The Duke Fell in Love With His Best Friend’s Little Sister the Moment They Met—Then Promised to Be Nothing More Than Her Friend, Carrying That Secret Beside a Silver Medallion for Two Long Years

 PART 6

Nicholas was in Spain another eighteen months.

The war ground on and turned and turned again, and at last, in the summer of what Ashendon had privately given up counting as a year of his own, Nicholas came home — thinner, harder about the mouth, with a small scar at the temple he had not had before.

Ashendon went to Portsmouth to meet him. They stood on the quay a long moment, looking at each other, and then Nicholas said:

“Marchant.”

“Vain. Home.”

“Home.”

They rode up together to Havering the next day. Nicholas had written ahead.

Harriet was at the door in the yard when they came up the drive. She was in a plain grey gown, no longer in any sort of mourning, her hair up in a plain knot and her hands folded quite still in front of her.

Ashendon, seeing her from the far end of the drive, put his hand up to the inner pocket of his waistcoat. Unconsciously.

Nicholas, riding beside him, saw the gesture and said quietly, without turning his head:

“I gave you that outside Salamanca. You are still carrying it.”

“I am.”

“Good,” said Nicholas — and kicked his horse into a canter.

They came up the drive together and clattered into the yard, and Harriet at the door went first to her brother and put her arms around his neck, and did not, for once, make any pretence of composure. She held him a long moment.

Then she stepped back and wiped her face with the back of her hand and said, without looking at Ashendon yet:

“Your grace. You are welcome. Please come in. There is tea.”

They had tea. They had supper. Nicholas talked and was talked to, and told half his stories and left the other half for later.

And at about ten o’clock, quite deliberately — and not, Ashendon thought, without a certain military neatness — Nicholas stood up, said he was for bed, said he had been on a ship four days and would sleep sixteen hours, kissed his sister on the temple, clapped Ashendon on the shoulder, and left them in the small parlour with the fire going low.

And Corbett — Corbett, forty-four years now in the house — standing at the door.

Harriet said, without looking at him: “Corbett, will you sit in the passage a quarter of an hour, please, with the door open?”

“Yes, Miss Harriet.”

Corbett sat in the passage with the door open.

Harriet stood at the mantelpiece. Ashendon stood by the small parlour table. There was a good six feet of Turkey carpet between them and there was going to remain so.

“Your grace,” she said. “It has been a long while.”

“It has, Miss Vain.”

“You are less thin.”

“I have been eating my dinners, as I was instructed.”

“Good.”

She was quiet. He was quiet.

Then she said, very low: “Your grace. My brother is home. You wrote him something in the summer of last year. I know because he told me on the road up from the coast today — which was, I think, very like him. He said only that you had written him a letter, and that he had told you to keep your promise and come home to him. He did not tell me what was in the letter.”

“Miss Vain —”

“Then may I ask you plainly, Miss Vain?” Ashendon said.

“I will save you the asking,” Harriet said. She lifted her chin. “I want to say it plainly, with Corbett in the passage. I want him to hear. I want your brother to hear it when Corbett tells him tomorrow. I want it said in this house with the door open, where I have had no right to have said anything private for two years and better.”

“Say it, your grace.”

He said it.

He said that he had loved her since the afternoon he had come into the drawing room and heard Corbett say her name. That he had said so to himself, silently, in that first hour, and had then, half an hour later, in the library, promised her brother to be her friend and no more. That he had kept the promise faithfully for two years — she knew it, she had watched him keep it. That he had in the interval obtained, so far as such a thing could be obtained, her brother’s leave to speak. And that he was speaking now, in her own small parlour with Corbett in the passage, because he would not speak in a place where he might later be suspected of having stolen a march on her.

“Miss Vain,” he said, “I want you to know I ask you as a man asks a woman he has known properly a very small number of hours and has honoured at a distance for a very great many. I have no right to hope you feel what I feel. I have every right to ask — because I have kept the terms, and because your brother has given me leave. I ask you now. Will you have me?”

The fire moved. In the passage, Corbett did not stir.

She looked at him from her mantelpiece, and she said, very quietly:

“Your grace. Come here.”