The letter to Lord Eldon took the Duke three drafts. Frances did not read it; he read it aloud to her, standing by the fire, because he said he needed to hear whether it sounded like a man who had lost his wits. It did not. It set out the facts in the order in which they had found them, very plainly, without a single adjective: the ring, the verse, the register, the stone. It said that the writer had reason to believe that his late father's marriage of 1785 was valid, that his late half-brother Bertram had in consequence succeeded as fifth Duke of Halvergate upon their father's death in November 1818, and that his half-brother's infant son was in consequence now the sixth Duke. It asked that the infant be taken at once under the protection of the court; that his maternal aunt, Miss Frances Blakeney of Norwich, be appointed guardian of his person, the writer being as next heir disqualified; and that the writer be informed by what process he should surrender the seals, papers and revenues of the dukedom to such receiver as the court might appoint. It was signed Tristram Stanier. Not Halvergate.
"Is that right?" he asked. "The signature?"
"I think it is the only right thing about any of this," said Frances.
He folded it and lit the wax, and then stopped, with the stick of wax in one hand and his own ring half-raised in the other. He looked at the ring for a moment. Then he looked at Robin, who was asleep on the settle under the pig with his mouth open.
"Would you seal it?" he said. "With his. It's his letter, really. It ought to go under the Duke's seal."
So Frances took the old ring from her handkerchief, and pressed it into the red wax, and lifted it; and there was the otter with the turn of its head, and the fish, and the edge of the motto, as it had been pressed on the patent of creation in the reign of the first George. The Duke gave the letter and the one to his London solicitor to his groom, who rode for Woodstock to catch the night mail from Oxford; and they heard the horse go away down the street in the dark, and then there was only the fire.
"Well," said the Duke. "That's done."
Frances found she was crying, quite silently, which she had not done since February. He did not say anything. He came round the table and sat down beside her on the settle at Robin's feet and put his arm round her shoulders, which was not at all proper in the parlour of the Plough, and she let him, which was less proper still.
The Dowager Duchess of Halvergate arrived at nine o'clock the next morning.