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A footman entered the room. Verity swallowed her rising tirade.

“Mr. Somerset has arrived, Madame,” said the footman.

“Very good. Clear the tea service and show him in in two minutes.”

When the footman was gone, the dowager duchess pointed to a Japanese screen set diagonally across a far corner of the drawing room. “There is a chair behind the screen. You will wait there.”

It seemed a long time before Stuart was shown in—Verity’s eyes were cross from staring at a delicately painted crane. At last his name was announced. She clamped her hands between her legs to keep them from shaking and followed the sound of his footsteps across the floor.

“Your Grace,” he said, his voice warm but puzzled. “You sent for me?”

“I did. Thank you for coming so promptly.”

“I’m amazed you knew where I was to be found—it is not every day that I visit my own solicitors.”

“I do have my means, Mr. Somerset. Please, take a seat.”

“Is it something urgent?”

“It is certainly not something I wish to leave to the caprice of time.”

“You have my full attention then, Madame.”

“I sincerely hope so, for I need you to listen very carefully to what I have to say.”

Someone came in and left. Verity heard the sound of water—the dowager duchess pouring tea.

“It has come to my attention that you have taken up with your cook,” said the elder woman.

From across the length of the room Verity felt him stiffen in discomfiture.

“With all due respect, Madame, that is not something I will discuss.”

She was gratified to hear that his voice had lost some of its warmth.

“I am not interested in the private particulars of your life, Mr. Somerset, but only the public ramifications.”

“Miss Bessler and I have ended our engagement. I see no moral conflict to my ‘taking up’ with anyone.”

“But it will not be interpreted that way. Once it is known that your cook is now your mistress, it will be naturally assumed that it was Miss Bessler’s revulsion that led her to cry off the engagement. Lest we forget, her father is still well beloved among our rank and file. Your own prestige will suffer much in consequence.”

The dowager duchess sounded so reasonable, so maternally concerned that Verity had to will herself not to despair.

“I see,” Stuart answered, his voice guarded. “That would be most unfortunate.”

“Ah, but it is not only unfortunate for yourself. It damages us all. Mr. Gladstone will be grieved to learn that you have so compromised your moral authority. He depends wholeheartedly upon you to lead the contest in the Lower House. We have no one else of equivalent skills and standing. Your diminished stature will severely wound any chance we might have of passing the Home Rule bill. Do you not agree?”

It was no use keeping her hands still, Verity thought vaguely, if the rest of her shook like the last leaf of autumn.

“We haven’t much more time left,” continued the dowager duchess in the absence of a response from him. Her voice was cogent, urgent, compelling. “You know the situation as well as I do. The Irish are restless. They will not abide English rule for much longer. This is our last chance to settle the question in peace and honor rather than in strife and bloodshed. Will you put one woman above the good of a nation?”

There was a long pause. Verity imagined her aunt gazing intently at Stuart, her steely will seeking victory at all costs.

“Can the private happiness of one man truly be so deleterious to the well-being of many?” he asked.

Verity closed her eyes. Despite the evenness of his tone, she’d heard the bewilderment and dismay in his voice.

“Yes, it can,” said the dowager duchess.

God Himself could not have spoken with much greater authority and conviction. Verity knew then that she had lost him. Bitter tears trickled down her face. The duchess knew that his greatest virtue was also his greatest weakness. The nobility of his character rested upon his absolute sense of duty.

“You are right,” he said. “It can.”

Her tears gushed now. After the Irish Question there would be other crises and other calamities—the ship of state sailed ever in dangerous waters. And there would never be a moment when he didn’t need his moral authority and his stature.

“I’m pleased that you see my point so well,” said the duchess.

Verity did not fail to notice the odd lack of triumph in the old woman’s voice. Such a good actress she was—she would not gloat in front of him. She would savor it later, when she slapped Verity with her I-told-you-so.

“Thank you, Madame, for pointing out where I’ve been blind,” said Stuart.

Verity covered her face, so as not to make any sounds. She would not give the dowager duchess the satisfaction of hearing her cry.

“You will send Madame Durant away, then?” said the dowager duchess, lightly yet commandingly.

“No indeed, Madame. I will marry her.”

A dead silence greeted his words. Then Verity sprang to her feet. Something fell loudly. But it wasn’t her chair. It came from the middle of the drawing room—and sounded like the dowager duchess’s walking stick.

“What did you say, Mr. Somerset?” asked the dowager duchess, her voice uncharacteristically high-pitched.

“I said I will marry her, Madame,” he said calmly. “Hiding her will allow speculations to proliferate. I will bring her into the open. I believe I might even be able to persuade Miss Bessler to be seen together with her. That should calm rumors about Miss Bessler’s revulsion.”

Yes! Yes! Yes! Verity stuffed her fist into her mouth to stop herself from screaming it out loud. She’d known she had entrusted her heart to the right person this time. She’d known it!

She climbed onto her chair just in time to see the dowager duchess rise from her seat. Stuart, who had been sitting with his back to the screen, rose also.

“Mr. Somerset, you have lost your mind.”

