He was in the library, at the window, in his shirt-sleeves, with a book open on the sill that he was not reading. He turned when she came in, and she saw that he had not slept again; the shadows under his eyes were violet. She put the tray down on the small table at his elbow, in the usual place, and began, in the usual voice, to say what was on it.
"The Colonel's letter is from Fenwick, my lord, he asks if you will stand godfather to his youngest. I have drafted a reply. The wine merchant wants a decision about the Madeira. There is a pamphlet on drainage, which I have burned, and a card from Lady Aldeburgh—"
She stopped.
He had picked up the little square letter.
He had picked it up without looking at it, as he did every morning, turning it over in his scarred hand; and then he had glanced down, and he had gone completely still. Not the stillness he showed when a door slammed. A different one. It went through him from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, as though a hand had reached into his chest and stopped something there.
The book slid off the sill and landed on the carpet with a small, soft thud.
"My lord?"
He did not answer. He was staring at the direction. His face had lost every trace of colour, and his lips had parted slightly, and she saw the pulse jump in the hollow of his throat.
"My lord, are you ill?"
"This," said Adrian Ravensdale, in a voice she had never heard before, a very small, very quiet, very flat voice, as though it came from the bottom of a well, "is impossible."
He whispered it. He said it to the letter, not to her. He said it again, lower, so that she barely caught the words. "This is impossible."
"Whose hand is it?" Clara said gently.
He lifted his eyes to her face. They were stricken. They were the eyes of a boy of ten who has been told something that cannot be so.
"It is my mother's."
The clocks ticked in the house. Somewhere below a door closed. The rain fell on the limes.
"My lord," said Clara carefully, "I thought—"