“The statement will be made,” Lord Brocklehurst said through his teeth.
“Splendid,” his grace said, getting to his feet finally. He had not touched one drop of his brandy. “I shall look for an official notice of your statement within the next week or two. You are recording all this too, are you, Houghton?”
“Yes, your grace,” the voice beyond the door said.
“After Miss Bradshaw’s name has been cleared,” his grace said, “I shall communicate with you again, Brocklehurst, to see what can be arranged for her comfort until her twenty-fifth birthday. But I need not detain you with a discussion of that point now. Good day to you. Have a pleasant journey. Do you go to Heron House?”
“I have not decided and do not feel it necessary to share my plans with you anyway, Ridgeway,” Lord Brocklehurst said, making for the door.
“Ah, quite so,” his grace said. He stood beside the chair and watched the other leave.
His shoulders visibly sagged when the door closed.
“Come in here, Houghton,” he said. “Have you ever known a more slimy fellow?”
Peter Houghton, closing the music room door behind him as he entered the library, did not seem to think it necessary to reply.
“I was in fear and trembling,” his grace said, “that he would see the obvious route out of all his difficulties. It was glaring him in the face so dazzlingly for a whole minute that I am amazed it did not blind him. You saw it too, I presume? Indeed, doubtless you saw it before I did.”
“He might have explained that all his attempts to get Miss Hamil … er, Miss Bradshaw to marry him were a ruse to get her to go quietly to avoid scandal in the house,” Houghton said. “Yes, your grace, I kept my eyes closed for all of half a minute waiting for him to see it. He will curse himself when he looks back and realizes how he could have wriggled out of your trap.”
“Knowing you, Houghton,” the duke said, “I would guess that the notes you made are beautifully written and meticulously organized. But go over them, if you please. I don’t believe we will ever need them, but I want them to be ready if we do.”
“Yes, your grace,” Peter Houghton said.
“In the meanwhile,” his grace said, smiling, “I believe I shall go upstairs to relieve a lady’s mind of the heavy burden that has weighed it down for all of three months.”
Peter Houghton did not reply as his master left the room, a spring actually in his step. Neither did he smile with amusement or sneer with scorn. He shook his head rather sadly. It was worse than he had thought. She was not his grace’s ladybird after all. She was his love.
But his grace was an honorable man.
Houghton felt a deep pity for his employer.
FLEUR HAD JUST ENOUGH money to reach the market town twenty miles from Heron House. Twenty miles seemed a very long way still to go, especially with the weather chilly and unsettled. And a bundle that seemed heavier by the minute and an empty stomach did nothing to improve the prospect of a long walk.
But there was no alternative. She set out to walk the twenty miles. She was fortunate enough to be taken up by a farmer in an uncomfortable and foul-smelling cart for three or four miles. And all of seven miles from home she was recognized by another farmer driving a wagon and was taken right to the door of Heron House. She could only thank him most gratefully and hope that he was not expecting payment.
But then, she thought with a rueful smile as he turned his horses’ heads and made off without delay, perhaps his payment would be in the excitement of being the one to break the news in the village that she was home.
The servants clearly did not know quite what to do when she was admitted to the house. She took a deep breath and decided to take the initiative.
“I am fatigued, Chapman,” she told the butler, as if she had just come in from an afternoon’s walk. “Have hot water for a bath sent to my room, if you please, and send Annie up to me.”
“Yes, Miss Bradshaw,” the butler said, looking at her rather as if she had two heads, Fleur thought. He spoke again as she turned away to climb the stairs. “Annie is not with us any longer, Miss Isabella.”
“She is gone?” she said, turning back to him. “Lord Brocklehurst dismissed her?”
“She had an offer of a place in Norfolk at the house where her sister works, Miss Isabella,” he said. “She was sorry to leave.”
“Send me one of the other maids, then,” Fleur said.
She had been looking forward to seeing Annie again, she thought, climbing the remaining stairs to her room and looking about at all the familiar objects—a part of her identity for so many years. It was almost a surprise to find that nothing had been removed from her room. Even the clothes that had been packed away in her trunk were back there. She need not have brought her new clothes from Willoughby Hall after all.