"She Won't Last a Month Here," the Duke Told His Butler — By Summer She Ran the Whole House
Chapter 21
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"There is a small dower house at the edge of the park. It is empty. It is sound. A woman might live in it decently on a hundred a year, and be neither served nor serving, and stop being so very tired. If His Grace is willing." She did not look away. "You would owe it to no one—least of all to me. I should like that understood."Lucretia stared at her. Whatever she had braced herself to meet, it had not been this. And it undid her worse than justice would have: her face crumpled once, hard, and set again."Why?" she said. It was not a graceful question; it was torn out of her."Because I know exactly how tiring it is," Juliet said. "And because a house that has just thrown out one thief should not celebrate by making a beggar. Good night, Mrs. Sedley."The Duke of Northwell looked at his grandmother's companion across the wreckage of his own long blindness, and something in his face that had been shut since April came quietly, painfully open.The summer ball at Lark Court had been Cecily's ball: she had given it every summer—the one night the shut great rooms were opened, the county driven up the honey-colored drive, the long gallery full of candlelight. There had been no ball for two years.And now the Dowager Duchess, who missed nothing and forgot nothing, announced it from the depths of her chair: there would be a ball again this summer. The house was breathing again; a house that is breathing again should be allowed to dance."You will open the rooms," she told Juliet. "You will do the whole of it: the linen, the plate, the supper, the flowers, the 50 beeswax candles in the gallery that my grandson will complain of the cost of and pay for gladly." The old eyes gleamed. "You have run this house since April, girl, whatever anyone chose to call you. It is time the county saw who runs it."So Juliet opened the great rooms: she had the Holland covers struck and the shutters folded back; two years of dust went out in pails. She filled the long gallery with early roses, 50 candles of good beeswax that did not smoke—for she had had the sconces cleaned herself. She let out one of Cecily's own gowns for herself, with the dowager's blessing, and Petronella's own maid to do it: a gown of soft dove gray, modest, unremarkable, exactly the color a ballroom looks straight through. She wanted nothing else; she had not come to Lark Court to be looked at.She was looked at anyway.She was standing at the head of the gallery near midnight in the gray gown. She saw that the supper went in and the candles were trimmed; she was entirely absorbed in her work, entirely unaware of herself.And the Duke of Northwell crossed the whole length of the crowded room to her.