"She Won't Last a Month Here," the Duke Told His Butler — By Summer She Ran the Whole House
Chapter 20
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Juliet inclined her head and did not trust herself to answer, and took up her three months of honest figures, and left him alone in the library with his sister's true accounts open at last upon the table.That left Lucretia.She had sat very still through the whole long reckoning in the corner of the library, her letter crushed to nothing in her lap. She watched the machine she had helped to build come apart plank by plank in the candlelight. When Grimshaw was gone, she rose. And she was still handsome and still upright, and she made one last throw with the courage of a gambler staking her last:"You will make a great deal of me now, I suppose," she said to the Duke. "Your loyal cousin who settled her little debts through your steward. Oh, I knew. Of course I knew. Do you imagine a woman as poor as I am does not know exactly where every shilling comes from?" Her voice was bright and brittle as struck glass. "You will turn me out, too. Where to, cousin? I have a hundred a year and a widow's cap. I married where I was told and buried him, and got nothing for it but the privilege of being poor among people who were once my equals. You do not know what that is; you have never in your life not known where you would sleep."She was shaking now, though her chin was up."She hid £4,000 to be free of a fat man's son. I would have hidden it to be free of the whole grinding pretense. Do not look at me as though I were a monster. I am only afraid. I have been afraid for 15 years. It is very tiring, cousin. You have no idea how tiring it is."And there it was: the human fear under the bright, hard shell, laid open in the candlelight.The Duke's face had gone hard as the forecourt again. He opened his mouth; Juliet knew he was about to be just. And just would be the end of Lucretia Sedley: turned out, disgraced, a hundred a year, a widow's cap, the county to talk."Your Grace," Juliet said. "May I?"He looked at her. He closed his mouth. He inclined his head.Juliet went and stood before the frightened, upright, hateful woman who had tried to ruin her that morning. She did not gloat; she had learned long ago that gloating is exactly what your tormentor expects, and she had never once given a tormentor what they expected."You settled your debts through the estate," Juliet said quietly. "That is theft. And you know it is theft, and so does His Grace. But you did not falsify the rents. You did not squeeze Widow Sefton for a shilling at Lady Day. That was Grimshaw's hand, not yours. You watched, and you profited, and you held your tongue—which is precisely the sin I committed myself until this morning. So I am poorly placed to hang you for it."She held the bright, terrified eyes.