An hour after the child came, while the Duke was down in the market town sending letters, Lady Livia came up the hill on foot. No carriage in the world could get up that track. Her maid toiled behind her, holding a parasol over her head.
She had not changed. That was the first thing Isabel thought, watching her come through the gate. She was as lovely as ever, in dove-gray silk and a straw bonnet with a long, pale ribbon, and she picked her way between the thistles as though they had been put there to insult her. The pearls were wound twice about her throat; they shone in the sun.
She stopped a good way off from the hives, and looked about her at the skeps, the cottage, and the old woman on the bench. Then she looked at Isabel in her apron with her sleeves pushed up, and smiled her sweetest smile.
"My dear Isabel," she said. "So this is where you went. I did wonder. How very rustic. I always said you had rustic talents, didn't I? And now here you are, living among them."
"Lady Livia," said Isabel. She kept her back straight and her knees unbent. She noticed that, and so did Lady Livia.
"I shan't keep you from your insects. I only came to say a few words as an old friend." Lady Livia glanced at Kezia on the bench and lowered her voice, the way people do when they share a secret. "I hear His Grace has been making himself ridiculous all over England, looking into churchyards. Everybody in town is laughing about it. And now he has found you. And I suppose he means to do something foolish, and I suppose you mean to let him. So I thought I had better come and remind you of a few things. For his sake, you understand? Not mine."
"What things?"
"That you left my house in the night without a word. That my pearls went missing the same night. That my maid saw you come out of my room." She said it all so gently. "It's only a story, Isabel. But it's the kind of story London likes very much: the Duke who married a thief; the Duchess nobody will receive. His name would be a joke in every club in St. James's. You wouldn't want that for him, I think. You were always such a considerate girl."
Isabel stood very still. She was aware of Kezia on the bench behind her, not moving either. She was aware of the bees going over her head down to the limes in the valley and back.
She was aware, most of all, of the pearls.