She slept on the small couch with the inventory folded beneath her cheek. Morning came pale and slow. Mr. Penrose arrived at a quarter to nine in a plain dark coat with a leather case.
A small dry man with a clerk’s careful eyes and absolute discretion. He had been her father’s man of business. He was now hers. She asked for a clear accounting of every instrument by which her husband was obliged to the bank.
“I have it here. ”
He laid the papers out between them. She read them slowly. Her father had taught her the difference between a covenant and a charge, between a mortgage and a note of hand.
He had wished her to know these things. He had lost three sons and decided she would have to be keeper of the line. She finished and folded her hands. “He has charged the southern estate twice.
”
“Yes, your grace. Once to the bank. Once to a private lender in Calais. ”
“Does the lender know the bank holds a prior charge?
”
“He does not. He was told the estate was unencumbered. ”
“The lender is a Monsieur Vasseur, of energetic methods. He recently arrived in London.
”
“Then we have perhaps a fortnight. ”
She nodded. She had been waiting for someone like Monsieur Vasseur for years. He was the wind.
She had only to open the right windows. “Draw up a formal notice of demand under the bank’s name upon every instrument. Serve it at his club at the hour he is most likely to be there with company. Have ready a clean conveyance returning the southern estate to my father’s trust.
”
Mr. Penrose looked at her. “You have been waiting some time to say that sentence. ”
“It is a good sentence.
”
“Will you wish the notice served by me or a junior? ”
“A junior. A well-mannered one. I do not wish his humiliation to be theatrical, only complete.
”
“Quite. ”
He paused. “May I ask what you wish done regarding the young woman? ”
She had considered it through the night.
Turn her out? Confront her? In the end she returned to the thing she always returned to: the girl was twenty-two and had been promised things she would not receive. It served no purpose to crush a creature her husband had already used.
“A quiet arrangement. A modest sum settled in her own name. A passage to her aunt in Lyon. The necklace returns to me before sundown.
She is not to remain in this house beyond tonight. ”
“It will be done. ”
When he had gone she stood at the window watching gardeners move along the south border. She found she was faintly hungry.
She rang for breakfast. Mrs. Cleaver came in with toast, a soft-boiled egg, very strong tea. She set them down with grim satisfaction.
“His grace is asking for you. He has been told you returned. He is in the morning room. He asks that you attend him at your earliest convenience.
”
“Tell him I shall come at eleven. ”
At quarter to eleven she trimmed a stray wisp of hair. She wore no jewels except her wedding ring and the thin gold chain with a small enameled rosemary sprig her mother had given her on her tenth birthday. At eleven precisely she went down.
The morning room faced east. The light was clean and merciless. Her husband had chosen the chair at the window, his face in shadow, hers not. She sat anyway.
He had aged more than she had allowed herself to notice. Around the eyes the faint sag of a man who slept poorly. Around the mouth the set of a man who had begun to be afraid of his own letters. “Eleanor, you are home early.
”
“I am home on the day I said I would be home. ”
“There is a guest in the east wing. ”
“Yes. ”
“Do not lie to me in this room.
It was my mother’s. Choose another. ”
He was silent. “What do you want?
” he asked quietly. “I want to know how much you owe. In total to every party as of this morning. ”
He laughed without breath.
“Eleanor, my dear—”
“How much? ”
He looked at his hands. “A great deal. More than I intended.
There have been losses. ”
“Which horse? ”
“Tamerlane. He was meant to win at Doncaster.
”
“He did not. ”
She let him have a moment. She had not come to humiliate him in detail. Only to be sure he understood she knew.
He understood. She watched it form like frost on a pane. “The bank to which you owe the bulk will serve notice this afternoon at your club. It gives you fourteen days.
At the end, the bank will move on the southern estate, the townhouse, the Wexford stables. Monsieur Vasseur of Calais will discover he holds no charge. I do not know what he will do. I have heard he is energetic.
”
He had gone white. “How do you know all of this? ”
“I own the bank. ”
He stared.
She watched the sentence travel through him like a stone dropped down a deep well. The splash came. “I bought it three years ago with money my father left me in a trust you did not know existed. I have been the holder of every instrument by which you borrowed against this house.
I have approved every advance. I have signed every renewal. I have instructed the bank to forbear until I decided what to do. I have decided now.
