Chapter Eight
For the first time since the books had begun coming up to the estate office, Miss Vane made an error in a sum.
It was a small thing, a column of the coal account carried wrong, and she found it herself a moment later and set it right without a word.
But Lucian had watched her add columns for months the way other men watched a good huntsman take a fence, and he saw the difference at once, as he would have seen a horse go short in its stride.
She added the column three times. Her pen stopped twice in the middle of an entry and stood on the paper until the ink swelled.
And once, reaching into her workbag for her memorandum book, she moved a folded letter out of the way with two fingers, quickly, the way a person moves a thing they do not want to touch.
“You are tired, Miss Vane.”
“I am perfectly well, Your Grace.” She did not look up. “The coal merchant is not, I think, perfectly honest, but that is winter for you. Where had we got to?”
They had got to the Twelfth Night ball, which was a few days off and already the size of a small campaign.
They settled the musicians and the cards and the question of how many of the county could be fed at supper without opening the state rooms. She was quick and clear and exact, and there was nothing wrong with her at all, except that the almost-laughter that had lived at the table between them these past weeks had gone, and in its place was a woman doing her work very well from a long way off.
He did not ask about the letter. It was not his to ask about. He noticed that he had thought of asking, which was itself unusual, and then Felton came in about the gravel for the avenue, and the morning closed over the whole matter like water.
His aunt sent for him before dinner.
She was at her little writing desk with the fire heaped high, and she did not turn when he came in. She held a letter out behind her between two fingers, as if it had begun to smell.
“Read that.”
It was written in a flowing, confident hand, crossed once, from Wrenfield, Devonshire.