"Father had it on his desk," he said. "On the salver, with the rest of the morning's post. He'd opened his own. He'd read it, and burned it, and then he sent for me. He said you'd made your choice. He said if you were let back into the house, every hanger-on and fortune-hunter in England would know that a Tremayne girl could be had for the price of a chaise to Gretna, and that he would not have it, and that I would not have it either, when it was mine." He looked at his hands. "He said if I opened it I would answer it, because I was soft, and that if I answered it, he would see to it that I had nothing from him but the entail — not a penny he could keep from me, not the London house, not the Yorkshire land, nothing. And he made me write *Refused* on it myself, so that you'd know it was me. So that you'd know I'd chosen." He made himself look up. "And I did choose. He didn't hold my hand. I could have put it in my pocket and opened it that night. I could have ridden to Carlisle. I was twenty-four years old, Immy, I wasn't a child. I picked up the pen and wrote it and gave it back to him, because I wanted Kelmscott more than I wanted to be decent. That's all. There isn't any more to it than that."
The bells had stopped. It was very quiet in the room.
"I knew," Imogen said, after a long time. "That it was you. I always knew. I used to think — in Carlisle, that spring, when I was trying to get work and couldn't — I used to think that if it had been Papa's hand, I could have borne it. Papa was always Papa. But you used to carry me on your shoulders down to the lake to look at the swans." Her voice did not change, but her eyes had filled. "I didn't understand how you could have done it. I've never understood it. I've hated you for six years for it, a good deal more than I've ever hated Rupert. Rupert was only a thief. I expected that of him, in the end."
"I know."
"Then why did you come? On Thursday. On a letter with no name. Why?"
He thought about it — honestly, for the first time.
"Because Father was dead," he said slowly, "and there was nobody left to blame it on. Because I've spent two years being the Duke of Kelmscott and I have hated every hour of it, and I knew why. Because I paid four men from Bow Street and a liar in Edinburgh to look for you, and every time they came back with nothing I was — relieved. God forgive me. Relieved, because if they never found you, I'd never have to stand in front of you and say what I've just said." He drew a breath. "And because on Tuesday night a stranger wrote and told me to come and ask a question, and I thought — if I don't go now, I am my father. That's all. I'm not sure it's a better reason than his."
Imogen wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand, briskly, the way she used to as a child when she'd fallen off her pony and was determined not to cry in front of the grooms.
"It's a better reason than his," she said. "It's not good enough. But it's better."
"I know that too."
"I don't forgive you," she said. "Not yet. Perhaps not for a long time. I want you to know that, so you don't go about thinking that one punch and a drive in a borrowed gig has settled it."
"I wouldn't think that."