An Inch of Black Ribbon

By daylight he is a duke again.

You come down at eight with the night still in your head, every line of those notes, his and yours, folded up small behind your ribs where nobody can see. You don't know what you expected. A look, perhaps. Some sign that the man who wrote please don't go at midnight and the man who rules this desk are the same person.

He's at the partners' desk already, shaved, starched, cravat like a blade. He says, "Good morning, Mr. Carew. The Wiltshire rents," and slides a ledger across without looking up.

So that's how it's going to be.

Fine. You can do starch. You were raised in a rectory.

But at half past three, when you bring up the toast, he puts down his pen the moment the plate touches the blotter. He eats the first triangle while you're still walking back to your chair. He doesn't look at you. His ears, very slightly, are pink.

You bend over the rents so he won't see your face.

The Feltham letter takes the whole of the afternoon.

"Too warm," he says, of your first draft. "He'll think I'm frightened."

"You are frightened, Your Grace."

He gives you a look that would wither a hedge. You write it again. Colder. Shorter. Your letter has been received. His Grace is presently much engaged with business in the House and will consider any communication at his convenience. Any further correspondence should be directed to his secretary.

He reads it. Reads it again.

"'Directed to his secretary,'" he says slowly.

"So that whatever Feltham sends comes to me first," you say. "And you don't have to watch it burn."

The study is very quiet.

"Mr. Carew," he says, and stops, and starts again. "That's not in the terms of your employment."

"Everything that comes into this house addressed to you, Your Grace. You said so. I'm only reading the terms very carefully."

He looks at you for a long moment. Then he takes the pen, signs it Ashvale in that small black hand, and gives it back without another word. But his fingers brush yours on the paper, and neither of you pretends it didn't happen, and neither of you says anything about it either.

Lady Lucasta Hollingbrook calls at four, which is not a calling hour, and asks for His Grace's secretary, which is not a thing ladies do.

Pengrave delivers this information with the air of a man reporting a fire in the chapel.

She's in the small drawing room in a walking dress the color of claret, pulling off her gloves one finger at a time.

"He's at the Lords," you say.

"I know. That's why I came now." She sits without being asked. "I want to see his appointment book."

"I'm afraid that's not possible, my lady."

"His mother means to announce our engagement by Midsummer. I want to know how many evenings between now and then I'll be required to stand next to him looking grateful." She smiles. "I'm asking for my own diary's sake, Ethan. Surely a man with your talent for seating charts can sympathize."

"His Grace's diary is his own."

"Everything about him is his own." She studies you. "Do you know, I've known Varian Rotherby since I was nine years old and he was eighteen and too beautiful to be borne. He's been perfectly kind to me for fifteen years. Not once has he looked at me the way he looked at that toast you were carrying upstairs just now."

You go cold. "I wasn't aware the toast was visible from the drawing room."

"Everything is visible to a woman who's being sold." She stands, pulls her gloves back on. "Don't look like that, Ethan. I've decided I like you, and I don't tell tales about people I like. It's so rare it seems a waste." At the door she pauses. "When his mother has you write the announcement, make the letters very small. I'd like to be able to pretend it isn't there."

The Dowager arrives forty minutes after Lucasta leaves, which you suspect is not a coincidence.

She doesn't sit. She stands in the middle of the study as if it were still her husband's, looking at the partners' desk, at your side of it, at his.

"Lady Lucasta called," she says.

"Yes, Your Grace."

"Good." She lays a sheet on your blotter, violet-scented. "This is the form of the notice for the Morning Post. You'll draft it in the proper style and have it ready by the first of June. The engagement will be announced by Midsummer." She looks at you. "My son will say he has not agreed. My son has been saying he has not agreed to things since he was four years old, and he always does them in the end, because he's dutiful, and because he's a Rotherby, and because he knows what's at stake."

"What is at stake, Your Grace?"

You meant it as a secretary's question, dry, about settlements and acres. It doesn't come out that way. The Dowager's eyes rest on you a moment too long, and for one second she looks less like a frost and more like a woman standing at a window watching weather come in.

"Everything," she says. "Good afternoon, Mr. Carew."

At half past five a footman brings a note from Westminster.

Mr. Carew. I need the Stanmere deed for the committee tomorrow, the original. It is in the bottom drawer, left-hand side of my desk, under the Wiltshire maps. Send it by Jem. A.

His side of the desk feels like trespass even though he gave you the key. You walk round. You kneel on the carpet in front of his chair, where he sits every day, where the leather still holds the shape of him, and you fit the little iron key into the bottom-left lock.

The Wiltshire maps. Under them, a long parchment with a red seal. Stanmere. You lift it out.

And as you rise, your knee knocks the drawer beside it.

The bottom-right drawer. That one is not yours, Mr. Carew. Not ever.

It moves.

It shouldn't move. You've seen him check it every night, last thing, one thumb on the brass. But it slides out toward you a whole inch on oiled runners, silent, and the lock tongue is out, not in its socket; it was turned but never caught. He was late this morning. You remember now. He came down five minutes after eight instead of before, which in this house is like the sun rising in the west, and his eyes were shadowed as if he had sat up writing long after the notes stopped.

You put out your hand to push it shut.

That's when you see it. Trailing from the gap over the polished edge, like something trying to get out: an inch of black silk ribbon.