The Bachelor Earl - Darcy Burke Page 0,45
that, however. While her experience with anyone outside her tiny village of Pickering in Yorkshire and its environs was limited, she could tell he was Quality. Or at least good at mimicking it.
“What brought you so far from home?” David asked.
“Providence, thankfully.” She realized belatedly he didn’t mean that home. She blamed the fact that she’d just been thinking of Pickering. Though she’d been at Stour’s Edge for nigh on six months, apparently she could still think of her lifelong home as home.
He gave a soft laugh. “Because you met me?”
Now she realized how that may have sounded. “No, I didn’t mean that. I meant... Oh, never mind. I am abysmal at polite conversation. I’ve almost no experience with it.”
“Are you in service?” he asked, voicing about her what she’d just been thinking of him.
She seized on the opportunity to mask her true identity and have a way to explain why he couldn’t escort her to the house. “Yes, I’m a maid.” She looked at him askance. “What about you?”
“In service?” He started to shake his head but then stopped. “Not precisely. I’m serving as apprentice to a steward.”
“That sounds exciting.”
He turned his head toward her. “Indeed?”
“Oh yes. To be responsible for so many things... You must be quite intelligent.”
He shrugged. “My father always told me so.”
“My father always told me I was a featherbrain.”
“I find that hard to believe.” He said this with utmost certainty. “Although, you did wander far from home in a snowstorm.”
“It wasn’t snowing then, and I was trying to save a rabbit.” She exhaled. “I’m afraid I’m terribly soft-hearted when it comes to animals. My father also told me I was far too kind. Once, he made me abandon a litter of puppies after their mother died.”
David gasped. “That’s atrocious.”
She nodded, glad for his support. “Yes, but I sneaked back out to where they were and rescued them anyway. One of the neighbors had a dog who was almost finished nursing her pups, and she was more than glad to adopt the four little babies. Ironically my father took one of those dogs several months later, never realizing it was one he’d left for dead.” She shook her head. “He loved that dog more than any of us, I think.”
“What an astounding tale. I would say you have a kind heart, not soft. There’s a difference, I think.”
She swung her gaze to his. “Do you?”
“I do.”
They stared at each other a moment before she tried to trip over a rock. He caught her, his free hand clasping her hand while he gripped her arm. “All right?”
“I’m also rather clumsy.”
“Then allow me to assist you over the stream, though I gather you made it across by yourself earlier.”
They’d arrived at the slender, but swift-moving brook. “It was a miracle, really.”
He laughed then withdrew his arm from hers. “I’ll go first and help you.” He leapt over the water with ease, and she decided she could watch him do that a thousand times. In her mind’s eye, she would.
He held his hand out to her. “Ready?”
She clasped his appendage, and he brought her over the stream with a fluid grace she didn’t possess on her own. “I bet you’re a fine dancer,” she said.
He grimaced. “Barely passable, I’m afraid.”
“I’m quite good. That is one area in which I seem to possess adequate agility.”
He chuckled. “A maid who dances and rescues animals. You are a treasure, Frances.”
Heat rose in her face, but she suspected her cheeks were red from the cold and was relieved he couldn’t see her blush.
He tucked her arm over his once more and they started on their way, keeping up their rapid pace. “Do you often get lost?” he asked.
Only when she struck off in a new direction and then only sometimes. Snowstorms were particularly helpful if one wanted to lose their way. “No, but then I just left home for the first time less than six months ago.” She wished she hadn’t revealed that much. But he was so easy to talk to.
“You’re new to your employment then?”
“Yes. What about you?” she asked, hoping to divert the conversation away from herself lest she bore him with the story of her life. “What are you doing out in the middle of a snowstorm?”
“I’m afraid I was just taking a walk. Then I saw you running up the hill, and I was curious.”
“So you followed me?”
“Guilty.” But the look he cast in her direction didn’t reflect even a tinge of regret.
She was glad and more