“Then we wait,” said Henry. And then, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, he said, “Dine with me tonight.”
She tried not to make anything of it even though she could hardly breathe. “Yes,” she said.
It was the first time. In all the weeks of her marriage she had never once sat at his table.
Sarah dressed her for it. The note and the kerchief lay sewn into the hem of her workbag, six feet from those steady hands.
The dinner was unremarkable from any observer’s point of view, but to Violet, it was the first time she saw the true nature of her husband. The duke served her from his own plate, filling her glass from the decanter at his own elbow, letting no dish reach her that had not first passed him. He could have been protecting his investment. She wanted to see it as tenderness.
She had barely risen from table when Patten announced that Mr Harris begged a word.
“Show him into the morning room. We will both come.”
They received him with the door closed. Kit’s eyes went once to Henry and once to Violet, and she gave him the smallest nod. Kit’s voice was low and level.
“She walked to Holborn. She took the back parlour of a coffee room off Snow Hill, and a gentleman came to her there inside five minutes. Ten minutes’ talk. Not warm, on either side. He passed her money at the end of it. They were notes, folded small, under the table’s edge. She said one thing more as she rose, and he shut his eyes at it. He seemed tired of hearing what she said.”
“Did you recognise him?” Henry asked.
“Yes, Your Grace. I’ve seen him at gaming holes.” Kit looked at Violet. She knew what he was asking to confirm. If she truly trusted the duke enough to divulge all the information. She gave him a small nod again.
Kit cleared his throat. “The man was Mr Vexley, Your Grace. I understand him to be your cousin.”
A log settled in the grate. Violet watched her husband receive his cousin’s name with no more expression than a man being told the weather.
“Go on,” he said.
“After, the carrier’s office at the Bull and Mouth. She handed in a parcel, a small and soft one, and paid the carriage on it. The direction’s in the clerk’s waybook; I can have it off him inside the week without anyone the wiser. Then ribbons at a warehouse, and home.” Kit took up his hat. “She’s careful like it’s a trade.”
“Thank you,” said Violet.
Kit inclined his head and went out.
Chapter twenty-six
What the Stillroom Heard
Violet
They had carried it through the rest of the evening without a word, saying goodnight on the stairs. And now, by one candle at one o’clock in the morning, they found themselves in the stillroom.
Her jars ranked on the shelves, her bunches overhead. Henry stopped two steps inside the door.
“Edmund has no money,” he said. “He economises on his boot-blacking. He has borrowed from me twice this year, and yet he finds banknotes for my wife’s maid.”
“Lovers?”
“Harris said cold. And Edmund is warm with everyone. Coldness from Edmund is itself information.”
“Then she has something on him, and he pays for the keeping of it. What could a lady’s maid know about a duke’s cousin that is worth notes under a table?”
“I cannot begin to fathom what that could be,” he said.
“Or…” she let her thoughts reorganise themselves because it wasn’t a thing that could be said easily or carelessly. “Or perhaps the money is not a secret kept but a service bought. There is exactly one man in England who profits if you die without an heir.”
She expected the flatnohe had given her several times before. It did not come. And that frightened her more.
“Edmund cannot hold a confidence past the fourth glass,” he said, finally, but slowly. “Twelve years of this work wants a discretion he has never once in his life displayed. And,” he stared at the candle, “there is the boy. Harold’s son. I pay her for his keeping, never once met him. Ten years of money passing through those careful hands already, and I have never once asked where any of it arrives.”