Thrown Out on Christmas Eve, She Took Shelter in an Empty House — Unaware the Duke Was Coming Home
Chapter 12
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"I turned you away on Christmas Eve, Hannah Lowe," she said, "and I've been ashamed of it ever since. I was afraid of that man. Well, I'm not now. You and the boy will come down to the bakery with me. There's a room over the ovens that's the warmest in the valley."Hannah's mouth trembled. She pressed her lips together hard. "Thank you, Mrs. Tibbs," she said.She picked up her father's order book, which had been lying on the table, and tucked it into the trunk. She put on her bonnet. She took Sam by the hand.Then she paused at the door and, without looking at Edmund, reached into her pocket and set something down on the windowsill: it was the stub of her father's Christmas candle, still wrapped in its handkerchief."For the Duchess's room," she said quietly. "She'd want one. Even a used one."And then she was gone down the drive with Mrs. Tibbs, the boy between them.Edmund stood in the kitchen and watched them go until they were three small, dark shapes against the white, and then until they were nothing. The gray cat jumped up on the sill beside the candle stub and looked at him."I know," said Edmund. "I know."Mr. Pike did not bring the account books by noon the next day; he brought them at 4:00 with a clerk. And he brought a sworn statement signed in front of Sir Henry Dalby, the magistrate: it said that on Boxing Day, while His Grace's back was turned, Hannah Lowe had carried a pair of silver candlesticks out of the dining room of Ashmere House in her trunk. Mr. Pike's clerk, a young man named Jacob Moss, swore he had seen them there. Constable Fenn had since found them in that trunk at the bakery.Sir Henry Dalby, who had been a friend of Edmund's father and did not like Mr. Pike in the least, sent a note up to the house that evening: he was obliged to hear the charge, he wrote, whatever he thought of it. The hearing would be on the morning of the 30th at the Lamb Inn; he suspected the whole valley would come.Edmund went down to the bakery that night. Mrs. Tibbs let him in at the back door and said Hannah didn't want visitors. Edmund asked her to tell Miss Lowe that he believed her completely and would bring the best lawyer in the north if she wished it.Mrs. Tibbs went up; she came back down after a few minutes."She says thank you," said Mrs. Tibbs. "And she says no. She says this is her name and her father's name, and she'll speak for it herself." Mrs. Tibbs sniffed. "She says you can come and listen if you like. And she says to tell you she needs to borrow something from your house."