The Duke Wrote Ten Rules for the Wife He Would Choose — She Broke Every One Before the Hunt Ball
Chapter 10
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The Duke was crossing the floor. He did not hurry; he had never hurried in his life, she suspected. He walked the whole length of the ballroom in his black coat, past the scarlet coats and the white gowns. Every head in the room turned with him. He did not look at any of them.He stopped in front of Rosamund."Miss Penrose is right," he said to nobody in particular, in a voice that carried to the windows. "She found £1,300 in three years of my books in five mornings. I have asked her to go on keeping them. I have also asked her a second question."He held out his hand. "Rosamund," he said.She looked at his hand. She thought of the drawing room on the first afternoon, and the list, and the woman in the saddle who had kept all ten. She thought of the coal, and the chair by the fire, and the post bag closed over her letter. She had broken every rule on that paper; she had not been punished for any of them."Yes, Ambrose," she said, and took his hand.The Dowager Duchess of Raxford, who was 78 and had not been heard to laugh since the old Duke's funeral, put back her head in her purple velvet chair and laughed until her diamonds shook.Lady Sedgwick left Raxford by the York coach at 6:00 the next morning without her daughter, who stayed for the hunting. Within the twelvemonth, Mr. Aldridge had applied to the Court of Chancery, and Lady Sedgwick had sold the lease of her house in Bath to repay the trust.The opening meet of the Raxford Hunt went out from the stable court that same morning. The clock on the tower said a quarter past 10:00, and was right. Rosamund rode Abbott in the green sidesaddle; it was the first time the saddle had ever carried anyone to a meet. The Duke rode beside her on the raw-boned chestnut. Two hundred people watched them go out under the arch; neither of them looked back to see who was watching.Four years later, the hunt ball came round again. Raxford Hall smelled of beeswax, lilies, and a fire in every room in the house, including the one under the leads at the top of the east stair. The estate books were kept in a small upright hand without a single blot; the fodder book showed 30 hunters, and 30 hunters stood in the stalls.In the library, framed under glass and hung where anyone could read it, was a sheet of paper in a man's hand: ten rules, each one struck through in fresh ink, and in the margin beside each, a date. At the bottom, in a small upright hand, the Duchess of Raxford had written two words:Broken all.A list of rules is a door shut before anyone knocks. That was true; it had always been true. And it was true of every list her husband's father ever wrote. But some doors are shut by a man standing behind them, waiting all his life for one woman to walk straight through.Downstairs in the ballroom, the Duke of Raxford was laughing at something his wife had said, loudly enough to be heard in the next parish. Mrs. Corbold, passing with the coal, did not even look round.