"My mother died in Florence in the spring of 1797." The words came out in a flat rush, quite without expression, as a man reads out a sentence he has said to himself ten thousand times. "She had a weakness of the lungs. My father took her south for the warmth. I was left here with my grandmother. I was ten. She went away on a Tuesday, in the rain, in the travelling carriage, and she kissed me, and she said she would write." His voice cracked on the word. "She left a note on my pillow. I have it still. It said, Be brave, my darling. Mama will write. And she did not. I waited a year. And then my father came into the schoolroom one afternoon, and told me that she had died in her sleep, and that she had not suffered, and that we would not speak of it again."
He stopped.
"We did not," he said.
"My lord—"
"I have her note in that box. I have looked at it every night for nineteen years. I would know that hand in the dark." He held the letter out in front of him at arm's length, as though it might go off. "That is her hand, Miss Whitlow. That is the D. That is the little curl. She made it on the note. She made it on everything." His voice dropped to a whisper again, shaking. "It is impossible. It is impossible. She has been dead for nineteen years."
Clara had never in her life wanted so badly to take another person's hand.
She did not. She stood where she was, and she said, as steadily as she could, because it seemed the only thing to say:
"Then I think, my lord, that you had better read it."
He looked at the letter for a very long time.
Then, to her horror, he turned and walked to the fireplace.
There was a small fire laid there, against the damp, burning low and red. He stood in front of it with the letter in his left hand. And she understood, with a lurch like missing a stair, exactly what he meant to do.
"No," she said.
He did not seem to hear.
"No, my lord, please." She was across the room before she knew she had moved. "You cannot. You must not burn it. It may be a cruel joke, it may be a forgery, I do not know, but it is the only thing that has ever come to you from her since she left. If it is a lie then you will know it is a lie, and that is better than never knowing. But if it is not—"
"It cannot be anything else."
"Why?"