"Your Grace."
"Pridmore tells me you've kept this house going on half wages since May."
"On no wages since August, Your Grace, for the indoor staff, but Mr. Quarrendon says it is only a question of the quarter's accounts being settled."
He turned and looked at her. It was a long look, and she held it.
"I sent the money for the wages in July," he said. "Through Quarrendon. With the money for the seed corn and the abatement."
"Right," said the Duke. He looked at the bath again. "Is he a careful man, Quarrendon?"
"He is very careful, Your Grace. He has a beautiful hand. You could frame his accounts."
"I've seen them. I've had a parcel of them every month. I could frame them too. It's the only thing I've known to do with them." He was silent a moment. "I'll be honest with you, Mrs. Oddie, since I've already been dishonest with one person this morning and it didn't suit me. I didn't want this. I don't mean that ungratefully. I mean I'd a decent life, and I knew what I was for in it. I can tell you what's wrong with a horse by the way it stands in a field. I can't tell you what's wrong with a rent roll by looking at it, and I've been looking at them since March. Quarrendon sends me papers and I sign them, because the old man trusted him, and the lawyers trust him, and I'd no reason not to." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I signed one in June about Coldwell Common. I thought I'd signed for a survey."
"Did you, Your Grace," said Mrs. Oddie.
"Miss Thorley thinks I signed for an enclosure."
"Miss Thorley," said Mrs. Oddie, "reads the newspapers, and the parish books, and the old court rolls in the vestry chest, which nobody has opened since the Restoration except her and the mice. If Miss Thorley thinks it, I should want to look at the paper again, if I were you."
He laughed then—the same short, unwilling laugh Kezia had got out of him in the yard—and said, "That's twice this morning I've been told to go and look at something. I'm beginning to think it's local custom."
"It's good advice in any county, Your Grace." Mrs. Oddie took the jug to the washstand. "And may I say one thing more?"