SHE PRETENDED TO BE A “BOY” FOR 7 MONTHS TO AVOID AN ARRANGED MARRIAGE—UNTIL THE DUKE FOUND OUT…

Chapter 26

In March, the news of Arthur Foster came to them from three directions in one week.

The first was Dennis, who brought it up from Hawthorne with the feed cart: that her uncle had been seen in the county town in January, dressed badly, drinking in a public house near the horse fair, and that he had been heard asking after a niece and telling anyone who would listen that he had been wronged by the Duke of Hawthorne.

“No one listened,” Dennis reported. “Horse fair’s full of men who know His Grace, and they know he doesn’t do a thing without a reason. Arthur Foster got thrown out of the George on the second night.”

The second piece of news came from Francis, in a letter written in his careful steward’s hand: that Arthur Foster had been served with papers from a creditor in Bristol — a matter that predated Josephine’s flight entirely — and that he was being pursued for a debt of some thousand pounds on a property he had mortgaged and lost.

“He is finished,” Francis wrote, in his flat way. “He has no house, no holdings, and no credit. He has been living on the charity of a cousin in Bristol, and the cousin has now written to me asking whether the estate would consider taking him on as a clerk — a request which I have not granted, and which I would not grant without instruction.”

The third piece of news came from Josephine’s own uncle.

It arrived in April, in a hand she recognized from a hundred letters that had been read aloud in her childhood. It was addressed to Josephine Foster, Foster Hall, and it was four lines long.

I am told you have done well for yourself. I have nothing and no one. I do not write to blame you, though it has been put to me that I should blame you, and perhaps you think so too. I am not asking for the Duke’s charity, and I would not accept it if it were offered. I am asking whether I may see the house one more time. I lived there as a young man, before your father, and I have thought about it a great deal. If the answer is no, I will not write again.

Josephine sat with the letter on the study desk for the better part of a day.

She read it in the morning and hated it. She read it at noon and cried over it, which she had not expected. She read it in the afternoon and felt nothing but a cold dislike. And at dusk she read it a fourth time, and understood that all three reactions were true at once and that none of them was the answer.

She showed it to Raymond that evening.

He read it without expression and handed it back.

“What do you want to do?”

“I do not know.” She folded it. “I am not going to forgive him. He sold me, and if I had been slower on the road or worse at lying, I would be the wife of Mr. Collingwood by now, and no one would ever have come looking for me. There is no version of that which I am required to forgive.”

“No.”

“But I do not want to be the kind of person who keeps a man from seeing his brother’s grave either.” She looked at the fire. “My father is buried in the churchyard at the crossroads. I have not visited it since I was eighteen. If Arthur wants to stand there for ten minutes, I do not think I have the right to stop him.”

Raymond considered this.

“There is a difference,” he said, “between what you have a right to do and what will let you sleep at night.”

“Yes.” Josephine stood. “That is exactly the problem.”

In the end, she wrote back. Four lines, matching his.

You may come to the churchyard at the crossroads on the first Sunday of May, at ten in the morning. My father is buried under the yew tree at the east end, beside my mother, and there is a stone bench four paces north of it. You may sit there for an hour. You will not come up the lane and you will not knock on the door of this house, and if you do I will have the constable remove you. I am not forgiving you. I am simply not able to be the reason you never stood at your brother’s grave. — J.

He came.

She watched him from the upstairs window as he walked up the churchyard path and sat on the bench. He was stooped and thin and his coat had been mended badly at the elbow. He stayed an hour, exactly as she had said, and then he stood up, and put his hand on the yew tree for a moment, and walked back down the path and away up the road toward Bristol.

He did not knock on the door.

She went down and told Raymond that it was over.

“Are you sorry?” he asked.

“No.” Josephine sat down. “I am not sorry and I am not glad. It is the first time in my life that I have done a thing about him that was neither.” She looked at her hands. “I think that may be what peace feels like. It is very quiet and there is not much in it.”