Chapter twenty-seven
What She Knows
Violet
Five days of chocolates had gone into the window box. The geraniums were dead.
Violet sat up and pulled her shawl to her shoulders when Sarah came in with the tray and the news that there was fog on the square. She set the chocolate by the window and crossed to the fire without being told.
“His Grace was asking after you yesterday. About the stillroom.” She paused while smoothing her sleeve. “He doesn’t usually trouble himself with the household.”
“Was he,” said Violet. “The stillroom was His Grace’s mother’s domain. He would want it to honour her memory.”
“While we are on the topic, I have been going through the stillroom receipts,” she said, as Sarah came to the dressing table. “Some of them go back thirty years.”
“Her Grace kept it up herself until her eyes went.” Sarah took the hairbrush from the table. “After that it stood idle.”
“Did the other duchesses use it?”
“Lady Elizabeth had a country upbringing. She might have.” Long strokes, from the crown down. “Lady Catherine had no interest in it. Lady Margaret brought her own woman for such things.”
Violet watched Sarah in the glass. Her face was composed and at work.
“Catherine,” she said. “She looked so well in the portrait.”
“She was.” The brush slowed. “Very lively. Right up until…”
“Go on.”
“It was nothing, Your Grace.” Sarah’s complexion was slightly rosy.
“I would still like to hear it.”
The comb paused mid-air while Sarah considered. “She was not quite herself. Perhaps she’d taken too much sun.”
“In what manner was she different?”
The comb resumed through Violet’s hair. “She would lose the thread of what she’d been doing. Get up in the night and not know why.”
Violet looked at her own reflection.The fourthwife.“Poor woman,” she said.
“Yes.” Sarah’s voice was full of sympathy. “You’ve done a great deal with the stillroom, Your Grace. The whole house has noticed.”
“I expect they have.”
Sarah moved to dress her. When she leaned in to fasten a button, Violet caught a faintly rotten smell. She kept her expression neutral. By the time Sarah straightened, it was gone.
She let Sarah work in silence for a moment. Sarah moved around the room, folding. Violet sat at the dressing table and turned the wedding band on her finger.
“There is something I have been curious about,” Violet said. “Mr Vexley called on Thursday. The more I see him, the easier I find him.”
“He is easy,” Sarah said.
“He spoke of his situation at some length.” Violet turned her ring on her finger. “He seems to be looking. For a companion, if I read his pauses correctly. He struck me as being quite particular about what he wanted.”
Sarah laid out hairpins on a tray. “Men in his position often are.” Her voice was perfectly detached.
“Yes. He seemed eager for a fresh arrangement. Someone young, I gathered.”