There was one cup at breakfast. The woman put it in front of me without asking, and I finished the tea before going to look at the portraits.
The housekeeper was working at the narrow end of the portrait corridor when I arrived. I waited for her to move her basket, pretending to study a man in a black coat. Daylight had turned one shoulder of the coat green. I hadn't noticed that on the way to dinner, when I had been counting turns and trying not to lose the attendant.
There were brass labels beneath the frames. I read the man's name, his dates, then the long title under the woman beside him. Neither meant anything to me.
Hana was four years younger than I was. I kept thinking of that as I looked along the wall, as though Cedric's sister ought to turn out to be younger by the same amount. I didn't even know what she looked like.
I had copied the Duke's words into my notebook: 'Your sister used to blame her mistakes on sleeplessness.' There was room beneath them for a name. At night, in bed, I had found more to worry about in 'used to' than the whole sentence could support. This morning I wanted something I could actually look at.
The housekeeper was brushing the top of a frame. I waited until she lowered her arm.
"Are these in family order?"
She looked along the row. "By the hanging plan, my lord."
"Who keeps that?"
"The estate office." She shifted the brush to her other hand. Its handle was bent, though it seemed to suit the work well enough.
I could go to the estate office and ask for the plan. Somebody would bring it to me, or send a request upstairs, or ask why I wanted it. I walked on.
A landscape hung between two portraits. Its narrow frame left a dark strip of paneling exposed on either side. Beneath it were two screw holes and a faint rectangle, about the size of the brass labels I had been reading.
I bent closer. One hole showed pale wood inside. The landscape was a hillside with a house on it, ordinary enough that I nearly looked for its own label before remembering.
When I took out my notebook, the folded academy reference slipped toward the edge. I caught it against my palm, pushed it back between the leaves and counted the frames from the window. Under the Duke's words I noted the landscape's position and sketched the two holes.
The brush had stopped behind me.
"What hung here before this?" I asked.
"That picture was here before I took the corridor."
"Do you know what happened to the label?"
Her eyes went to the closed door at the end of the passage. "I clean around the fittings, my lord. I don't take them off."
I looked at the door too. It was the same dark wood as the others, without a plate. The edge of the handle was dull; the part a hand would turn was brighter. I added the door's position to my notes, though I had passed several shut doors on the way here.
"Who used that room?"
"I couldn't tell you. The steward has the room allocations."
There was a work sheet folded through the strap of her basket. I could see numbers on it, and spaces for initials. Her brush hovered over the basket without being put away.
"Were you here when my sister—"
She stepped back, caught the basket with her heel, and stopped. Bottles knocked together inside it.
I had meant to ask when my sister was last here. Or who had looked after her rooms. I had not decided which, and now the housekeeper was standing against the wall waiting for me to finish.
"I'm assigned this corridor for the quarter," she said. "If there's been a complaint about the earlier work, the house steward will have the allocations. I can ask him to—"
"No."
She stopped speaking.
I moved away from the basket and shut the notebook.
"You don't need to fetch anything. I was looking at the pictures."
Her gaze went to the landscape.
"Carry on," I said, and stepped aside far enough for her to reach the next frame.
For a moment she remained where she was. Then she pulled a small step out from beside her basket, set it under the carved panel above the portrait, and climbed onto it with the brush. One of the bottles was still rocking. I watched until it settled and found her watching me.
I went toward the window.
The unmarked door stood between us. As I passed, I slowed close enough to see my sleeve in the bright part of the handle. I could have tried it. If it opened, there would be a room to explain being in, and perhaps someone inside who expected me to know why I had come.
I kept walking.
At the window I opened the notebook again, with my back to the corridor. I had written the housekeeper's glance beside the position of the door. After it I had begun, 'She knew—'.
I put a line through those two words. The glance was still there. So were the measurements of nothing very much: two holes, an old rectangle, a picture that didn't cover its place on the wall. I checked the number of frames once more before closing the book around the academy slip.
The housekeeper had come down from the step. When she saw me turn, she moved her basket against the wall and stood beside it, leaving the way clear.
The other stair was beyond the window. I took it.
Halfway down, I heard the step scrape across the floor overhead, followed by the faint knock of the brush against a frame.