"I did ask," he said. "In a manner of speaking." He leaned against the doorpost of the tack room and folded his arms, and for the first time she saw clearly how tired he was—the colour under his eyes, the way he held himself still so as not to sway. "If you could say one thing to him—to the Duke—what would it be?"
Kezia considered. The sun had got a little higher. Somewhere behind the stables a cock was crowing with no conviction.
"I would tell him," she said, "that a man who has spent his life with horses ought to know better than anyone that you cannot judge a thing you will not go and look at. And that if he will not come and look, he should at least have the decency not to sign his name to it." She pulled her gloves through her hand. "And then, I am afraid, I should tell him he was unbearable. I find I have quite settled on the word. It has a sort of finish to it."
He laughed. It was a short, surprised sound, as if it had got out without his leave, and she liked him for it more than she had meant to.
"You'll not want to hear this," he said, "but I think he might agree with the first part."
"Then he has a better opinion of me than I have of him, and I shall try to bear that too."
The yard gate creaked.
They both turned. Across the wet cobbles, picking his way between puddles with the anxious care of a man in good stockings, came a young footman in the full Wendlebury livery: plum-coloured coat, silver lace, powdered hair, the whole lot of it gleaming absurdly in the stable yard like a bird of paradise in a henhouse. Kezia knew him at once. It was Matthew Sowerby, Bet Sowerby's boy from the end cottage on the common, who had sung in the church choir until his voice broke and had gone up to the Abbey at fifteen to clean boots. He had been made second footman in the spring. His mother had told everyone.
He came to a halt three yards off, red in the face, and Kezia began to say good morning.
Matthew did not look at her. He looked at the man in the borrowed shirt, and drew himself up, and bowed—not the quick bob he would give the curate or the brisk inclination he would give a caller, but a deep, slow, formal bow from the waist, one hand at his breast, the bow the butler had evidently drilled into him in the servants' hall for exactly one purpose and one person.
"Your Grace," he said. "Mrs. Oddie's compliments, and Mr. Hendry's, and there's hot water drawn in the blue dressing room, and Mr. Quarrendon is come up from the estate office and is waiting in the library, and Mrs. Oddie says"—he swallowed—"Mrs. Oddie says she's heard from Mr. Pridmore that you were up all night with the mare, and will Your Grace please come and eat something before Mr. Quarrendon gets hold of you."
Then he turned, and saw Kezia properly, and his face went from red to white.
"Miss Thorley," he said, and gave her a little nod—a small, horrified, sideways nod, as one might give to someone standing too near the edge of a well.