XI.
In the morning she was angry, and so was he, and it was a relief to them both.
"He arranged me," she said. She was standing at the study window in a fresh black gown with her arms folded, and the grey light was on her face, and he could see it quite clearly. "Like a—like a chair. He put me where you would need something to sit on. He let me ask him for widowhood and say yes, and all the while he'd written that letter and that codicil and was only waiting to see whether he'd live."
"He arranged me too," said Ivo. "He had a letter about my eyes from a man I trusted and he never said a word. He let me ride three hundred miles to call him a dotard to his face."
"You did call him a dotard."
"I did. And he laughed, and then he went and died, so that I can't take it back." He was silent. "Do you want to undo it? You can't, in law, but there are ways to live. I said the dower house, in the vestry. I meant it."
She did not answer at once. Outside, on the gravel, a groom was walking the carriage horses up and down.
"No," she said at last. "I don't want to undo it. I want to be angry with him for a while, that's all. I think I'm allowed that." She turned from the window. "And I want to go to Fleetwick this morning and see Sir Digby."
He raised his eyebrows.
"Jethro swore his statement before Mr. Furnival last night. Mr. Furnival is a magistrate, and he wrote it down, every word about Tench and the cottage and what was read and what wasn't, and Jethro made his mark, and Bet's sister read it back to him first, aloud, in front of witnesses." She took a folded paper from the desk. "Sir Digby will have his suit. I can't stop that and I don't mean to try; let the court say whether the Duke knew his own mind. But he will not send Tench onto the fen again to frighten one more family into putting their mark to his lies. I want to tell him so myself."