That is not for you to decide. Aunt Vivienne. They looked at each other across the small table. Petra's eyes were pale and calm. She had a way of settling arguments before they began.
She did it now. "You will not throw yourself at him," Petra said. You will not run from him either. You will be what you were on the road. That is all.
That is easy to say. "Yes," Petra said. It is very easy to say. It is a great deal harder to do. Drink your tea.
Vivienne drank her tea.
Two mornings later, the carriage came down the lane. Vivienne heard it before she saw it. Nothing on that lane sounded like that carriage. She was in the garden cutting the last of the marigolds for the kitchen, and her hands were full of small orange suns, and she looked up over the low wall and saw the black horses and the polished door with the crest that was too small to read at a distance, but that she did not need to read. She did not run inside.
That was the thing she was most proud of. Later she stayed where she was in the garden with the marigolds in her hands and she watched the carriage stop at the gate and she watched Pel, she remembered his name, climbed down and opened the door. The Duke came down more slowly than a well man would have. He used a stick. His temple had a fresh bandage under the brim of his hat, and his shoulder held itself a little stiffly, and he came up the short path with the careful walk of a man who knows exactly which of his bones is complaining today.
Miss Ashcom, he said, and lifted his hat. Your grace, I am told I owe you an apology for the state of my clothes when we met. I do not recall the state of your clothes. That is a mercy. He looked at the marigolds in her hands.
She looked at them too as if she had forgotten they were there. She had for a moment. May I come in? He said, "My aunt is inside. I would be very glad to meet your aunt." Petra met him at the door with the calm that she brought to all things.
She curtsied. He bowed. She showed him into the parlor, which was small and clean, and smelled of the lavender that hung in bunches from a beam. She poured him tea in the cup that had a chip on the rim, because that was the only cup she trusted with a guest, and the Duke of Ravenholm accepted the cup as though it were made of gold. He sat with them for an hour.
He did not speak of the fall. He asked Petra about the garden. He asked Vivienne about the marigolds. He asked at one point whether the miller's flour had improved since the new stones, which was a question that suggested he had spoken with someone about the village recently and had listened. Petra noticed this.
Vivienne noticed that Petra had noticed. Before he left, he set his cup down and looked at Vivienne over the rim of it in that quiet way he had.
"Miss Ashcom, I would like to explain one day soon why I was on that scaffold. It is not a story I owe the world. It is one I would like you to know."
"Your Grace does not owe me a story."
"I am aware. Then I would still like to tell it." She could feel Petra not looking at her. It was a specific kind of not looking, the kind that fills a room.
"Very well," Vivienne said.
He rose. He bowed again. He walked back down the path more slowly than he had walked up it. The carriage took him away. The marigolds lay on the parlor table where Vivienne had set them down without remembering doing so.
"Well," Petra said. "Do not." "I said nothing." "You said, well."
"I did," Petra agreed. "That is not the same as saying anything." He did not come the next day. He did not come the day after.
Vivienne told herself she was glad. She was not glad. She caught herself listening for the sound of the carriage on the lane. And each time she caught herself, she was cross with herself. and each time she was cross with herself, the crossness lasted a little less long.
On the fourth day she was at the vicarage, whether she wished to be or not, because the vicar's wife had a way of arranging that could not be resisted without rudeness. There was a small gathering, cakes on a plate, weak wine and glasses that were too warm from the sunlit window. six or seven ladies and the vicar's brother who had come down from London for a fortnight and who kept looking at Vivienne in a way she disliked without being able to name why. The door opened. A servant announced a name. The name was Lady Mariset Vaughn.
Vivienne had heard of Lady Mariset. Everyone had. She was the widow of a man who had left her a great house on the far side of the county and a great deal of money and no children. And she had been much talked about in the years since her mourning ended because she was said to be very beautiful and very rich and very close, some said, to the Duke of Ravenholm. The last part was the part everyone whispered about most.
Lady Mariset came in as though the room had been arranged for her arrival. She wore a dress the color of the inside of a shell and a hat with a feather that curved just so. And she smiled at the vicar's wife and kissed the air near her cheek and turned at last and let her eyes come to rest on Vivienne. Everyone else in the room went quiet in the small way rooms do when they know something is about to be said. "Ah," Lady Mariset said.
"So this is the girl." Vivienne stood. She curtsied. "Ma'am."
"You caught the Duke, they tell me. Off a scaffold, my dear. Off a scaffold. Like a game of catch at a country fair."
My my Lady Mariset's voice was as light as thistle down and as sharp as a pin. I have known his grace since we were both quite small, and I would not have thought in all my imaginings that his life would one day depend upon a girl in a moss-colored shawl. Someone in the room laughed. It was a small laugh. It stopped quickly, but it had happened.
"I was fortunate to be there," Vivienne said. Oh, fortunate is one word for it, dear. Fortunate is one word. Do sit. Do sit.