“No, Madame. I assure you, I am in firm possession of all my faculties. You yourself said I cannot afford the loss of prestige brought on by an engagement that ends in ill feelings and an affair with someone of Madame Durant’s particular…distinction. Every rumormonger loves an affair, but there is little to excite the imagination in a marriage. And while Miss Bessler cannot keep company with my mistress, I’m sure she will have no objection to a shopping expedition or two with Mrs. Somerset.”

“A shopping expedition or two…” The duchess was never at a loss for words. She was now.

“With a special license we can be married within the week.”

Verity had always liked Stuart’s voice. Now she knew that he had the most beautiful voice in the entire world.
Within the week.

“Mr. Gladstone will never stand for it.” The dowager duchess almost sputtered.

“Do we speak of the same Mr. Gladstone, Madame, the one who in his spare time personally arranges for the rescue and rehabilitation of prostitutes? I should think he’d consider it splendidly done of me to make a vapid
hausfrau
of one of Britain’s most infamous retainers.”

“I will cede you that point,” said the dowager duchess, more collected now. Verity’s euphoria cooled a few degrees. The dowager duchess was regrouping. She was far from giving up. “Perhaps Mr. Gladstone, in his advanced age and eccentricity, would not mind your choice of a spouse. But you may be certain that he would be the only one. The rest of the Liberal establishment would be aghast. And it would be the end of your political career. You will not receive the Home Secretary’s portfolio. You will not even retain your position as Chief Whip. And if you’ve ever entertained thoughts of 10 Downing Street, well, you need never entertain them again.”

He said nothing. Did he waver inside? Did he realize that he would be giving up far too much for her? She dared not even breathe.

He retrieved the dowager duchess’s fallen walking stick, and presented it to her.

“I understand everything,” he said slowly. “And I accept it as a price I’m willing to pay.”

“You do not understand.” The dowager duchess stomped the floor with the walking stick. “She, and consequently yourself, will be shunned everywhere. Doors will close in your face. Opportunities will flee before you. Your life, as you know it, will be finished.”

“No, Madame, my life will have finally begun. I do not need the blessing of the Liberal establishment to practice law. I do not need the approval of Society to keep Fairleigh Park. And I will gladly be shunned on her behalf.”

Tears came again, hot and sweet. This was how a prince slew dragons for his princess.

“You are mad, Mr. Somerset.” The dowager duchess’s voice trembled.

“I have loved her from the moment I first saw her, Madame. She has left me and I have left her. And now that we are at last together, nothing, save death, will part us again. Not you. Not the Liberal establishment. Not the opinion of every last man, woman, and child in England.” He bowed. “If you will excuse me, I’ve been away from her far too long this day already.”

He turned and walked toward the door. At that moment, the dowager duchess did something unprecedented: She broke down and cried, and not silent, ladylike tears, but great, shuddering sobs that racked her thin, aged frame. Verity almost fell off her chair. Stuart turned around, aghast.

He rushed back to the dowager duchess’s side. “Madame, are you all right?”

She turned her face away. Gradually, her sobs quieted to soft hiccups and then to complete silence. With great stiffness, she moved toward her seat. He caught up with her and silently offered his support. She leaned heavily on him and lowered herself with a hard grimace.

He bowed again.

“Mr. Somerset, please sit down.”

“Madame, you must understand, there is nothing you can say to me that will make me change my mind.”

“Yes, I quite understand that. I require only a few more minutes of your company. Will you humor an old woman?”

He hesitated. “Of course.”

“You too, Vera, sit down. There is nothing more ridiculous than a grown woman standing on a chair,” the dowager duchess said, without looking in Verity’s direction.

“I beg your pardon, Madame?” said Stuart.

The dowager duchess, of course, did not answer.

Verity climbed down from her chair. But she couldn’t sit. A dress, she needed a dress, simple and elegant and not too costly and—

“Do you remember, Mr. Somerset, what I told you about my brother-in-law and my sister the other day?” said the dowager duchess, her voice hoarse.

“Yes. They perished at sea together. You raised their daughter. And she died when she was sixteen.”

“Her name is Vera. The Lady Vera Drake. And I never said she died; I said we lost her.”

Utter silence.

“Do you understand now, Mr. Somerset?”

“My God, do you mean to tell me that—that—”

“Yes,” said the dowager duchess.

Verity stumbled into her chair. She was sure the chair shook violently. She had to dig her fingers into the armrests so that she wouldn’t be bucked off. Did she hear everything properly? Did her aunt just acknowledge her?

“The Lady Vera Drake was our joy and our despair. I worried about her constantly, more than I worried about my own four children altogether. Unfortunately, all my worrying was not enough. When she was sixteen, she conceived a child with a stablehand on our estate, who was himself only seventeen.

“The news shattered my well-run life. This was the beloved child of my sister, the beloved child of my husband’s brother. I’d never been so grieved and so angry in my life—I had utterly failed in my duties to her, to my husband, and to her dead parents.

“Her pregnancy was a secret known to only myself, her governess, and the physician who had looked after the Arlingtons for thirty years. It became my overriding goal to keep it that way, for I had a plan to make things right again: The physician would diagnose her with a wasting disease that required a long trip abroad for recuperation, the baby would be fostered with a reliable family that would be lavishly compensated for treating the child well, and she would return to England, still only seventeen, make her debut, dazzle Society, and live her life as if nothing untoward had ever happened.