Page 77 of His Illegitimate Duchess

“I cannot imagine that Her Grace would jump to such a conclusion.”

“Then count yourself lucky that you haven’t had the experience with me that she had.”

“Very well, I shall respect your wish,” Doctor Cooper said earnestly, then steered the conversation towards calmer waters. “The girls seem to be enjoying Miss Williams’s company, particularly Hannah. I haven’t seen her smile like that since she joined us.”

“Yes, it’s rather interesting, isn’t it?” Colin said thoughtfully.

“Or absolutely to be expected,” Doctor Cooper countered with a pointed look which Talbot didn’t fully understand.

“Can you read me my letter, Doctor?” A young girl approached them.

“Of course, Margaret,” the Doctor smiled kindly. “Do you have it with you?”

“Oh, yes,” she nodded eagerly as she retrieved it from a pouch around her neck. “I so rarely get word from home, it hasn’t left my person in two weeks.”

Talbot smiled at her enthusiasm. A small crowd was starting to form around them since everyone loved hearing news. Doctor Cooper cleared his throat dramatically and started reading:

“Dearest Margie,”

Talbot glanced at the girl, who now had tears in her eyes and a big smile on her face in response to what he assumed was a childhood nickname.

“Father Andrews is here, so we dictated this letter to him. I’m afraid we don’t have good news.”

Doctor Cooper stopped reading and frowned. His eyes flew over the rest of the page, and he then looked at the girl with pity in his eyes.

“Dad suddenly passed away two nights ago. He simply never woke up in the morning.”

A blood-curdling sob left Margaret’s body, and she crumpled to the floor.

Doctor Cooper carefully folded up the letter and beckoned his wife over.

As Mrs Cooper hugged the girl and helped her get up, Margaret kept speaking through her sobs, “I didn’t…

All this time… I had the letter with me, and I never even knew…

Every night I slept with that treacherous letter… ”

Colin had been intellectually aware that most people of her class did not know how to read or write, but the idea of this young girl sleeping with a letter that contained the devastating news of her father’s passing and never seeing it as more than a series of lines and scribbles was the first time that he saw a real-life example of the downsides of being illiterate in his adult life.

“I’m going to teach them how to read,” Elizabeth said next to him as if she had been reading his mind. “I don’t care if you don’t like it.”

“Why would I not like it?” His head jerked back.

“It’s maybe…” She seemed to lose some of her bravado. “Maybe it resembles being employed too much.”

“You’re a lady doing charitable work, it’s fine,” he said, aiming for humour, but it fell flat. “It’s a wonderful idea,” he added more seriously.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I hesitated to bring it up.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I keep a lot of things to myself.”

“Did you do that with me? When we were first married?” He asked, not bothering to conceal the desperation in his voice.

Lizzie nodded and looked away. Colin’s stomach hurt.

“You can make a list of supplies and we’ll send Stevenson out this afternoon,” he said instead of further pursuing the topic.

“I’d like to go myself, I rather like such errands.”

“We can go tomorrow morning, if you wish?” Talbot asked, praying that she’d accept his company when she didn’t have to.

“All right,” was all she said.

That afternoon, they went to the poorhouse again.

“Look here, the good-looking lordling is back,” the dirty old woman called out when Talbot entered the consumption ward, and her entire room laughed.

“Call me Talbot,” he offered, feeling an inexplicable fondness for the vulgar woman. “Do you need my assistance with anything?”

“I’m here waiting to die, so if you can do anything to make that less vexing, be my guest,” she said and had another coughing fit.

Droplets of blood were coming out of her mouth with every bout, and her clothing and bedding were already heavily stained by it.

“What are you dying of?” Talbot decided to adopt her way of conversing, seeing as they didn’t exactly have time to tiptoe around matters.

He looked around, saw a chair, and pulled it closer (not too close, for the stench around her was what he imagined a festering gangrene smelled like) to her bed and sat down.

“The Doctor with the young wife told me I have a cold in my lungs.”

Talbot had personally witnessed Hettie address the Doctor by his name and was amused by how she described him now.

“Would you like me to read to you?” Talbot suggested, and Hettie eyed him with suspicion.

“Depends, what do you plan on reading? The Bible?”