”
“Why now? ”
“Because of the necklace. ”
His mouth opened. “My mother’s necklace.
You put it on the throat of a girl in my mother’s bedroom. You stood behind her and smiled at the back of her head. You laughed in a way that told me I did not exist any longer in any room that mattered to you. So I shall move into the rooms that matter to me, and ask you to leave them.
”
He put his face in his hands. “What do you want me to do? ”
“Sit with Mr. Penrose this afternoon and sign three documents.
The first returns the southern estate to my father’s trust. The second assigns the townhouse and stables to me. The third is a deed of separation. You will have four thousand a year from a property in Northumberland I purchased in my own name.
You may live where you like on that. You may not live here. ”
“Eleanor, you—”
“The house was my father’s. It is mine.
It will in due course be our daughter’s. ”
He looked up. “I am with child. I had intended to tell you over dinner Thursday in the great room.
I find I am telling you now in this room in this way instead. I’m sorry for that. I am not sorry for much else this morning. ”
He began to cry in the silent surprised way of men who have forgotten how.
She said more gently, “You will not see her while she is small. When she is older, if she wishes to know you, I shall not prevent her. But you will not undo in her childhood what you have undone in mine. ”
He nodded.
She rose. “Mr. Penrose will be here at three. I would advise you to eat something.
”
At the door she paused. “The young woman is being attended to. She leaves tonight with a sum settled in her own name and a passage to Lyon. She is not to be spoken to harshly.
”
“Yes. ”
She opened the door and went out. She walked down the corridor past her grandfather, her father, her amused great-aunt. At the painting she paused and looked up.
The painted eyes looked back with something like recognition. She smiled. The girl in the east wing was found sitting on the edge of the bed, the emerald necklace already off and laid neatly on velvet, her trunk half packed. She was not surprised.
She asked only whether the duchess would receive her before she left. They met at four. The girl came in alone. Prettier than the duchess had allowed herself to acknowledge the night before, younger, tired around the eyes.
She wore a plain traveling dress. She curtsied. “Sit down. ”
She sat.
“Your name is Clemence Bouvier. Your father was a music master. Your mother died when you were eleven. You have an aunt in Lyon.
”
“Yes, your grace. ”
“Why did you not go to her? ”
“I had been told I could do better. ”
The duchess looked at her.
“You may do better still. There is a school in need of an assistant mistress of French and pianoforte. The position is offered. A sum is settled in your own name.
You are not to touch the principal except in emergency. You are to live on your salary. This is the last conversation we shall have. You do not come back.
Not to this country. Not into this family by any door. ”
“Yes, your grace. ”
The girl rose and went to the door.
She stopped. “He told me they were his mother’s. ”
“I know. ”
“I am sorry.
”
“Go to Lyon. Be useful. Be happy if you can. ”
The door closed.
The afternoon was long. The three documents were signed. The duke’s hand shook on the first, steadied on the second, was by the third the hand of a man who had decided to be done. He left the house that night with two trunks and his valet.
He went to a hotel, then to Northumberland, where he took up walking and the writing of long unsent letters. He lived a long time. He did not marry again. Monsieur Vasseur departed for Calais two days later, having extracted a sum from the duke’s personal effects.
The duchess judged it a fair price for the lesson. Captain Marston was posted to the West Indies. Mademoiselle Bouvier taught in Lyon. She married a bookseller, had three children, kept a sealed letter in a drawer she never opened.
She was buried with it. As for the duchess, she bore her daughter at midsummer in her mother’s bed with the windows open and the smell of cut hay. She named the child Margaret. She raised her at Aldermere.
She managed the estate. She kept the bank. She did not remarry. She wore in the evenings, when alone, the small enamelled rosemary at her throat.
The emeralds she kept in their case and brought out once a year on her mother’s birthday. She counted them always seven. They had not been laughing. They had been waiting, as stones do, to be taken home.
In the small study at the end of the west corridor, a woman sat each evening at her father’s desk with her daughter asleep in a basket at her feet and wrote the small daily letters by which an estate is kept alive. Sometimes she paused and looked at the basket. Sometimes she did not. The fire made the small sounds fires make.
The clock kept its patient time. Outside the long lawn went down to the lake. The lake, which had been there a great deal longer than the house, declined as ever to comment.