"Pay in full, in a famine year, to a landlord who's just cancelled their dinner and sold the old Duke's horses." He nodded. "I'd have been unbearable. You'd have had it exactly right."
Aunt Letitia was looking from one of them to the other. "But surely," she said, "Your Grace can simply tell Mr. Quarrendon—"
"I can tell him. I've told him. He bowed and said it would all be put right at Michaelmas, and he's very sorry for the misunderstanding, and Sir Lionel will be so disappointed, and all the principal freeholders have expressed themselves in favour, and the petition has already been lodged with the parliamentary agents and it will look very odd in London if His Grace withdraws it now, and very odd in the county, and the estate is encumbered—which it is, by eighty thousand pounds the old Duke spent draining the fen and building the new wing—and enclosure would raise the rents by two thousand a year. All of which is true. He's a careful man. I could dismiss him tomorrow; I've half a mind to. But I don't know enough yet to know what he's done that I can prove and what he's merely done. And I don't know the common. I've never walked it. I don't know who's on it, or what they keep, or what they'd lose. He does. You do." He looked up at her. "I came to ask if you'd show me."
Kezia was silent for a long moment.
"Why should I?" she said. "Not for you. I have not forgiven you."
"No. Not for me. For the forty families. For Matthew Sowerby's mother, who Mrs. Oddie tells me has a cow called Duchess that she's very proud of." Something moved at the corner of his mouth. "I've also been told you've read the old court rolls in the vestry chest. I'd like to know what's in them, before Quarrendon tells me."
Her uncle, who had come quietly to the parlour door some minutes before and had been standing there unnoticed with a book under his arm, made a small sound that might have been a cough.
"I have conditions," said Kezia.
"I thought you might."
"You will go as yourself. Not in a borrowed shirt, and not as Mr. Carrick come about the horses. If you are the Duke of Wendlebury, you will be the Duke of Wendlebury in every cottage on that common, and you will let them look at you."
"Done."
"You will not interrupt them. Whatever they say. Some of them will say what I said this morning, and worse, and in broader language."
"I'll not interrupt. I've had practice this morning at not interrupting."