Clara looked at the glittering stones for a long moment. Then, gently, she shook her head. "Forgive me, Your Grace," she said, "but I don't think I could ever wear it. Not after everything."
The Dowager nodded slowly. "I understand. Then what would you like instead, my dear? Name it. Anything at all."
Clara thought for a moment, then she smiled. "I would like you to come to my wedding," she said, "and sit in the front row, and be glad."
The proud old Dowager Duchess of Ravenshire stared at her, and then, for the first time in a very long time, she laughed: a cracked, rusty, astonished sound. And then she was crying and laughing together, and Clara was holding her, and neither of them could stop.
The Duke sold the bracelet in March; every penny went into the Hartley Fund.
As for Henry and Clara themselves, they did not rush. That winter, they spent long evenings together in the library at Ravenshire by the fire: he read to her from his father's old book of poems, the one she had mended on the very first day; she sat with a lamp and a needle and repaired every old book in the house that had a torn page or a loose cover. There were hundreds; it took months. Neither of them minded at all.
They talked about everything: their fathers, the mistakes they had made, books, horses, the stars, and the price of corn. Henry told her things he had never told another living soul, and Clara discovered that the cold, silent Duke of Ravenshire was, in fact, the kindest and most quietly funny man she had ever known. He had simply forgotten how to show it; she reminded him.
The old Duke's study, which had been locked for three years, was opened up again, cleaned and aired: the dust sheets were taken away, fresh flowers were put on the desk, and Henry gave it to Clara for her very own room.
"You were the one who opened it, after all," he said, "with your blue ribbon and your stolen candle."
"I didn't steal the candle," said Clara indignantly.
"No," Henry agreed, smiling. "Only my father's diary and my heart."
One evening in early spring, Henry came into the study looking strangely nervous, holding a small box wrapped in brown paper.
"I have something for you," he said. "I hope I have not been foolish."
Clara opened it. Inside lay a silver-backed hairbrush: old and worn, with a tiny dent in one corner and the initials *M.H.* engraved on the back—Mary Hartley, her mother.
Clara could not breathe. "How...?" she whispered. "How did you...?"
"Polly told me," said Henry quietly, "that you sold it that night in London to pay the doctor. I went to every pawnshop near that boarding house until I found the right one. The little bald man had sold it to a dealer; the dealer had sold it to a shop in Bath; the shop in Bath had sold it to a lady in Bristol." He smiled a little. "It took me five months. The lady in Bristol was very surprised to receive a visit from a Duke asking about her hairbrush."