The Duke Posed as a Servant to Observe His Fiancée… and What He Heard Broke His Heart

Chapter 10

The list went like this.

One. The dressmaker in Paris. A creditor who has threatened to withhold goods. There will be a letter. Letters can be found.

Two. The note in Baker Street, held by a man whose name her mother will not say aloud. Debts owed to unnamed men are the kind that leave paper.

Three. The forged letter requesting an advance, in his name, on a settlement that is not yet signed. That is not a sin. That is a crime, and the magistrate in Hollowmere is a man who has dined at Ravensmere twice.

Four. The mortgage on Hollowmere Hall. Three years in arrears. Held by the Ashby Bank in Derby, if the mother’s wine had loosened anything true.

Five. The question of who else in this house knew.

That last one was not on the list because he wanted it. It was on the list because a man who tears down a wall must first know whether the wall carries the roof.

On Friday he found the girl.

She was at the pump in the stable yard at a quarter past five, filling two buckets, and when she saw him she straightened up so fast she spilled one.

“Mr. Hale.”

“I’m not going to bite you, Nell.”

“You’ve been here five days and you’ve spoken to no one,” she said. “The others say you’re odd.”

“The others are correct.”

She laughed—a small, surprised, real laugh that she immediately pressed her hand over, as though she had been caught stealing. And then she looked at him, and it was the same look as in the scullery: the appraising, careful look of a person who has spent her life reading the moods of dangerous people and who had begun to suspect she was looking at something she had never seen before.

“Are you in trouble?” she asked.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because you ask questions.” She picked up the bucket. “Nobody in service asks questions. We know everything, we just don’t ask.”

Adrian took the full bucket out of her hand—her left hand, the bandaged one—and started walking. She had to hurry to keep up.

“Then answer one,” he said. “How long has Lord Kelgrave been visiting?”

“Two years.”

“Two years.”

“He came first for the shooting. Then he came for the autumn. Then he came for Christmas when her ladyship was at the London house and the dowager was here alone, and stayed a fortnight.” She lowered her voice. “The old butler, Mr. Pike, spoke about it once. He said it was not proper. He was gone by the end of the month.”

“Gone?”

“Dismissed,” Nell said. “Without a reference.”

They reached the stable door. Adrian set the bucket down. Rain was coming off the eaves in a curtain.

“And the duke,” he said. “Does anyone here believe she means to marry him?”

Nell looked at him for a long moment.

“Mrs. Craddock does,” she said. “Cook does. They think she’s been lucky.” She turned away and picked up the second bucket. “The ones who work upstairs don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because we hear her say his name.”

“How does she say it?”

“Like it’s a key,” Nell said, and went inside.

Saturday passed. Sunday, the family went to church, and Adrian carried the footwarmers and stood at the back in the servants’ pew and watched Lady Celeste Draycott pray with her hands folded and her eyes shut so beautifully that the parson mentioned her by name. Monday, Mrs. Craddock’s temper was foul. Tuesday, the rain stopped, and the estate came out from under it, and the smell of wet leaf and horse came up the yard.

Tuesday night, at half past eleven, Adrian went down the garden path, through the laurel, over the stile at the bottom of the orchard, and out onto the lane where the beech trees began.

Hollis was waiting under an umbrella.

“Your grace,” he said, and looked at him. “Something has happened.”

“Yes.”

“Do you wish to tell me, or shall I go on guessing?”

Adrian took the umbrella out of his hand and held it over both of them, because Hollis’s arm had begun to shake and because it was easier than looking at him.

“You are aware that I came here to discover whether the woman I intended to marry was honest.”

“I believe I called it madness.”

“Then remember that I said this next part calmly, and that I have never in my life said anything to you that I did not mean.” Adrian looked out across the dark field, at the black hump of the Hall against the sky, at the single lit window on the second floor that was hers. “She is not merely dishonest. She and Lord Kelgrave intend to marry her to me, hold the title, drain the accounts, and keep a house in London together while I sit in Derbyshire reading the Times and believing I have a wife.”

Hollis was silent.

“There is a forged letter,” Adrian said. “There is a false signature. There is a mortgage on this house, three years in arrears, and the dowager has a creditor she will not name. There are two years of this, and it is all written down somewhere, because people like this always write it down.”

“Your grace—”

“Go to the village at dawn,” Adrian said. “Send a telegram to Mr. Fenn in Lincoln’s Inn. Tell him to buy the mortgage on Hollowmere Hall from the Derby bank—whatever they are owed, whatever the arrears, whatever it takes. Tell him to bring me the deeds and every paper touching the Draycott accounts. And tell him to bring the ring.”

“The ring.”

“The Ravensmere diamond. In the vault at Fenn’s. I left it with him in March because I did not want it in the house.” He handed the umbrella back and stepped out from beneath it, into the wet dark, where the rain was only a memory and the cold had teeth. “The engagement ball is in six weeks. I have just decided to attend.”

“As her footman?”

“I shall attend,” said Adrian Ashford, “as her footman. And then I shall attend again.”

Hollis’s voice was very carefully level.

“And what happens at the second one?”

Adrian had already started back toward the stile. He did not turn around, and the half of his face that Hollis could see in the dark was completely, terribly calm.

“I am going to give the lady exactly what she has been giving me for four months,” he said. “Everything she asks for.”