Page 102 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

I tried to let her down gently. "She would not accept my proposal, Petunia, even were I to make it. She loves you and your brothers and sisters. And she has the keeping of all of you besides. She would never set that down."

"That has changed. The keeping part, I mean. Not the loving part."

Against my better judgment, I asked. "How has the keeping part changed?"

"She and Claire had a talk. Once we go to Yorkshire, Claire will take over the household duties, and the keeping of us as well. Not me, though. I stay with Rosie wherever she goes. Hopefully here." She surveyed the room and found it adequate. "Snowball will like it. Lots of room to roam."

"How do you know this?"

She gave me the look that said I was slow to catch on. "I listened, of course. They were sitting in Claire's sitting room, which used to be Mama's. And very quietly, like a mouse, I put my ear to the door."

I had to laugh. There was not a secret in that house that had ever been kept with Petunia around.

"You may laugh," she said, "but I have been keeping count."

She turned the paper around and pushed it across the desk to me. Her hand was large and careful and sloped downhill toward the right.

Rosie did not eat her breakfast. 4 days. Rosie stopped in the middle of a sentence when reading to me. 3 times. Rosie did not scold Fox about my doll when she really should have. Rosie said she was perfectly fine when asked at least nine times.

I read it once. Then I read it again, which did not improve it.

"She is sad, Duke,” Petunia said. "Everybody says she is tired. She is not tired. I know what she looks like when she is tired, because she has been tired since I was small." She reached over, took the paper back, folded it along its old creases, and returned it to her pocket. "And you are also sad. You live across the square from her when you should be living together. Which is also very stupid."

There was no reply to that which would not have been a lie.

"You had best go soon, Duke. She is busy packing for Yorkshire, but she'll make time for you." When I did not immediately rise, she said, in a voice I have heard her sister use when she offered comfort, "I know it is scary. But you must be brave and ask her to marry you."

She came to her feet. "Now, if you do not mind, I should like to borrow Mr. Milford."

"Milford. Why?"

"Because I need to measure the curtains in my new bedchamber—the one I chose before, with the good light for my dolls. The curtains there are perfectly dreadful. They belong to the last century. I shall be needing new ones."

"Yes. Of course." I rang. When Milford appeared, I told him what was wanted of him, which prompted a smile he did not trouble to suppress.

"It shall be my pleasure to assist you, milady."

"Bye, Duke. Best hurry. Oh—Mr. Milford, might we have tea and biscuits afterward? I am rather famished."

"Certainly, milady. Will fairy cakes do?" He knew the way to her heart.

She grinned. "Oh, yes. They are my favorite." And with a wave of her hand she dismissed me and followed him out of my study.

I sat where I was for a long while.

That she had heard the conversation I did not doubt, nor that she had the gist of it right. Petunia hears a thing and keeps it whole. She counts what other people overlook, and she has never once, in my acquaintance, been wrong about a person in a room with her.

What I doubted was Rosalynd. She might have agreed to any arrangement Claire proposed for the simple reason that Claire proposed it, and that family has had enough turbulence these last weeks to make a woman purchase peace at whatever price was named. Rosalynd had been buying peace for that house since she was eighteen.

Rosie says she is perfectly fine at least nine times. I knew Rosalynd well enough to know what that meant. She was not fine.

What Petunia had brought needed to be considered. If Cosmos's marriage had opened a door and Rosalynd had looked through it and seen me standing on the other side, then there only remained the thing I had never once let myself set down in words.

Children. She would want children.

I could not imagine her marrying without the prospect of them. And that was something I could not allow. But maybe, just maybe, there was a way around it.

It took me another half hour to devise my plan. From somewhere above me came my butler's voice, grave and unhurried, agreeing that the curtains were indeed a disgrace.