***
Morning came gray off the river, with rain on the stone and the particular quiet of a house that has already rehearsed its gossip. Nell brought the water and did not bring a story with it. She only looked at Mara as if the back stairs had tried the truth on in the night and found it either too large or too plain.
Mara set her sewing basket on the bed and put the tin inside it. She washed her face, pinned her hair as severely as ever, and did not change the beige dress. The ring stayed on her hand. She went down by the main stair. The servants' stair would have been a way of agreeing, with her feet, that she was still a secret.
The hall was not a court. It was fuller than she wanted and smaller than a legend. Mrs. Adel stood at the foot of the stair with her keys. Keene held a case and hoped, visibly, to be mistaken for furniture. Two footmen failed at invisibility. Mr. Hoby, the steward, had been pulled from his books and resented the interruption more than the scandal, which made him, in his way, reliable. Nell lingered at the baize door. When Mara shook her head, the girl stayed anyway.
The duchess was already there. The gown was the blue again, or another so like it that the difference was a private wealth. Nothing in her face had been converted by sleep. Edmund came out of the library in a dark ordinary coat. The star was gone. Mara understood that: he would not let a jewel do the speaking. He saw the basket on her arm and stopped.
"You are leaving," he said.
"I am ready to," she said, and she made sure the hall could hear. "I said I would be here under my name. I did not say I would wait in an attic while this room decided what I was. If I am dismissed, Mrs. Adel should hear the wages. If I am claimed, the claim should be one you cannot walk back at the next dinner."
Helena's hands were folded at her waist. "You may have the wages and the road," she said. "That offer is clean. What he is about to do is not clean, and I will not paint it."
Edmund looked at the housekeeper, the steward, his mother's secretary, the girl from the attic, and last at Mara. His voice was not large. It carried because everyone had already decided to repeat it.
"Her name is Mara Elling," he said. "She is my wife. We were married in Heston on the eleventh of April, before my brother died and before any of you had to call me duke. Anne Brant was a name bought to keep her quiet. I did not buy it. Last night I refused Sir Walter without saying whom I was already bound to. That was half a courage, which is only a polite failure. I am saying the rest. If a letter leaves this house, let it carry the right name."
No one knelt. Mrs. Adel's keys struck once against each other. Keene looked at the duchess and was given nothing back, and the lack of an order unsettled him more than an order would have.