For weeks after the wedding that never happened, she barely spoke, keeping to her own rooms. When she came down to dinner, she sat in silence at the end of the long table and ate very little; if Clara came into a room, the Dowager left it.
"Give her time," Henry told Clara gently. "My mother is a proud woman. Pride is a very hard thing to swallow."
So Clara gave her time. She did not push; she did not complain; she was simply kind. When the Dowager caught a chill in December, it was Clara who sat up with her through the night. When the Dowager's old spaniel died in January, it was Clara who found her weeping in the garden, and quietly sat down beside her on the cold stone bench and said nothing at all.
And then, one evening in February, there was a soft knock on Clara's door.
It was the Dowager Duchess. She stood in the doorway holding something wrapped in a velvet cloth. For a long moment, she did not speak.
"May I come in?" she asked at last, her voice very quiet.
"Of course, Your Grace."
The Dowager sat down stiffly in the chair by the fire. She held the velvet bundle in her lap and looked down at it.
"I have come to say something," she said. "It is not easy for me. I have not said it often in my life—perhaps never." She took a deep breath. "I was wrong."
Clara said nothing; she waited.
"I threw you out of this house in the rain," said the Dowager. "Without wages, without a character. I called you a thief and a liar in front of everyone. I believed every word that wicked girl said because she had a title and a fortune, and you wore an apron." Her voice shook. "I chose that marriage for my son because I thought money and rank were the most important things in the world. I was a foolish, proud, old woman. And because of me, you nearly died in the same place your father died."
She looked up, tears in her eyes.
"My husband knew the truth for all those years. He knew, and I never listened to him when he tried to tell me he was troubled; I was too busy with my parties and my plans." She pressed her lips together. "He would be ashamed of me. And he would have loved you. I know he would."
Clara knelt down in front of her chair and took the old woman's cold hands in her own. "Thank you," she said softly. "That means more to me than you know."
The Dowager squeezed her hands, then unwrapped the velvet cloth in her lap. Inside lay the diamond bracelet of the Duchesses of Ravenshire—the one that had fallen to the floor of St. George's Church.
"It has belonged to the Duchesses of this family for two hundred years," said the Dowager. "I want you to have it."