Kezia sat down beside her and took her hand.
"I know it is my doing," she said. "Not his alone. If I had held my tongue in the stable yard—"
"If you had held your tongue in the stable yard, Mrs. Sowerby would have lost her cow and that wretched man would be counting our tithe into ninety-two acres and we should all be very comfortable." Aunt Letitia's fingers tightened on hers. "I am not a fool, Kezia, whatever you and your uncle think. I only wanted to know that when we are gone you would have a roof. That is all I have ever wanted. I still want it. And now I do not know how it is to be managed."
Kezia was quiet for a while. Then she said, "I may know."
"How?"
"I have been offered a post." She felt her face grow warm, and kept her voice steady. "The Duke came to the vestry on Thursday. He wants the court rolls put in order and calendared, all of them, from the beginning, so that there can never be another argument about what the custom of the manor is. And he wants someone to keep them, and to sit with the steward at the court baron, and to know the common. He says he cannot ask a woman to be steward of a manor court, because the lawyers would have fits. But he can pay a keeper of the records. Eighty pounds a year." She swallowed. "I told him I would think about it. I told him I would not accept it as a kindness, and he said it was not a kindness, it was the cheapest bargain he had made since he came into the title, and that if I wanted a kindness I should have to wait in line behind Bathsheba."
Aunt Letitia turned and looked at her properly for the first time.
"Kezia," she said slowly. "Is that all he wants? A keeper of records?"
"I don't know," said Kezia honestly. "I have not asked. And he has kept his word, Aunt. He has not once asked me what I think of him."
XI.
The first snow came in the middle of October, which no one in Wendlebury St. Giles could remember happening before and which nobody, in that year, was in the least surprised by. It came in the night, thin and dry, and by dawn it lay over the park like a dusting of flour on a board,.
Kezia went across at six, as she used to, in her oldest habit and her resoled boots. She had no horse to ride. She told herself she was going to look at the colt.