Silence sat down between them like a fourth person with rights.
Edmund had come farther into the room without anyone noticing the steps. He stood by the dress form now, one hand on the pinned bodice as if he needed a thing that was not alive. The star dragged at the green cloth. He looked younger and older at once.
"I wrote when Gareth died," he said. "I asked whether you were well, and whether the northern aunt was only a politeness. The answer came in Keene's hand. You had refused further letters, it said, and there was a receipt for fifty pounds." His mouth twisted. "I kept it. I thought if you had taken the money, you wanted the door shut. I did not ask why a woman who argued with me about pride would sell a marriage for the price of a horse."
"I never saw fifty pounds," Mara said. "I saw wages. I saw my father's bond go into the fire in Mr. Keene's grate, because he made me watch, so I would know the purchase was real. He did not offer me a horse. He offered me the absence of a jail."
Helena set the muslin on the table at last. She did it carefully, which was worse than throwing it. "The receipt was a convenience," she said. "If I had sent him your refusal in your own words, he would have heard your voice in them and come looking. Edmund hears what he wishes. He always has. The fifty pounds bought nothing from you. It bought a story that would hold him until he was home and the Holme match was far enough along to make looking foolish."
"The Holme match," Edmund said.
"Sir Walter dines here tonight. His daughter comes with him. She has been raised to run a house of this size, not to unpick it. You have known about the intention for two months."
"I have known about your intention."
"Do not split hairs with me while your county is in the hall." The duchess's voice rose, not to a shout, only enough to pass through oak. "You were not the heir when you married her. A second son may be a fool in a garrison town, and the foolery can be buried with the chaplain. A duke cannot. If you acknowledge her, every cousin who lives on a great family's discomfort has a door into this house. Beatrice will be a laughingstock. Her father will want money or blood, and he can buy the kind that is printed."
"And Mara?" Edmund asked. "What does she become in the version where I am sensible?"
The duchess looked at the young woman by the stool. For a moment something moved in her face that was not strategy. It might have been pity. It did not stay long enough to be useful.
"She becomes what she has been," Helena said. "Safe. Paid. Unknown. I will raise her wages. I will see that her brother is secure. I will not have her dragged through a confirmation suit so that you can feel clean. If the ring matters, she may keep it in a box. She may not wear it. And she will remain Anne Brant while Beatrice is under this roof. That is the furthest mercy I can offer without lying to myself about the world."