They held Mr Follet's funeral three days later. It was a relief to Grace that her father's corpse was gone at last, the coffin nailed shut, carried from the black-draped bedroom on the shoulders of black-draped men. James was one of the pall-bearers, standing in for his father. Grace could hardly meet his eyes, haunted by the argument they had had at the ball as her father was dying. In the urgency of rushing home, of waiting hopelessly by her father's bedside, she had forgotten how much James had hurt her. It had come back the next day when James visited with his parents to see what they could do to help and had made her very cold towards him.

Perhaps what made her coldest of all were the things she had said herself. They had felt so very true then. Even now, she was not sure they had been a lie. She was shocked her father was dead, yes, but she was not saddened, she did not think she was grieving. After the first bout of ferocious tears, she had found herself quite calm. The next morning, she had woken up and eaten a full breakfast and felt ashamed of herself for it, for her mother and sisters only nibbled at toast. To make up for it, she had thrown herself into the funeral preparations, doing whatever she could to take the most pressing tasks off her mother's hands. She had been frustrated to find that Mr Redwood, as the executor of the will, was responsible for the funeral arrangements, and almost angry when Uncle Bernard had visited to offer his services as well. They left her with little to do but dress the house and her sisters in black, write letters to relatives informing them of Mr Follet's death, and prepare stalks of rosemary wrapped in black silk as favours for the funeral goers. Such mindless chores could be no distraction from her feelings, and by the time the coffin was carried from the house she was in a state of restless irritability. She paced the floor of the drawing room while Emma and Alice curled up together on the sofa wishing she had something — anything — to do.

In the early evening, the men returned from the church and descended upon the funeral supper at the Follet house. Mrs Follet was very anxious about the supper. Cook had tested her again by refusing to make game birds into pie, so Mrs Follet had had to persuade the cook around to fish and fruit pies instead. She was not sure that was entirely correct for a funeral, but she thought it must be better than several baked pheasants, served hot, when there was no longer a man of the house to carve them.

The men had too much of an appetite to complain about anything, however. They crowded around the Follet's dining room table talking loudly of what a good man old Follet had been and reminiscing about the times they had had together.

"Such a cerebral fellow," one man said. "He once told me he read two newspapers a day."

"A bright mind," another man agreed, shaking his head. "A great loss."

"To his family particularly," Grace's Uncle Bernard said. "We are all so, so very shocked."

But Uncle Bernard did not look particularly shocked. He looked, thought Grace, like he was enjoying the fish pie a great deal.

After the supper, Mr Follet's old friends milled around the house continuing their sad compliments to his character. At intervals, they would draw Mrs Follet or Grace or her sisters aside and offer more personal condolences. Grace fought the urge to squirm whenever anyone touched her shoulder or pressed her hand. She swallowed her feelings and forced herself to be polite, to thank them very nicely for their condolences, even gauche old Uncle Bernard, to try to smile at them, to make sure they were not crowding her mother, who was far too meek-mannered to ever leave a conversation that was paining her. Alice and Emma needed guiding too, direction to speak to this and that cousin or to a friend of their father's, to give out the funeral favours to departing guests, to not cower by themselves in the window seat and avoid their visitors.

When the crowd was thinning, when it was mostly relatives and close friends remaining, Grace felt a faint touch at her wrist and turned to see James behind her. She had been trying to avoid him.

"Are you leaving?" she asked. "Did you receive a favour yet?"

"I'm not leaving, and yes, your mother gave it to me. I've got something for you, actually."

"What?" She stared at him and he gestured to a table by the fire on which a pot of tea and a teacup stood. "Oh. Tea."

She made her way to the chair — the most comfortable chair in the room — and plopped down into it. James sat down next to her and poured her a cup of tea, adding a generous amount of milk and sugar.

"You should have sent for more than one cup," she said.

"If I had, you'd be offering tea to everyone in the room." A wry smile pressed at the corners of his lips before fading. "You've been looking after everybody else. You will sit down and drink tea and the others, I assure you, will manage without you for a quarter of an hour."

