Page 97 of A Murder at Kew Gardens

Petunia, who had carried the ring on a cushion with enormous solemnity, whispered at a volume that reached the hall. "You are supposed to put it on her finger."

"I am trying."

"You are doing it badly."

Half the room laughed. Claire laughed hardest. Grandmother did not laugh, and afterward blamed the roses for her eyes.

Cosmos got the ring where it belonged. The clergyman went on. And then, just like that, they were married.

Three days later I knocked at the door of Claire's sitting room. The countess's sitting room. That required some adjustment.

The rooms had been my mother's. After she died they were shut, then opened and aired twice a year and shut again. Grandmother had suggested I take them years ago. I refused. They belonged to the Countess of Rosehaven, and there had not been one. Now there was.

"Come in."

Claire sat on the sofa by the windows with a writing desk pulled close and tea at her elbow. She was pale, though less pale than at breakfast, when she had taken one look at the eggs and fled the room.

"How are you feeling?"

"Much better."

"You said that yesterday."

"I was lying yesterday."

I smiled. Claire had already put her mark on the room: roses on the table, two books left face down beside the sofa, a shawl abandoned over a chairback. My mother had written her menus at that desk. I had written my first ones at the schoolroom table, because I would not sit in her chair. The room was Claire's now. I was glad. Mother would have approved.

"Do you have a moment for household matters?"

Her face changed. "Oh, dear."

"Nothing dreadful, I promise."

"You have brought papers."

"Only three."

"That is how dreadful things begin."

I sat on the settee opposite her and put them on the table between us. "Mrs. Bateman came to me this morning. Cook cornered me yesterday outside the stillroom, which I consider unsporting."

Claire looked alarmed.

"Nobody knows which of us is in charge."

"Oh."

That was the difficulty precisely.

"You are the Countess of Rosehaven now. Mrs. Bateman needs to know whether household matters go to you or go on coming to me. Cook has the same question. There are accounts to approve, menus, servants' wages, repairs, orders⁠—"

Claire held up a hand. I stopped. She swallowed, and her color went faintly green.

"You are ill!"

"No. You said menus."

I bit my lip.