"She Won't Last a Month Here," the Duke Told His Butler — By Summer She Ran the Whole House
Chapter 15
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Mrs. Lucretia Sedley was the Duke's first cousin, the only daughter of his father's only sister, and she had been born to more than she now had: her own father had gambled the family portion into the sea; her husband, a Mr. Sedley, had died leaving her a jointure that dwindled with every quarter. She was five-and-thirty, handsome in a hard, bright way.Since Cecily's death, she had come to Lark Court more and more often, and stayed longer and longer. She had a plan that was the twin of Silas Probin's; the two of them had never met. Lucretia meant to be the next mistress of Lark Court: if she could not be its Duchess—and she was his cousin, and he had never once looked at her so—then she would be its power behind the shut door. A grieving bachelor Duke, a dwindling jointure, a great house with no mistress: it was, to a clever, desperate woman, an opportunity dressed as a family duty.She had chosen Grimshaw three years back, or Grimshaw had chosen her; it came to the same. She smoothed his way to the master; he saw that her small debts in the county were quietly settled out of the estate's quiet river. Each propped the other; neither could have done it alone.And both of them understood the danger the moment Lucretia arrived that June: she saw the shortened dinner table; she saw the swept flue; she saw the small brown companion who moved through the house like its mistress. Something had grown up in the garden while their backs were turned.Lucretia was cleverer than Grimshaw: she did not smile and threaten; she watched. And within a week she had understood something Grimshaw had not troubled to: that the companion was not merely competent, but hiding."Eldstone," she said one afternoon sweetly over the dowager's tea, turning the name on her tongue like a sweetmeat. "Eldstone? From where, one wonders? There are Eldstones in Shropshire, I think. Are you a Shropshire Eldstone, Miss Eldstone?""Nowhere so grand, ma'am. My father was a plain gentleman of the north.""Was he? And left you nothing, poor creature, so that you must carry other women's linen." The smile did not reach the eyes. "How wearing to have been born a little above one's fortune. One is neither one thing nor the other—neither served nor serving. It must be quite exhausting, always to be watched for the false step." She sipped her tea. "I do watch, Miss Eldstone. It is my one accomplishment. My cousin thinks me an idle woman, but I watch."Juliet met the bright, hard eyes and understood that here was the real enemy: not the pink steward—this one."Then you keep better accounts than I do, ma'am," she said. "For I own I have never learned the trick of watching people; I only ever learned to watch the linen."The dowager, from the depths of her chair, made a small sound that in a less dignified woman would have been a snort.It moved quickly after that, the way a slow thing moves quickly at the last.