"All right," he said.
Imogen let out her breath. For a moment she swayed, and Miss Penhallow — who had dropped the poker — was beside her at once with an arm around her waist. Imogen looked down at the arm, and then at Morwenna's face, and her own face changed.
"You promised me," she said.
Miss Penhallow did not let go. "I know."
"You stood in my workroom and you promised me, and I trusted you, and you went home and wrote to him." Her eyes flicked to Jasper and back. "Of all the people in the world. Him."
"Yes."
"You had no right."
"No," said Morwenna Penhallow. "I hadn't." Her chin went up a fraction. "And you're alive, and you've got that paper, and he's on a blown horse going nowhere. I'd do it again tomorrow. You may hate me for as long as you like."
Imogen stared at her.
Then she pulled herself free, quite gently, and straightened her cap, and looked round at the ink and the scattered samplers and the overturned form as if she were seeing them for the first time.
"I have eleven children in the garden," she said, "who are going to want their dinners, and who are going to want to know why the room is full of ink. I am going to go down to them now, and I am going to tell them that a gentleman had an accident with the inkstand, and then I am going to give them their dinners. I should be grateful," she said to both of them, without turning round, "if neither of you were here when I came back up."
She went out. They heard her on the stairs, light and steady, and her voice in the passage saying something kind to Miss Peverell, and the garden door opening, and then a sudden flood of children's voices, all calling her at once.