Page 42 of A Bride for the Ruthless Duke

“That is exactly the lane I have been looking for.” Ellen gathered the reins. “Good day to you. I shall come back when I have the time for the longer tale.”

She rode home along the river with the wind at her back, and arrived in the yard with color in her face that no amount of managing had put there, and Hibbert looked at her and the mare both and said only that he had thought as much, and would she ride again the following day.

***

The accounts she had to fight for, in the end, though the fight was quiet and conducted entirely over a ring of keys.

Mrs. Selby received her in the housekeeper’s room standing, which was its own small statement, a tall straight woman of sixty with a face that had refused softer expressions for so long they no longer occurred to it.

“Your Grace asked for the household books.” The keys hung at her waist and did not move. “I keep them very particular. They have not wanted a second hand on them these eleven years.”

“I do not doubt it. I have seen the house, and a house this well run does not run itself.” Ellen sat, since the woman would not, and folded her hands. “I have not come to take the books from you, Mrs. Selby. I have come to read them, and to take the stillroom and the kitchen garden off your hands, which I am told have been a burden to you that was never yours to carry.”

“The stillroom is no burden.”

“Then it is the only neglected thing in this house that is not, and I have walked the whole of it, so I know what I am looking at.” She let that sit a moment. “You have run Wrenfield with no mistress over you for eleven years and made it look as though there were three of you. I am not here to undo that. I am here to lift the one stone off you that you have not had hours for, and to learn the rest from the person who knows it best, which is yourself.”

The keys still did not move. But something behind the woman’s refused face was doing arithmetic of its own.

“Last quarter’s books are in the press,” Mrs. Selby said at last. “I will send them up before dinner, as Your Grace instructed Coyne. The stillroom keys are these two.” She unhooked them, and held them a moment, and gave them over. “The large is the door. The small is the spirit cupboard, and I will thank Your Grace to keep it locked, for the maids.”

“I will keep it locked.” Ellen closed her hand round the keys. “Thank you, Mrs. Selby. We shall get on.”

“We shall see, Your Grace.” But it was said without frost, and at the door the woman added, almost grudging, “The late duchess kept the small key on a blue ribbon. There is one in the second drawer, if Your Grace cares for it.”

“I should like that very much.”

She measured the fortnight that followed not in days but in what changed under her hand, the cleared beds, the pears tied in straight, the bay’s leg gone cool in six days and the gutter running clean, Heather out every fine afternoon until the grooms stopped watching to see whether the duchess could ride. By the time Augusta’s traveling carriage came up the beech drive there was a brown line of sun across the back of Ellen’s hand where the glove had gaped, and the small stillroom key hung on a blue ribbon at her wrist.

Augusta came down from the carriage in a damp pelisse and a hat that was both dignified and entirely ridiculous, and stopped where she stood. “Child, you have not been getting nearly enough sun.”

“My lady, I have been out of doors every day this fortnight.”

“Then it is doing you no good at all, and we shall have to find a better sort of sun.” She crossed the gravel and folded Ellen into a brief firm embrace and let her go before it could become a thing that needed managing. “Well. You are upright and you are brown and you have not run mad. I had wagered against at least one of the three.”

It was the first time anyone had put their arms round Ellen since her father’s demise, and she had held on a half-second too long, and Augusta had felt it and said nothing.

“You seem quite out of frame today.”

“I sleep well enough.”

“That is not the same as sleeping, but we will let it lie.” Augusta drew off her gloves. “Where is my nephew?”

“In his study. Where he is most mornings, and most afternoons, and a good part of every evening.”

“Of course he is. Give me tea, and tell me everything, and I shall pretend not to be prying while I do it.”

They had tea in the parlor that caught the afternoon light, and Augusta asked her not one direct question, which was how Augusta got everything.

“The weather here is softer than London,” the old woman observed, to the window. “One sleeps better. I always did.” A silence, into which she added nothing at all, and stirred her tea, and let the quiet do the asking for her.

“I sleep well enough,” Ellen said.

“Of course you do.” Another silence, longer, comfortable as an old coat. Augusta seemed wholly occupied with her cup.

“The duke is kind to the staff,” Ellen heard herself say, into one of the old woman’s long comfortable silences. “I did not expect that, and I watched for it to be false, and it is not false. He pays a pension to a coachman who can no longer hold the reins, and no one was meant to tell me, and the coachman told me himself, weeping.”

“Mm.” Augusta turned her cup a quarter-turn on its saucer. “And does he know that you know?”