"She Won't Last a Month Here," the Duke Told His Butler — By Summer She Ran the Whole House
Chapter 19
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Grimshaw went. There was, in the end, nothing else for him to do. At the library door he turned once, all the softness gone out of him, and looked at Juliet with a hatred that had no smile left in it at all."You could not simply keep to the linen," he said."No," Juliet agreed. "I never could. Good night, Mr. Grimshaw."When he was gone, the library was very quiet. The Duke stood a long while with his hand still on the worn book, as though he could not quite lift it away. Juliet gathered her fair copies from the table, page by page—the work of three careful months—and she did not know what to say to him. And for once in her life, she did not try to find it: some silences are better kept than broken.It was the Duke who broke this one."You knew," he said, "for months. You carried the tenants' baskets. You mended my linen and sat with my grandmother. And you said nothing to me." He looked at her. "Why not, if you knew? You could have come to me in April.""I could not," she said. "In April, you would not have believed me. A grieving man does not want a stranger to tell him his sister's house is being robbed; he wants to be left alone with his grief. So I did not bring you a suspicion, Your Grace. I waited until I could bring you a proof you could not refuse." She set the last page square on the pile. "And there was my own reason, too, which you have heard in the forecourt this morning, and which does me no credit: I had a fortune of my own to keep hidden. A woman who makes herself noticed makes herself found. So I chose to be safe rather than useful for as long as I dared. I am not proud of it.""No," the Duke said slowly. "But you did not choose it in the end. In the end, you were seen, and you spoke. And you might have kept your head down and your fortune hidden a while longer if you had not." He was looking at her as though he had never properly seen her before, which, she thought, was perhaps the truth. "My sister would have liked you. She had no patience with people who kept their heads down." A pause. "Thank you, Miss Eldstone. I do not think I have said it: thank you."It was three words. And from that spare and shut-up man, they were worth a great deal more than three.