She is a farmer. She is a horse breeder. She was a governess. She has no family, no rank, no fortune to speak of, and she has been in service. Yes, said Cecily.
Ambrose Vane sat by his dying sister's chair and could not for the life of him produce an end. They will cut her, he said at last quietly. That is the whole of it, Cecily. It is not what I think. I do not give a straw what she was.
But if I marry her, they will make her pay for it every day of her life, every drawing room in England, every dinner, every damned county ball. She has built something out of nothing with her own two hands, and she is prouder of it than any man I know has a right to be of anything. And I will not, his voice cracked, and he mastered it. I will not put her in a room where she is looked at as I looked at her on that first day. In her own hall, there was a silence.
Ambrose Vane, you great fool, Cecily said. You are the Duke of Grantmere. You cannot stop them from looking. She squeezed his hand with what strength she had.
But you can stand next to her while they do it. That is all a woman ever wanted from a man in this world, not to be protected from the room, to be stood beside in it. He went to Renfield in March. He got as far as the ford, the new one, the good stone one that he had paid for and been shouted at for. And there he found Tabitha Ren on the far bank in the early light in her gray habit, watching the water come over the sill.
And he sat his horse in the middle of his own bridge and could not for a moment go on. It holds, she called. It holds, he agreed. Was there something you wanted, Your Grace? Ambrose Vane rode across the ford.
Yes, he said. As it happens, there was. She said no. She said it standing in the estate room at Renfield with her back to the window and her hands quite still and she said it kindly which was worse than anything. I am five-and-thirty years old.