Page 96 of A Baby for the Duke

She went down anyway.

She had spent four days not telling him, and it had nearly undone her.

He had asked twice. On Friday, at breakfast, he had said in the manner of a man reading a bill that he understood there had been a purchase. Leonora had said that there had, and he had waited for her to elaborate, but she had only eaten her toast. On Sunday, he had come into the small parlor while she was writing to her mother and had stood by the window for eleven minutes without saying anything, which was, she now understood, how her husband asked a question when he had decided not to ask it.

She had it carried down after dinner.

He was in the study with the door open and a letter in his hand, and he put it down the moment she appeared.

“There is something in the drawing room,” she said, “that I would like you to come and look at.”

“The crate.”

“The crate.”

“It has been in my hall since eleven o’clock this morning and three separate people have refused to explain it to me.” He came round the desk. “Where are you putting it?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On you,” Leonora said, and opened the drawing room door.

The dust sheets were off the sofas. She had done that in the afternoon, with Peg, and she had had every candle in the room lit and the shutters folded back.

Colin stopped in the doorway upon seeing the four feet of a walled garden in June propped against the wall opposite. He did not say anything for a long time.

Leonora stood by the door with her hands clasped together and kept quiet, which was the hardest thing she had done all week, and watched him.

“You bought this,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it is yours,” Leonora replied. “It has been yours since three o’clock last Thursday. I paid for it with your money, which I am aware is ridiculous, but I have decided to be shameless about it anyway, because there is nothing else in the world I have to give you that you do not already own.”

Colin slowly crossed the room and stopped in front of the painting. He reached out his hand, paused, and then let it fall.

“There is a hat on the grass,” he observed.

“I know.”

“Somebody has put a hat down on the grass and gone away, and left the gate open, and they are coming back.” His voice had gone strange. “That is what the picture is. It is not a garden. It is a person who is coming back.”

“Yes,” Leonora agreed, tears filling her eyes.

“Where do you want it hung?”

“I don’t want it hung anywhere. I want you to hang it.” She came a step into the room. “There is a wall at the north end of the gallery that has had nothing on it for fifteen years, and eleven feet of canvas propped against it under a black sheet that nobody in this house is permitted to speak of. I did not ask you about it again, and I am not asking you about it now.”

“Leonora—”

“I am only saying that there is a great deal of wall,” she continued. “That it faces south, so it receives light all afternoon. That whatever you decide to do with the sheet is entirely your business. That it may stay there for another fifteen years, and I will never say one word about it.” She was crying now. “Maybe it is time to let go of the past, Colin. Enough to make room for something new. That is all. That is what I came in here to say.”

Colin turned around. He was closer than she had expected, and his face was not shuttered at all. She saw it happening: his hand coming up, his head tilting, his chest rising.

She pressed her fingers against his mouth. “No,” she whispered.