Eleven at night, and the study at Marrowfield is the last room on the ground floor with the light still on. The house has gone up: Ettrick's tray on the stairs with one cup on it, the driver's boots gone from the mudroom, and Julius's truck still out on the gravel with a cold engine. The trust's books are open on the desk, the ledger and the north field schedule, with the folder he laid beside your plate at dinner.
Augustine Larchmont has taken his overcoat off at last and hung it on the back of the door. He is standing at the desk with his sleeves buttoned, reading a column the way another man would read a letter from somebody he misses.
"Sit down,"
he says, without looking up.
"You have been standing in my hallway for four minutes."
He marks something with the pencil from behind his ear and closes the ledger on one finger.
"He told you about the lease at the gate,"
he says.
"Good. It was his to tell you, not mine; he has been carrying it since June and it is eating him."
He sets the pencil down, parallel to the folder's edge.
"What I want to say is shorter. The cottage is yours whether you marry him or not. The line in the books is yours whether you stay or not. Your mother's loan clears on Friday and I have not told her, because it is yours to tell."
He comes around the desk one step and stops where you can see both his hands.
"And the reason I wrote it is simpler than you think,"
he says.
"I want you to stay in this valley for a reason I can read. Stay for him, stay for the cottage, stay for nothing at all. But I want a share of the decision, and I will not pretend otherwise at this hour. Come here and ask me the rest."