Mr. Quint opened his writing-case. He did it slowly, with a little bow, as if apologising to the papers for disturbing them.
"Miss Blakeney," he said. "On Monday morning I called at the church of St. Peter Mancroft in Norwich and examined the register of banns, and the register of marriages, for the year 1812. There is no record of the calling of banns between Bertram Rendle and Catherine Blakeney, in that year or any other, and no marriage between them in that church. I then waited upon the deputy registrar of the consistory court of the diocese of Norwich and asked to see the allegations for marriage licences for October of that year. I found this." He laid a paper on the tablecloth, between the toast and the ham: a long, narrow form, half print and half handwriting, in a clerk's flowing copperplate. "It is an attested copy. The allegation of Bertram Rendle, sergeant of dragoons, of the parish of St. Gregory, aged twenty-six years, and Catherine Blakeney of the same parish, spinster, aged twenty-one years and upwards, sworn before the surrogate on the nineteenth of October 1812, in order to obtain a licence to marry at St. Gregory's, which they did on the twentieth. And this." He laid another beside it. "Extract from the register of baptisms of the parish of St. Giles, Norwich. Catherine, daughter of Oliver and Rachel Blakeney, baptized the sixth of April 1794."
Frances looked at the papers. She could read them upside down; she had been reading registers upside down across vestry tables for six years. She did not need to read them. She had known what was in them, she thought afterwards, from the moment he said St. Gregory's.
"She was eighteen," she said.
"Yes, ma'am."
"She told me it was banns. She wrote and told me it was banns, at St. Peter's. She said Papa never came to forbid them." She put her hand flat on the cloth. "He didn't come because there was nothing to forbid. She went to the surrogate and swore she was one-and-twenty, because a licence was quick and quiet and Papa would never hear of it until it was done. And she wrote me that letter so that I should not worry. She knew I'd know what a licence meant." Her voice cracked, very slightly.
"A marriage by licence," said Mr. Quint gently, "where one of the parties is a minor, and the consent of the father has not been given, is void under the statute of the twenty-sixth year of George the Second. The false swearing to her age makes no difference. I am very sorry, Miss Blakeney. The courts have held so a dozen times."
The Duke had not moved. He said, "Then Robin—"
"Is in law the natural son of the late Bertram Stanier," said Mr. Quint, "and cannot inherit a title of honour, or any land in tail. The late Bertram Stanier, if the marriage of 1785 is good, as I believe from what Her Grace tells me it is, was de jure fifth Duke of Halvergate for the eleven weeks between his father's death and his own. Upon his death without lawful issue, the dukedom passed to his heir male, his younger brother." He bowed, very slightly, toward the Duke. "Your Grace is the sixth Duke of Halvergate. You have been, since the ninth of February."