“You Should Marry My Sister,” the Girl Told the Duke — The Duke Smiled at the Child’s Bold Proposal

Chapter 12

He turned so that the whole room could see him.

“I returned from London to find a child’s removal arranged without my review, and two women living under my roof without secure residence or income. I had been away five years. I had let the house be run by habit, and the habit had grown teeth.” He spoke without heat, as though delivering a survey. “I proposed the deception because I had neglected my duty and possessed no better safeguard ready that afternoon. Miss Thurlow accepted it only after setting three terms — that her sister remain with her, that I never presume to know her private feelings, and that she might end the arrangement at the assembly, for any reason or none.”

He paused.

“I accepted all three. She named them within a minute of hearing the plan. I want the room to understand that the terms were hers, and that I did not bargain over a word of them.”

Ottilie’s mouth had gone thin.

“Your grace—”

“I have not finished.” He looked around the room — past Ottilie, past her Selwin cousins beside the musicians, at the tenant families at the back, the steward, the housekeeper, the head gardener standing uncomfortably by the door with his hat in his hands. “My first public promise afterward was careless. I stood on the south lawn and told these people that no one under this roof would be removed without being heard, before I had verified whether I could keep it. Miss Thurlow told me plainly that fine intentions do not mend an unsound roof.”

He lifted one hand towards the eastern windows, beyond which the schoolhouse and the cottage lay dark among the ash trees.

“She was right. So I have done what should have been done before I spoke.”

The room was utterly still.

“Thurlow Cottage has been placed in Miss Thurlow’s tenancy under the school trust. Her salary as botanical drawing mistress is secured for three years, payable quarterly, and is subject to renewal by the trustees — not by any marriage. Nell will remain in her sister’s care. Mrs. Vane has no further authority over their residence or the child’s schooling.”

A murmur went round the oriel, and it was a different murmur from the whispering on the terrace. This one carried surprise first.

Then — and Maren felt it move through the room like a tide turning — approval.

Ottilie’s face had gone a dull, ugly red.

“All arranged,” she said, “to reward her manipulation.”

Adrian faced her fully.

“Then let us speak only of what has been witnessed.”

He looked around the room.

“Anyone who personally saw Miss Thurlow instruct her sister to make that proposal — anyone who saw her pursue me, or any other gentleman, improperly — may step forward now.”

Nobody moved.

The musicians stared at their instruments. A candle guttered in one of the wall-branches. Somewhere at the back a man coughed once and then thought better of it. Adrian let the silence run long, long enough that it stopped being silence and became an answer, and only then did he speak again.

“Now,” he said. “Who has seen her protect a child? Who has seen her teach with patience, refuse what was dishonourable, or serve this estate faithfully when she received neither thanks nor standing for it?”

The head gardener stepped forward first.

Maren’s breath caught.

“She taught my eldest girl without charge,” he said, “after my wife fell ill. Every Thursday for a year. She never asked for anything and I never offered her anything, and I have thought about that every week since.”

A tenant’s wife left the line beside the windows.

“She walked my two boys home in the snow the winter before last, when their father’s cart broke on the Beckside road. It is three miles. She carried the little one the last half.”

The steward came next, and then the cook, and then three mothers whose daughters had attended Maren’s drawing lessons before Ottilie closed the schoolroom to them. Each one spoke a sentence, and each sentence was small, and the effect of them, one after another, was not small at all.

The housekeeper moved into the open space last.

She was a tall, spare woman named Mrs. Ellery who had been at Elmswood eleven years, and her face was pale, and her voice did not shake.

“Two years ago,” she said, “I heard a married guest follow Miss Thurlow into the old conservatory. I heard her tell him to leave her and never approach her alone again. By breakfast he had called her ambitious, and by supper half the servants’ hall had heard it.” She took a breath. “I kept silent. Mrs. Vane told me that a prudent servant knew when to lower her eyes.”

The phrase passed through the room like a draught under a door.

A tenant’s wife lifted her head.

“She said the same to me,” the woman said, “when I asked why Miss Thurlow no longer taught our daughters.”

“And to me,” said another, from somewhere near the jasmine.

Maren felt Cordelia’s fingers tighten around hers.

The anonymous sentence no longer belonged to a scrap of paper hidden in a pocket. It had become Ottilie Vane’s voice, in the memories of people she had expected to remain silent, spoken back to her in her own words by the very people whose silence she had counted on.