“No.”
“A fire in the morning room?”
“No.”
“In Your Grace’s chamber?”
“Yes.”
“Very good, Your Grace.”
He went up the stairs.
At the top of the stairs, the long gallery of the second floor turned to the right and led to his small suite. To the left it led to the master suite and the mistress’s suite that had been Margaret’s, his third wife, whom he had barely known.
He turned left.
He had not, in twenty months, turned left at the top of these stairs.
The corridor was unlit. He took up a candle from a side table. The sconces on the walls had been left unfilled for almost two years. He walked it.
Margaret’s door was unlocked. He had given no order to lock it, and no one in this house since her death had presumed to do anything with her rooms that he had not asked for.
He pushed the door open.
The room was cold. It smelled of dust and the faint remains of whatever scent she had worn, which he had never been able to name and which he had never asked about. Her powder and brush sat on the dressing table. The bed was made. The hangings were as she had left them. On the small table beside the bed, a book lay face down with its spine cracked open at the page she had reached. He crossed to it and looked.
He had married three women. He had buried them in the cathedral church at Iredell, first when he was almost three and twenty, the second at six and twenty, the third at three and thirty.
He had told himself, after Margaret died, that he would not marry again. He had written, in his own hand, a letter to his cousin naming Edmund his heir for the entirety of his estate, and he had sent it round to Mr Brigg.
He was risking it again.
He sat upon the edge of the bed. The mattress gave under him the way an old mattress does, with a sigh.
He sat there for some time. He could not recall Margaret’s face. He had met her only a few times and been married to her for eleven months. He remembered her voice being thin, timid.
Elizabeth, he remembered better despite the years. His first wife. He recalled the way she’d laughed with her whole body, the flush that spread across her chest when she was angry. The night she had told him she was carrying a child, he had lifted her off the ground at the supper table, and she had said, put me down, Henry, you ridiculous man, and he had not put her down.
She had died a few months later.
He stood, left the room, and found a footman on the landing.
“Have Mrs Greer clear the mistress’s chambers tomorrow. Everything out. The furniture and personal effects to storage. Nothing is to be discarded. The new mistress will need a temporary bed.”
“Very good, Your Grace.”
“And prepare the master’s suite. I shall reside there starting tomorrow.”
“I will inform Mrs Greer, Your Grace.”
In his own chamber, the fire had been built up. The bed had been turned down. He sent his valet away. He did not undress but poured himself a brandy and sat in the chair by the fire. He watched the light move through the crystal glass.
The clock on the landing marked the half hours through the night. He hadn’t slept well since Elizabeth’s death.
Half past one.
Two.