"She Won't Last a Month Here," the Duke Told His Butler — By Summer She Ran the Whole House
Chapter 5
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"Everyone is very sorry. It is the least useful sentence in the language." The old woman looked into the fire. For a moment the sharpness left her, and something older and worse sat in its place. "She was three-and-twenty. A fever in the spring. She was mistress of this house. My grandson never married; there was no duchess. So Cecily kept the keys, and kept the peace, and kept the whole place breathing. And then one week in April she was too warm at dinner, and the week after she was in the ground at Lark Court Church. And my grandson..." She stopped. "My grandson," she said in quite a different voice, "has not been in the east wing since, nor spoken her name if he can help it, nor looked at a single thing that wants doing in this house, because everything that wants doing was hers. Do you understand me?""I think I do, ma'am.""I think you do, too. That is why you are the first companion in a year I have not sent away inside the week." Petronella folded her ruined hands. "Now: you have been here 19 days. Tell me what you have seen. And do not be tactful; I have no time left for tactful."So Juliet told her. She had not meant to, but there is a particular relief in being asked a true question by someone who wants the true answer, and she had been holding it all in for 19 days. She told her about the green beef, and the smoking flue, and the sheeted rooms, and the roof that leaked somewhere over the east wing. She told her about the linen going to rot in the presses. She told her, carefully, about Mr. Grimshaw, who settled every account and held every key and could not be told his business.The dowager listened without moving. When Juliet had finished, the old woman was quiet for a long time."My grandson," she said at last, "is not a fool. He is a grieving man, which is a different thing, though from the outside they wear the same coat. He has let one man hold the reins because he cannot bear to touch them himself. That is his weakness; it may prove a very expensive one." She turned her head. "You know something of accounts?""A little, ma'am.""Do not be modest. I loathe modesty above all the false virtues." She held Juliet's eye. "I am going to make you useful. Not as a companion—companions are furniture. I am going to give you the running of the still room, and the linen, and the kitchen accounts on my authority, which in this house is a good deal older than Mr. Grimshaw's. And we shall see what you find.""Your Grace... the Duke...""I heard him say I would not last a month."Something almost like pleasure crossed the old woman's face. "Did he?" she said softly. "Then you have nine days to prove him wrong. I suggest you use them."Juliet used them.The house did not believe in her, and the house said so in the way of houses: below stairs and out of her hearing. There was a wager in the servants' hall by the end of her first week, and everyone knew of it, and it was reckoned a fair one: a shilling said the new companion would be gone by Lady Day, packed off like the three before her, worn out by the cold rooms and the grieving master and the pink steward who ruled them both. The betting ran heavily against her; even Prue, who liked her, had put her sixpence quietly on the month.