Page 47

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The accounting came from Pendleton within the week, as he had promised, thorough to the last, a clerk’s neat columns running down page after page, every family, every sum, every year. Julian brought it to Stoneleigh and laid it on the library table where so much of the rest had been found, and they went through it together in the failing afternoon light, as they had gone through all of it.

It was longer than either of them had expected.

“I had thought a handful,” Viola said at last, very quiet. “The Aldous family. The Colbournes. My father. I had not thought — ” She turned a page, and another. “There are so many of them.”

“Years of it.” Julian’s voice was low. “She kept on, all that time, helping where she saw need, and he followed behind her, taking. The wonder is not that she was deceived. The wonder is how much of it still got through, despite him. She was relentless, your benefactress. He could not skim it all.”

Viola looked at the names. Some she would never know: a widow in Bath, a clergyman’s family in the north, a young man set up in a trade. The Colbournes again, more than once; the late earl, and after him others of the name. People scattered across years and counties, none of them aware of any of the others, each believing themselves the solitary object of one woman’s unaccountable kindness, or believing themselves forgotten, when they were not.

And then, slowly, she understood the design of it, the thing that had been just beyond her grasp since Braithwaite first read out that impossible will.

“It was not only us,” she said. “The will, I mean — the way it was made, the bequest that comes only after her death, sealed past any meddling. She did not do that only for me.” She looked down at the pages. “She did it for these others too, did she not? Whatever she could not finish in her life, she set in motion to finish after, put beyond his reach, where he could not follow.” She lifted her eyes to his. “We were not singled out, Carrington. We were part of something she built to outlast her.”

Julian looked at the pages a long moment before he spoke.

“Braithwaite will have the rest,” he said. “Her instructions. Whatever she meant still to do.” He set his hand flat upon the accounting, as though to keep it from blowing away. “It is not finished, I think. Not all of it. There are wrongs in here that were never set right, and she will have left some provision for the righting of them, knowing her. She thought of everything else.”

“Then someone will have to see it through.” Viola said it simply, not knowing she spoke of anything beyond that room, that table, the work in front of her.

“Someone will.” Julian’s mouth curved, faint and tired and warm. “She seems to have had a gift for choosing them.”

Braithwaite had called at Stoneleigh the morning before, dry as ever, half-moon glasses and all, to tell her the next of the staged sums would be released at Michaelmas. The occasion, he had said, with the smallest of bows, having arisen. She had not needed to ask which occasion he meant. No condition had ever been read out to her; no task had been set. And yet, step by step, without once being told what was asked, she had done exactly what Lady Warrington believed she would do. That was the design. That had always been the design.

Viola looked down at the long roll of names — at the proof of a kindness so vast and so patient it had needed a death and a sealed will to complete itself — and felt the last of her bewilderment ease away. She had spent this whole strange season asking why me. She saw now that it had never been the right question. She had not been chosen for what she was. She had been chosen for what she might do, and what she might become, and what she might help to finish — as her father had once been helped, and the Aldous family, and the Colbournes, and all the quiet others whose names she would carry now, whether or not she ever met a one of them.

She gathered the pages gently together and gave them back into Julian’s keeping.

“Then we are not at an end,” she said. “Only at a beginning of a different kind.”

“No.” He took her hand, and the warmth of it ran all the way through her. “Not at an end at all.”

EPILOGUE

Morning light spilled through the high windows of Stoneleigh House, turning the pale marble of the entrance hall to a sheet of glass. Dust motes drifted in the brightness, and the house seemed to hold a long, patient breath. Viola stood at the foot of the staircase, her hands clasped at her heart, and watched her father turn slowly in a circle as he gazed all about him.

He had taken off his hat the moment he crossed the threshold, holding it awkwardly to his chest, his gloves still on. His eyes moved from the carved balustrade to the painted ceiling, from the crystal branches of the chandelier to the twin doors of the drawing rooms. There was no envy in his face. Only wonder.

“Papa.”

He turned, and Viola hurried forward and embraced him, tears in her eyes. “Papa, I am so very glad to see you.”

“As am I.” He set his crumpled hat aside and peeled off his gloves. “My dear Viola, this is the most beautiful house my eyes have ever seen.” He tipped his head. “And it is yours.”

She watched his gaze dart about the hall, as if he could not quite take it in, and saw how the light caught the silver at his temples, the lines in his brow heavier than before. She did not want that weight on his shoulders a day longer, not now, when she had the means to lift it. He had scraped and saved to keep their lives from growing too small. It would be her joy to give him his ease.

“Papa, will you come with me?” She touched his sleeve. “There is something I wish to show you.”

He took her arm, and she led him down the long hall to the small morning room that looked out over the garden. There he paused, a smile pressing at his lips as he gazed out at the green.

“It is a joy to me that you are mistress here,” he said, a catch in his voice. “You always deserved more than I could give you.”

Viola shook her head and drew the watch chain from her pocket, the token he had pressed on her before she left for London, a piece of himself to carry into unfamiliar rooms. She lifted it, and let him see the fine new watch she had set upon it. He stared, uncomprehending at first, and then his eyes flared.

“Viola.” His fingers trembled as they closed around the gold. “It is too much. I — ”

“No,” she said gently, tears starting. “It is not enough.” A single tear fell, and he brushed it away, shaking his head though a smile touched his mouth. “I know you blame yourself for what was lost, Papa. But it was never your fault. Lady Warrington knew that.”