“No, I bought some chapbooks from a salesman downstairs. Let us see,” he said as he pulled the poorly-made, thin booklets out of his waistcoat pocket.

“We have a historical story, a ballad about love, and a story about devotion and morality, which, judging from your expression when you mentioned the Bible, I doubt you’ll be interested in. ”

He was almost sorry that he’d made her laugh again when she started choking on another cough in the middle of it.

“I like you, Talbot. Let’s hear the historical story.”

Hettie’s entire body transformed as she listened to Talbot, who did his best to enact the different characters and voices, since he’d noticed that everyone else in the room had grown quiet and was listening as well.

When he finished, he looked up at her, and she looked like a young child who had been transported to a magical world through the power of storytelling. Her gaze was bright, and her shoulders relaxed. Her right hand was stroking her left, like she was comforting herself.

“Shall I bring more next week?” He asked in a conversational tone, pretending like nothing extraordinary was happening.

“Yes, please,” Hettie said with a meek nod.

“I need to talk to you about the smell,” he told Cooper as they were exiting the building later.

“I cannot do anything about that, Talbot,” the other man said defensively.

“I wasn’t asking you to. I want to do something,” Talbot said haughtily.

“I want to pay workers to transport the tubs, and washerwomen to heat the water, and maids and manservants to assist the paupers in the consumption ward on Wednesday mornings. I’ll have my valet find a way to get them clean clothes and bed linen as well,” he mused.

Cooper started laughing. “Here I was, about to be amazed at your generosity, only to realise you’re doing this for purely selfish reasons. Admit it, you can’t bear the stench when you’re in there!”

“You need not concern yourself with my motivations,” Talbot winked at his friend, who shook his head and laughed again.

The next morning, Talbot was in the carriage with his wife again. He felt like he was given a priceless gift; two days in one week when they were doing something together, like the couple they used to be.

Colin had decided to take his wife to his favourite stationery shop, Letts of London . He suspected she’d be loath to spend a lot of money, so he was determined he would wait for her to make her selection, tell the shop to double it, and then pay for everything.

“Whatever Your Graces might need, I am at your disposal,” the shop owner had said, and then he kept following them around, eager to help, but Colin could tell that it was making his wife uncomfortable.

“Thank you, we shall call for you if we need anything,” Talbot said, his tone dismissing the man at once, which allowed Elizabeth to finally start touching every single thing she saw, like Talbot had known she would.

She selected pens, inkwells, penknives, muttered to herself about how many quires of paper she might need, and Talbot was pleasantly surprised to discover that she was being far from frugal.

“Was this what I should have been doing all along in order to get you to spend some money? Take you to purchase writing supplies?” He teased her affectionately.

“No,” she replied decisively. “Two quires of paper cost what a housemaid makes in a week, which I consider excessive, so I avoid wasting paper as much as I can. This is different, however, since I’m purchasing these things for my students.”

“I distinctly remember you blowing out every unattended candle you could find at Norwich, so pardon my incredulity.”

“You are comparing ten candles unnecessarily illuminating an empty hallway all night long to lighting a candle in someone’s mind by teaching them to read.

One is a waste, and the other one is something I’ll never regret spending money on,” Elizabeth said and made her way to the front of the store, where she opened her purse and spent an exorbitant sum of money on other people.

“Can we make one more stop?” He asked when they were on the sidewalk.

“What for?” Lizzie asked absentmindedly.

“I need to buy some chapbooks,” Colin said conversationally.

Elizabeth stopped walking. “You? Chapbooks? What for?”

“For Hettie,” he admitted sheepishly, and Lizzie tilted her head to the side endearingly.

“I’m amazed! Duke Colin Talbot is selecting books for a woman. I shall very much enjoy observing you on this momentous occasion,” she said with a smile that made Colin’s heart swell.

“It’s not the first time I’m selecting books for a woman,” he said, only half-defensively, and immediately regretted it when her face hardened.

*

A week later, Colin watched an inner light illuminate his wife’s face as she stood in front of the Magdalen girls, writing large individual letters on the blackboard and demonstrating the sound they made in different words.

The happiness and change in her every movement made him realise that this was, truly, what she had been put on this earth to do.

Her purpose, he thought. But also something she could do anywhere in the world.