raised in Stoneleigh?”
“Yes, my lord.”
Another lie, if the deepening red at her throat was any indication.
“Stoneleigh is quite a distance from Kent. Is this the first time you’ve ventured out of Warwickshire county?” Gideon was toying with a letter opener on his desk, and Miss Gilchrist was following the movement, her gaze fixed on the point as he turned it casually between his fingers.
“Yes, my lord.”
Gideon raised an eyebrow. That was her third yes, my lord since she’d entered his study. The impertinence he’d noticed in the courtyard had disappeared, replaced by a docility much more appropriate in a servant. Perhaps it should have reassured him, but it felt false, as if he were watching her play-act at being a housemaid.
“Well then, my lord. Shall I take her upstairs and see her settled?” Mrs. Briggs didn’t seem to notice anything amiss, but appeared well satisfied with her new housemaid.
Miss Gilchrist half-rose from her seat and hovered there, like a bird balanced on the edge of a branch, ready to take flight at any hint of a nod from him. He took in her clenched fingers and the fluttering pulse at the base of her throat, and shook his head. “No, not just yet, Mrs. Briggs. I’d like to have a bit more conversation with Miss Gilchrist first.”
“Of course, my lord.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Briggs.” Gideon waved a hand toward the door. “You may leave us.”
Miss Gilchrist looked as if she were digging her fingernails into her palms to keep herself from clutching at Mrs. Briggs’s arm to prevent her leaving.
“Yes, my lord.” Mrs. Briggs offered Miss Gilchrist an encouraging smile, then turned and made her way toward the door.
Miss Gilchrist watched her go, swallowing as Mrs. Briggs closed the door behind her.
Gideon tossed the letter opener aside and rapped his knuckles against his desk. “Your attention if you please, Miss Gilchrist.”
She jumped, and met his gaze. “Yes, my lord.”
Gideon regarded her in silence for far longer than was comfortable for either of them, then he said, “The ribbons on your hat.”
She reached for the bonnet perched atop her head. “My ribbons?”
Gideon noticed her hand was shaking, but he ignored the twinge of his conscience. “That shade of blue is the latest fashion in London, and your cloak, which was also almost certainly made in London, is an exceptionally fine one for a Warwickshire housemaid.”
Her dark eyes went wide. “I—”
“I don’t know what reason you’d have to lie to me, Miss Gilchrist, but—”
“Yes, my lord…I mean, no my lord. I mean, I beg your pardon, my lord, but I didn’t lie to you.”
Gideon held up a hand to silence her. She’d come all this way from…somewhere, at Mrs. Briggs’s request. He didn’t like to send her away again like this, but there was something off about her, and it was more than just her ribbons and cloak. Those could be explained easily enough, but her dainty hands and smooth skin, her voice and bearing, and the way she looked directly into his eyes when she spoke to him…
He didn’t trust her, and he couldn’t afford to employ people he didn’t trust. He simply had too much to lose. “I don’t allow liars in my house, Miss Gilchrist. You are dismissed from Darlington Castle.”
Chapter Three
“You’re dismissing me from your service because my ribbons are blue?”
A thousand tangled thoughts were flying through Cecilia’s head at once, and somehow this was the one that burst from her lips? Of all the things she might have said or done—deny she’d lied, protested her innocence, burst into a flood of noisy tears—she’d chosen to quibble with him over blue ribbons?
But really, how could she be cursed with the ill luck to come across the one lord in London who knew this particular shade of cornflower blue was fashionable this season? She’d never come across such a creature before. Most gentlemen couldn’t tell the difference between azure and cerulean.
And here she’d thought Lady Darlington’s ghost rising from her grave to haunt Darlington Castle would be the most shocking part of her day.
Lord Darlington glared down his aristocratic nose at her, his eyes colder than the bits of ice floating in Darlington Lake. “You don’t appear to understand me, Miss Gilchrist. The color of your ribbons is irrelevant. I’m dismissing you because you’re a liar.”
She was a liar, and not a particularly good one, but that didn’t make his accusation any less infuriating. Why, what shameful arrogance, for him to accuse her of dishonesty based on nothing more than