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The Duke Sent Her His 3 Old Aunts for Winter — By Easter His Duchess Begged a Seat at Their Table

The Duke Sent Her His 3 Old Aunts for Winter — By Easter His Duchess Begged a Seat at Their Table

Chapter 12

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The snow lay for a week. When the cutting was dug out and the carriages went home, every guest went home talking about Cold Harbor Farm, about the old ladies who had been sent out of Brexwell, and about the steward who had stopped their money.By Candlemas, the whole county knew it, and the Duke's invitations began to come back refused.The Duchess came in Lent. She came on foot, alone, down the lane from the hill in a gray cloak and stout boots, with the mud splashed to her knees on a raw March Sunday when the dinners were at their fullest.She stood in the kitchen doorway with her hood back and the rain on her face, and the talk along the benches died away. She was very pale, and she did not look like a duchess; she looked like a young woman who had not had anyone to talk to for a year.She looked down the long table at the laborers, their wives, the curate, the squire's wife, and the three aunts at its head, and she did not seem to know what to do with her hands."I have come," she said, and it was very nearly begging, "to ask if there might be a seat at your table on Easter Sunday for me." She swallowed. "I shall pay my penny."Maud stood by the dresser with the blue jug in her hands.Then Winifred got up from her place, went down the whole length of the table, and took the Duchess by both her cold hands. "My dear," she said, "you'd better come into the fire. You're wet through."They sat her at the fire and gave her soup, and she ate it the way Dorcas had eaten the soaked bread on that first night—as if she had forgotten how. And she talked in a low voice, with the whole table listening and pretending not to.
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The Duke Sent Her His 3 Old Aunts for Winter — By Easter His Duchess Begged a Seat at Their Table

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