"And his marrying you," said Ivo. "Was that also for the fen?"
She looked at him then, full in the face.
"Yes."
He waited. She went on, evenly, as if reciting figures.
"He asked me in July. He said that he would be dead within the year, and that if he left the fen trust to a bookseller's daughter and a millwright's orphan, Sir Digby would have it out of my hands in a twelvemonth and the cottagers would not lift their caps to me while he did it. But they would lift them to a duchess. And a duchess who was a widow would answer to nobody. He said—" her voice did not change, but her hands tightened on each other—"he said he had a great deal of money and one good deed left in him, and he would like to spend them both on something that would outlast him."
"And you accepted."
"I accepted. I will tell you why, since you came here last night to call me an adventuress and I would rather you had the true charge to bring. I accepted because I wished to be his widow. Not his wife. His widow. Do you know what a widow is, in the eyes of the law, Your Grace? She is the only woman in England who belongs to herself. A girl belongs to her father and a wife to her husband. But a widow may sign her own name to a lease. She may sue and be sued. She may say no. I have been a daughter and an orphan and a paid servant, and I wanted, before I died, to be a person." She stopped. "He understood that. He thought it a great joke. He said I should make a better duke than any Ferrand since the first."
The clock ground overhead. Ivo found he had nothing at all to say.
"So you see," she said, "I am not what you called me. I am something you have probably not got a name for. And now he is dead, and if I want the fen to be safe I must be married after all, to a man who despises me, and be a wife instead of a widow, and he knew that, and he wrote it anyway." For the first time her voice shook. She steadied it. "I do not know why. I have been trying to understand it since three o'clock this morning, and I do not know why he did it. He never said a word to me about you, except that you were stubborn and would come. But it is what he wanted, and the fen is what he wanted, and I am here."
"In black," said Ivo.
She lifted her chin. "It is the gown I wore for my father. I have no other. And I would not come to this church in white, and smile for those people in the pews, with him lying up at the house not cold. If you marry me you will marry me in mourning for him. I will not pretend for anyone."