Thrown Out on Christmas Eve, She Took Shelter in an Empty House — Unaware the Duke Was Coming Home
Chapter 8
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So they had holly. There was a great holly tree by the old chapel wall, and Edmund dug a path to it, and Sam carried armfuls back. And the three of them hung it over the kitchen mantel and along the dresser. Hannah found a box of the old Duchess's ribbons in a drawer upstairs and asked whether she might use them; Edmund said, in a strange voice, that he thought the Duchess would like it very much.Hannah did not go into the rest of the house beyond what she needed: it felt wrong, like reading someone's letters. But in the afternoon, looking for more blankets, she opened a door on the first floor and found herself in a small sitting room that was not shrouded like the others. It had been left just as it was: a workbasket by the chair with embroidery still in it, a shawl over the arm of the sofa, and on the small table by the window, in a silver holder, the burnt-down stub of a beeswax candle with a ring of red wax around it.Hannah stood and looked at it for a long time. The Duchess had burned her Christmas candle down past the ring, all the way down, almost to the holder. She had not stopped; she had sat up that last Christmas Eve long after the candle told her to go to bed, waiting.When Hannah came downstairs with the blankets, she did not say anything about it.That evening, when Sam was asleep and the house was quiet, she opened her father's trunk and took out the things she had packed in it that one morning before Mr. Pike's men came: her father's molds, a spool of plaited cotton wick, and a block of pale yellow beeswax, about two pounds in weight, the last of the summer's stock."What are you doing?" Edmund asked, coming in from seeing to his horse."Making candles," said Hannah. She had a pan of water heating on the range and a smaller pan sitting inside it, and she was breaking the wax into pieces with a knife. "This house needs light. I can't give it much, but I can give it some.""You don't have to do that.""I know." She dropped the wax into the inner pan. "I'm a chandler's daughter. When someone needs light, this is what I do. It's the only thing I'm good for.""I don't believe that's true," said Edmund.She looked up at him. He was standing by the door with his coat over his arm and snow in his hair, and he was looking at her as though she were a puzzle he very much wanted to solve."Then come here," Hannah said, "and learn something. You can cut wicks."And that is how the ninth Duke of Ashmere spent Christmas night: sitting at his mother's kitchen table with his sleeves rolled up, cutting lengths of cotton wick with a pair of kitchen scissors, while a chandler's daughter told him how it was done.