"Easier than what?"
"Than not knowing," she said. "Than being quite certain you are exactly as you want to be, and then finding without warning that you are considerably less certain." She turned back to the garden, her hands folded in her lap. "My father was a contented man. He always knew what he had. I sometimes think that knowing what you have, really knowing, is harder than it looks."
Rafferty looked at her hands in her lap. Her left hand had a faint ink stain at the side of the first finger, which he had noticed before. It was the mark of someone who writes frequently and does not always notice the pen. He said nothing. He was not certain what he could say that would not be inadequate. Outside, the rain softened slightly, not stopping, just considering it.
It was Aunt Cress who mentioned it in early September over breakfast. "I hear Somerfield is for London soon," she said, in the way she mentioned most things—conversationally, without apparent intention, which was the manner she had developed over sixty years of watching what people did with information.
"Is he?" Adelaide said.
"The Marchioness of Ashby's family," Aunt Cress said, turning a page of her letter. "The Ashby connection. A Miss Dunmore, I believe. Apparently, there has been some correspondence."
"That seems sensible," Adelaide said. She ate her toast. She drank her tea. She looked out the window at the garden, which was beginning to turn toward autumn—the flowers going over, the first yellow in the lime trees. Outside, the morning was clear and cool.
"She is said to be very accomplished," Aunt Cress said.
"Good," said Adelaide.
The conversation moved on. They talked about a letter from Clara, who had news of a neighbor's engagement, and about the linen cupboard, which needed reorganizing, and about whether the walk to the upper wood was worth attempting before the leaves turned or better left until after. Adelaide said nothing further about Miss Dunmore, or the Marchioness of Ashby's family, or London.
She spent the morning at her letters. She went for her walk after luncheon, which she always did, but she took the lane that ran east toward the village rather than the path that skirted the lower edge of the Somerfield grounds, which was the shorter route and the one she usually preferred. She did not think about this. She simply walked east through the village, past the church, and back around by the long way. When she returned, Aunt Cress was in the sitting room with her needlework and said nothing. This was, in Adelaide's experience, an unusual discipline for Aunt Cress, who generally said something.
*She is said to be very accomplished,* Aunt Cress had said at breakfast. Adelaide had said *good*. She had meant it. Of course it was good. Of course it was sensible. Of course a duke needed to marry well, and the Ashby connection was exactly the kind of thing his mother's correspondence had been designed to arrange. She understood all of this with perfect rationality.