"Did Mr Redwood put you up to this?" she asked, sipping her tea.

"No, I just thought... you look harassed."

She curled her fingers around the warmth of her teacup, not willing to admit that she was harassed and have to thank him for his kindness. "It seems more like something your father would do. He is always so very kind to everybody."

James twisted to look at his father, who was standing by Mrs Follet and gently disengaging her from a rather obnoxious conversation with Bernard Follet about what she ought to do now that Mr Follet was dead.

"I suppose he is," James said. "I never really... thought about that. He gets severe with me." He winced. "I probably deserve it."

He did, Grace thought, and she wished that she could be severe with him, but she dared not bring up what they had said at the ball, for what she had said had been just as bad as what he had. She drained her cup, unwilling to meet his eyes, and started to stand, but he took her hand and stopped her.

"Fifteen minutes," he said. "I will leave if you wish, but you will spend fifteen minutes sitting down and looking after no one but yourself."

She sat down again, not entirely reluctantly, and poured herself another cup of tea.

"Should I go?"

"No." She stared resentfully at her steaming cup of tea. "What happened at the funeral?"

"The usual."

"Describe it."

James breathed out slowly. "Uh, we followed the hearse to the church. Then we stood and we listened as the vicar read from the bible. It was... 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want...'"

"Psalm twenty-three," said Grace.

"Yes. It's... it's a nice one. We listened to the vicar read that, and it was very... comforting. Then a few men came forward — your uncle, my father — and read their own passages from the bible or talked about your father... mostly they talked about him. They shared their memories of him."

"What sort of memories?"

"Um. Mostly, you know, witticisms he had once said. A few of them talked about how clever he had been when he was practicing law. I didn't even know he had practiced."

"Years ago. He quit the law to take up being a gentleman, as he called it."

"Yes. That was one of the witticisms they brought up."

"He used to say it a lot," Grace said bitterly. "It didn't amuse me the first time."

James smiled sadly. "Well, after all those memories, we... we took him for committal. My father told me to slip away once I'd helped carry the coffin to the graveyard. I walked back with some friends of your father who traded more stories about him. There were many stories."

Grace nodded. "We sat at home waiting. It's not quite the same."

James took her hand in his, with a touch that spoke far more kindness than any mere words could have. Grace leaned unconsciously towards him, the same way she had the night her father had died, before catching herself and drawing sharply back, slipping her hand away from under his.

"I don't need that," she said. "That doesn't help."

"I'm sorry."

"You can go now," she added. "I'll drink my tea on my own."

James left without another word, though he did, Grace saw, go to Emma and Alice and speak gently to them. Emma gave him a look of haughty distrust, which with another word or two on his part dissolved into anguish. When he took her hand, she did not object. She even clutched at it as he spoke. Alice was more composed, shaking hands with him quite cordially.

When Grace finished her tea, Mr Redwood announced that the will-reading was to be held and asked that everybody who was not family bid their goodbyes. Grace was stirred from her peace then, to say polite goodbyes to the last of her father's friends. When that was over, she followed her mother back into the drawing room where Mr Redwood and the lawyer were unrolling a parchment on the table. Uncle Bernard was sitting in the chair closest to it, looking very pious.

"I, uh, I can stay, can't I?" James said from the door. "I'm not family — but should I stay?"

Mr Redwood looked to Mrs Follet, who seemed incapable of making a decision.

"He can stay," Emma said, before Grace could say that he couldn't. "He'll be family soon enough."

James took a seat near the door, and the lawyer began to read the will. It was, to Grace, not entirely comprehensible. Mr Follet had arranged for a great many little parcels of money to be given to a great many people. But many of those people were already dead, or had married, or had otherwise disqualified themselves from Mr Follet's good opinion, which left the little parcels of money chasing around to other people. Mr Redwood explained things to Mrs Follet in a low voice at intervals, quelling the anxious look that arose on her face every time a parcel of money did something unexpected.

The real blow came at the end, when Uncle Bernard shuffled forward in his chair and sat up, and the lawyer read out in solemn tones that the house in Richmond was to be left in whole and without caveat to Mr Follet's brother Bernard.

