She gave him a look. He met it steadily.
"And you will not," Kezia said, "at any point, ask me what I think of you."
That surprised a laugh out of him again, and she saw her aunt flinch at it and then, unexpectedly, almost smile.
"Agreed," said the Duke of Wendlebury. "Monday, then? At nine?"
"At eight," said Kezia. "The geese go out at seven. You will want to see them go."
VII.
On Monday the rain held off, as if out of curiosity.
Kezia came across the park at a quarter to eight on her own feet, in her second-best habit, and found the stable yard full of horses. The hunters were going. Enoch Pridmore stood in the middle of the cobbles with a list in his hand and a face like a shut gate, and his lads were leading them out one by one in their travelling rugs and knee-boots, to be strung together for the long walk down the North Road—the bay Ajax, and Trooper, and the little chestnut the old Duke had called Parson because he was so steady and so dull, and last of all Sibyl, pale as a ghost in her grey rug, tossing her head at the strangeness of it.
The Duke was standing by the pump. He was dressed as himself today, in a dark coat and good boots and a hat that had at least been brushed, and he was not watching the horses. He was watching Kezia watch them.
"I can keep her back," he said, when she came up. He said it low, so that Pridmore should not hear. "One mare. It'd make no difference to the sum. Nobody'd think the worse of it."
Kezia looked at Sibyl. Toby Mapp, the youngest of the lads was holding her head and talking to her in a whisper, and the mare had her ears turned to him, listening.
"What would she fetch?" Kezia asked.
"Two hundred. Perhaps more. She's the best of them."