SHE PRETENDED TO BE A “BOY” FOR 7 MONTHS TO AVOID AN ARRANGED MARRIAGE—UNTIL THE DUKE FOUND OUT…
Chapter 13
Josephine wrote the letter by candlelight in the tack room, with a bridle hook for a desk and a stub of pencil Dennis had sharpened for her with his knife.
She wrote it plain.
I am not Joseph Whitehead. My name is Josephine Foster, daughter of the late Edmund Foster of Foster Hall. I came to Hawthorne Estate in November disguised as a boy to escape an arranged marriage contracted by my uncle, Arthur Foster, without my consent. I have served in the stables and, for two months, inside the manor. I deceived the household and its master. This is the truth of it, written in my own hand.
She signed it. Josephine Foster.
Then she sat back and looked at the name and felt something strange and enormous move through her chest, because it was the first time in six months she had set that name down anywhere. The first time she had admitted, in writing, that she existed.
She folded the paper and took it to Dennis.
He read it slowly — mouthing the words, because Dennis’s letters were hard-won and he did not waste them — and when he finished he folded it again and handed it back.
“Good,” he said. “Clean. Nothing in it to hang you.”
“Now what?”
“Now you go see him.”
“He said I am not to enter the house.”
“He said you’re not to enter the house,” Dennis agreed. “He didn’t say you couldn’t knock on the door.” He stood and stretched. “Go at the change of the watch. He’ll be in the study. Knock. Hand it to him. Say nothing else. Then leave.”
“And if he doesn’t read it?”
“Then he’s a different man than I’ve worked for fifteen years,” said Dennis, “and you’ll know it, and you can write to Lady Evangeline in the morning.”
She knocked at eight o’clock, in the grey hour between the servants’ dinner and the house’s late quiet. Rain ran off the eaves in a steady curtain. Her boots left water on the flagstones of the back hall, and she stood dripping in the corridor outside the study door with her cap in her hands and the letter folded twice in her fist.
She knocked twice. A voice said to enter.
She did not enter.
“Your Grace.”
Raymond Hawthorne looked up from his desk. He was alone, coat off, sleeves rolled to the elbow — an intimacy she had never seen and was not supposed to see. His pen stopped moving.
“You are not to be in this house.”
“I know, Your Grace.” She held out the paper without crossing the threshold. “I came to give you this.”
He looked at the folded page, and then at her, and then back at the page. He did not move to take it.
“What is it?”
“A confession, Your Grace. In my own hand, signed with my own name.” She kept her arm out. “Lady Evangeline asked me to write it for her to keep. I chose to write it for you instead.”
For a long moment, nothing happened. The rain ticked against the window. The fire hissed in the grate.
Then Raymond stood, crossed the room, and took the letter from her hand without touching her fingers.
He unfolded it. Read it. And Josephine watched his face while he did — watched the small tensions move through it, the jaw, the brow, the way his eyes slowed at her father’s name and stopped at the word uncle.
When he reached the end, he read it again.
Then he lowered the page and looked at her, and his expression was something she had never seen on him before — not cold, not controlled, but faintly, unmistakably angry in a way that had nothing to do with her.
“Arthur Foster.”
“You know him, Your Grace?”
“Every man who has money in this county knows Arthur Foster.” His voice was tight. “He sits on the county board. He votes on the poor rates. He gives generously to the church.” He looked down at the letter again. “And he sold his brother’s daughter to a miller.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“The miller’s name.”
“Mr. Collingwood, Your Grace. Of Harrowfield.”
Raymond’s jaw moved once. He folded the letter carefully, precisely, along the existing creases, and set it on the corner of his desk exactly aligned with its edge.
“Go back to the stables.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“And Joseph—”
She stopped in the doorway.
“Thank you for bringing this to me.”
She stood in the rain-dark corridor with her heart climbing into her throat and did not know what to say to that, and so she bowed her head and went out into the wet night, and the study door closed behind her with a soft, definite click.
Evangeline was waiting in the servants’ hall the next evening with her hands folded and her smile already prepared.
“You have it?”
“I have it, my lady.”
Josephine held out the second envelope — the copy, written in the same hand, folded the same way. Evangeline took it and turned it over, and her eyes flicked up.
“That was easier than I expected.”
“You were right, my lady. Better to be caught honest than to be hunted.”
Evangeline watched her for a moment, looking for the trick. Josephine kept her face still, kept her eyes level, and gave her nothing, because she had learned in four months that the only way to lie to a clever person was to say nothing at all.
Evangeline slipped the envelope into her sleeve.
“You were wise,” she said, and it sounded like a sentence pronounced. “When I return to London, I will consider what use to make of this. If you behave, it stays unopened.”
“I will behave, my lady.”
“See that you do.” Evangeline turned toward the door, then paused. “One thing, Joseph.”
“My lady?”
“If you ever think to cheat me — if that letter in my hand should turn out to be worth less than it appears — remember that I know your name now.” Her smile was serene. “Josephine Foster. A name like that, with a scandal in it, travels a very long way.”
She left.
Josephine stood alone in the servants’ hall and let out a breath she had been holding since the letter left her hand.
She had a copy in Evangeline’s sleeve and the truth on the Duke’s desk.
Now it was only a matter of which one reached the world first.