, the way a person does who uses a pen every day of her life, and the small competence of that gesture went through the room like a draft under a door.
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Send the Simple Girl Inside," the Duke Ordered — She Was Already on His Horse

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