“Sorry.” I stir in the milk and the honey.

Margaret lifts her cigarette, drags lengthily, places it back in the ashtray. She’s holding a letter in her left hand, and though I don’t mean to snoop, I can’t help noticing that it’s typewritten.

“Find anything interesting?” I ask.

“They’re all interesting.”

“I mean anything in particular.”

“Annie,” she says. “Tea.”

Annie rolls her eyes and sets the teacup in the patch of bare table next to the ashtray. Brings the milk and the honey. Margaret adds both and stirs with the teaspoon, clinkety clink, without taking her eyes from the paper before her.

“What’s that?” I say. “The Magna Carta or something?”

“It’s in French, that’s all.”

“Let me have it, then. I’m practically fluent.”

She shoots me a murderous glance over the top of the paper. “So am I. It’s just that I can’t make heads or tails of what’s in it. Annie?”

“Yes, Miss Margaret?”

“You don’t remember any legal dealings in Paris, do you? Oh, Lord. Of course not. You were the housemaid.”

“It’s from a lawyer?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says, snapping again.

“Do you mind if I—”

“It’s none of your business.”

I set my hands around the teacup. “I disagree. I think it is my business. He’s my father-in-law, isn’t he?”

“He’s my father.”

“I’m carrying his only grandchild.”

She tosses the paper to the table. “Are you certain of that, darling?”

“What the devil does that mean?”

Margaret picks up the cigarette, smokes it; picks up the tea and drinks that. The cup rattles in the saucer when she returns it. Her eyes are a little glassy, I think.

“Maybe that’s not his only grandchild, I mean.” She makes a thin, bitter smile. “It seems my father was paying a lawyer in Paris to track down a certain woman and her daughters.”

“Oh, dear.”

“And what’s more, it seems he succeeded.”

“How—how—”

“How the mighty are fallen, perhaps?” She points her cigarette to the letter. “See for yourself, then. I don’t give a damn.”

I reach across the table and pluck the letter from atop the layer of envelopes, all of which are addressed, I perceive, in the same elegant handwriting, to Maj. W. B. Thorpe. Except this one, typewritten, dated the thirtieth of June. The day before he went into battle. Margaret lights herself another cigarette and rises from her chair to stare out the window above the sink. She’s wearing another of her shapeless housedresses, which hangs from her slender frame, reminding me a little of the duchess. The same shape, except it’s not cultivated, it’s not fashioned the way you fashion a mannequin, it’s not displayed to its best advantage. It’s just what it is, a woman who’s naturally slender, who isn’t eating as well as she should, smoking too many cigarettes, fretting.