The church stood at the bottom of the village, square-towered and grey, with a yew tree in the churchyard older than anything else in sight. There were three carriages drawn up at the lych gate and a knot of villagers loitering about it in their Sunday clothes, though it was Thursday. Somebody had tied white ribbons to the gate. They were wet through and hanging limp.
"There," said Thrale quietly. "It's real, at least. There is a wedding."
Jasper pulled up so hard that the near horse threw its head. He gave the reins to a boy who came running, gave the boy a shilling without looking at it, and got down. His legs had stiffened on the long drive and for a moment he could not trust them. Then they held.
"What will you do?" said Thrale.
"I don't know."
"You don't know who he is."
"No."
"You never saw Lennard. Not once. Nobody in the family ever saw him except Imogen and that music master in Bath, and the music master is dead."
"I know that, Aldous."
"Then how—"
"The letter says to ask him." Jasper looked at the church door. It stood half open. Through it came the low drone of a clergyman reading, and under it, the shifting and coughing of a congregation that had been sitting still too long. "So I shall ask him."
He went up the path between the graves. He did not hurry. He had learned in the last two years, since his father's death had made him what he was, that a duke who hurries looks like a man with something to hide, and a duke who walks slowly looks like a man who owns the ground he walks on. He had no wish to own this ground. He only wished not to fall down on it.
At the door he stopped.