When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,13
that Duncan ignored. “He burrows into the ground and dreams of sunshine and clover.” Or possibly the company of warm, friendly lady bunnies. One didn’t say that in polite company, but nature was nothing if not preoccupied with procreation.
Unlike Duncan.
“Your housekeeper found me some clothes,” Miss Maddie said. “I will consider them a loan.”
“You may have them, madam. My wardrobe boasts as many dresses as I need for the present.”
She gave him an exasperated look when he was trying, with his usual lack of success, to be humorous.
“I am not a criminal, Mr. Wentworth, though I have taken dropped apples from orchards and scraps from the middens of a busy inn. I would rather admit to those petty wrongs than be a charity case.”
He held the door for her, and she swept through, clearly unaware that even with so small a detail, she revealed herself to be a woman born to privilege.
One who envied solitary rabbits their dark winter burrows.
“I wonder if the rabbit nibbling from my garden considers itself to be committing any wrong at all,” Duncan said, opening the concealed panel that led to the footmen’s stairs. “The estate office is on the next floor up. The higher vantage point allows me to gaze despairingly upon my acres. Did you sleep well?”
She rounded the landing and paused, her hand on the owl carved into the newel post. “I slept so well, I woke up more exhausted than when I went to bed.”
Duncan knew that kind of sleep, the kind that flattened a man already lying in a ditch of bone-deep fatigue.
“Then I must not deluge you with my brilliant prose until tomorrow,” he said, resuming their progress up the steps.
She followed more slowly, suggesting that even climbing a staircase taxed her. “A mere cascade will do for today, thank you. Why do your acres cause you to despair?”
They didn’t, not yet. They drove Duncan to resentment worthy of an adolescent scholar forced to repeat a dull exercise for the third time. The despair would come in a year or so, when Quinn announced that Duncan’s sentence was to become permanent.
Duncan opened the door to the estate office, a blast of warmth pouring into the corridor. “Welcome to my dungeon.”
Miss Maddie stopped short a few steps past the doorway. “I hadn’t realized Berkshire was prone to tornados.” She moved into the room turning in a slow circle as Duncan closed the door. “Will a short man singing to himself soon appear and offer to bring order here if I’ll surrender my firstborn after marrying the prince?”
She referred to a children’s tale, one featuring a troll or some other objectionable fellow with a long name. The children of the poor were not generally read fairy tales. Books were expensive, and really, what would be the point? Most poor children were born knowing princes and good fairies never saved the day.
Duncan had eventually learned that lesson too.
“This is the organized version,” he said, gesturing to piles of paper and ledger books stacked haphazardly on every level surface. The chairs alone were free of the estate’s administrative wreckage. The cats left alimentary evidence of their displeasure if Duncan infringed on their territory to that extent.
Miss Maddie pushed back the curtains from the window above the desk. “Where do we begin?”
Beyond the glass, Brightwell had become a setting for a Norse tale of giants and magic bears. All was blanketed in fanciful curves and drifts of white, a deceptively soft tableau that might have been the death of Miss Maddie Pay-Me-In-Cash.
The sun cut through the overcast in slices of gold that turned the falling snow into a thousand diamonds dancing down onto a bed of blinding white.
I have missed England. The thought was preposterous and unwelcome, but Miss Maddie was also gazing out on the wintry scene with banked yearning in her eyes.
Who or what did she miss? Who or what did she regret? “We’ll soon be chilled to the bone if you insist on having the draperies open, madam.”
She took a seat near the blazing hearth. “I don’t chill so easily, and reading is best done with a quantity of light. You never answered my question.”
“Says she who dodges interrogations as nimbly as a hare.”
She twitched up her shawls, covering herself from the ears down. “Are we to engage in productive enterprise, Mr. Wentworth, or waste the morning in pointless contention?”
“Pointless contention can be another name for philosophical debate.”
Well, damn. Somebody had taught her the tutor’s most effective weapon with unruly scholars—the