There was no changing of direction here. Uncle Bernard's success in the law did not disqualify him. His marriage to a wealthy heiress did not disqualify him. His having two sons full grown did not disqualify him. His having three nieces born and raised in the house did not disqualify him. He was the owner of the house.

"That's not fair!"

Grace spoke far too loudly in her anguish. Everybody stared at her. Her cheeks flamed.

"She's a little over-strung," Uncle Bernard barked. "Poor chit. Someone get her a glass of wine."

"I have hartshorn," Mrs Follet said. "Are you faint, dear?"

Grace wished she was. She stood up, so abruptly her chair tumbled backwards to the floor, and ran blindly for the door. She hit a warm, hard body and someone's arms came around her — James, muttering her name.

She shoved him away. "Don't touch me!"

She fumbled for the door and slipped through. When she was halfway up the stairs, Alice and Emma caught her up.

"If it's not hartshorn," Emma said anxiously, "a little bit of shortbread or some pudding never fails to make me feel better."

"I'm not you, Emma."

"I second the wine," Alice said. "Now, really, Grace—" she slung her arm around Grace's shoulders "—I actually admire you. It is unfair, and you're the only one who dared say it."

"It's our house!"

"I know, but you get to marry James, who has his own. It's me and Emma who ought be worried."

"James!" Grace shook Alice's arm off. "That man!"

"What did he do?" Emma asked. "He was so kind today. I didn't know he could be like that."

The echo of her own voice came back to Grace — Love him!? Never! — and the memory of the shocked look on James's face as he had heard it. Had she never loved her father? Perhaps not. Had she hated him? Right now, she thought she still did. And James knew.

The thought filled her with white-hot shame and fury. "Just leave me alone! I don't want to speak to anyone!"

* * *

It was nearly midnight when James and his father left the Follets' house, having said goodbye to everybody except Grace, who would not, Alice said, emerge from her room. In the coach on the way home, Mr Redwood said, "The wedding must be postponed six months."

James, thinking of the haunted expression that had not left Grace's face all day, hardly heard.

"Did you hear me?" his father said. "You cannot marry Grace so soon after her father's death. People will think it indecent. It will have to wait until spring."

"Right." James shook Grace from his mind. "A stay of execution then."

"Don't be so disrespectful," Mr Redwood snapped. "A man died. A friend of mine. Your bride's father."

James's cheeks warmed. "I'm sorry." He was. He had cared nothing for Mr Follet, nothing except a faint, persistent dislike, but he ached for Grace, who was so obviously wounded and, like a wild animal, wished to hide alone with her pain. At the same time, he could not help but feel relieved that he was not to be married so soon after all. Spring was a long way off yet.

Mr Redwood watched him with narrow eyes. "You were good to Grace today, so I suppose you mean it."

James shrugged. After a moment, he added, "You might have warned them about the will."

"It would have been very improper of me to do so. Besides, they must have known Follet would never leave his property to his daughters. He provided for them very well otherwise. His wife has a comfortable annuity and his younger two daughters significant dowries."

"And Grace?"

"Grace is already provided for by her engagement to you."

"But what about her dowry?" James asked. "Mr Follet didn't settle it already, surely?"

"No, he did not. Our agreement is that I will match the portion he had saved for Grace and settle it on her upon her marriage. He dissolved her dowry weeks ago and absorbed it into his capital. Don't look so shocked, James. You must have known I had to give him strong incentive to agree to the match."

James felt sick to the pit of his stomach. "Do you mean that if we don't end up marrying — if I die, or if Grace turns me down — she has nothing?"

Mr Redwood raised his eyebrows. "That will not happen."

But it has to happen, James thought. I can't marry Grace. I can't.

__

A/N 2021-07-12: So basically I had the story fairly well drafted up til halfway, and from this point on my draft is basically scrambled up scenes and bits of scenes and needs a ton of editing, so any semblance of an update schedule is off the table. I'll be updating as soon as I've got a chapter ready instead.