“Sleep,” he said. “One of us should.”
“Henry.” He stopped. She was looking at him over the candle flame. “Thank you for telling me.”
He inclined his head, and went back into his room, and closed the door with great care, as though it were something that could bruise.
When he entered the kitchen at quarter to six, Mrs Greer set down her cup with alarm and rose swiftly.
“Your Grace.”
“Sit, Mrs Greer. Nothing is wrong.” He took the chair across from her and watched her sit back down in astonishment. “A small matter. Her Grace has taken the stillroom in hand. You’ll have seen it.”
The alarm seemed to ease. “I have, Your Grace. Restocked and ordered proper. It does the heart good to see it used again.”
“She means to go on with it. I shall like to see her attended to. There was a girl brought up to it, in my mother’s day. Whom did she teach?”
Mrs Greer considered only briefly. “Only the two, Your Grace, that were properly taught. Mrs Garrick. Her Grace your mothersoon discovered she knew her mushrooms and hedge-greens from her country days and took her in hand for the kitchen remedies. She still makes the simple ones; the horehound syrup for the boot-boy’s cough this past winter was hers.”
Henry gave a small approving nod, encouraging her to continue.
“And Sarah.”
He did not move. Mrs Greer must have thought he was confused, because she continued, “Sarah Baker, that’s maid to Her Grace now. Her grandmother kept this house before me, God rest her, and when the child was orphaned, Her Grace your mother took a particular interest. Had her up to the stillroom from nine or ten. Taught her the letters at that very bench, I believe, along with the rest of it.” The warmth in her face was wholly unguarded now. “Her Grace used to say Sarah had the steadiest hands she ever taught.”
“Indeed,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“Shall I tell Sarah Her Grace would like her help with it, then?”
“No.” The word came too quickly. He mended it at once, evenly. “No. The duchess prefers to manage it herself for the present. It was an idle question. I would not have it carried further… to anyone.”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Mrs Greer would never in her life suspect what she had just revealed, because to her the household was a body, and she would as soon suspect her own hand.
He thanked her for the information and went up.
Henry was at the connecting door. His hand was, in fact, already on the wood, with the names in his mouth and every resolutionabout certainty going quietly to pieces, when he heard the outer door of Violet’s chamber open.
The light clink of a tray. And then a voice, bright and easy and ordinary as the morning itself.
“Good morning, Your Grace. There’s a hard frost. I’ve brought your chocolate up hot.”
Sarah.
And Violet’s answer, blurred with sleep: “Thank you, Sarah. Set it by the window.”
He stood with his hand flat against the door, close enough to hear his wife wake, while the steadiest hands his mother ever taught moved about her room. Curtains opened. The fire seen to. Small domestic sounds, each one ordinary, each one intolerable. It was the longest posting of his life, and it lasted perhaps four minutes.
The outer door closed. He knocked once and went in.
Violet was sitting up with her shawl about her shoulders, and one look at his face had her sitting upright. He crossed the room, and the first thing he did was look at the cup steaming gently on the window table.
“Have you—”
“No.”
The relief went through him with a force out of all proportion to a cup of chocolate. He sat on the edge of the bed.
“Two,” he said. “My mother taught two. Mrs Garrick.” He watched her take it in. “And Sarah.”
Violet looked at the door her maid had just gone out of. For a long moment she said nothing.
