Send the Simple Girl Inside," the Duke Ordered — She Was Already on His Horse
Chapter 14
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She wrote. It took her a moment. She set the pen down and stepped back, and the footman turned the book out of habit so the Duchess could see.Augusta looked at the page. Nobody at that table saw Augusta Vane's face do what it did then, before or after: nothing dramatic, only a very slight tightening at the corner of the mouth, the expression of a woman who set a trap in a doorway and heard it close on her own foot. Because the hand on the page was upright and even and beautifully spaced, the loops closed, the line running true, better than her own, better than anyone's in the room:Beatrice Anne HarrowAnd underneath, in the same faultless hand, in the column headed Of what place?:Ravensmere. Born here, same as the horse.Lord Mowbray laughed out loud—a bark of pure delight entirely on her side—and turned it into a cough against his napkin.Augusta closed the book. "You write very prettily," she said. "Who taught you to write, Miss Harrow?""Your elder son's steward, Your Grace. He wanted the yard's ledgers kept in a clear hand, and my uncle's hand was not clear. I kept them from the age of ten." She paused. "I keep them still.""Ledgers." Augusta let the word sit. "So you have numbers as well as letters.""I have both.""How remarkable. And yet the whole village calls you simple." Augusta lifted her glass pleasantly and said it to the table rather than to the girl, which is how such things are always said. "One does wonder which of you is the liar."The room went quiet in the particular way a room goes quiet when it knows it just watched something go too far and intends to do absolutely nothing about it.