Chapter 11: A Letter and a Gig

I was down the back stairs in four minutes, with my hair in my fist and my dress buttoned wrong.

My father stood in the great hall with his hat in his good hand.

A footman held the door and a housemaid held a candle.

Both looked at the ceiling.

"Clem," my father said.

"Papa. You can't. You can't have come all this way with your arm."

"I took the carrier to Hatfield and the dog-cart from there." He looked me up and down. "You've done your buttons wrong."

I looked down.

I'd done the first one in the second hole, and the whole row climbed up crooked.

"I was in a hurry," I said.

"I should think so."

A step sounded on the stairs.

The Duke of Ashvane came down in his dressing gown and his boots, with his hair on end and the scar white over his eye.

He stopped on the last step.

For a long moment nobody in the hall made a sound.

Then my father held out his right hand.

"Your Grace," he said. "Josiah Tallis. I believe I owe you an apology for sending a substitute."

"Mr. Tallis."

Everard came down and took the hand, gravely.

"You owe me nothing."

"Your daughter is the best thing that has happened to this house in ten years."

"The piano?"

"I meant the tuner."

My father's eyebrows went up behind his spectacles.

I wanted to lie down on the flagstones.

"Is there any breakfast in this place," my father said, "or must I smell it from the road?"

There was.

He ate two eggs and four rashers at the end of the long table.

The duke sat across from him, and I sat wedged between, my face the colour of a boiled beet.

He asked about the damp.

I told him about the chimney.

He asked about the pinblock, and I said the clamps were on and it was a waiting matter now.

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