When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,24
a pair of inside dandies, a topside farm lad traveling into London to look for work now that the harvest was in, as well as the coachman, guard, and grooms. A foursome of young swells heading into the Midlands for foxhunting had kept the tavern maids hopping for the past two days, though the innkeeper had to be thrilled to have such custom at such a lowly hostelry.
“You might start a friendly game of whist with the young swells,” Herman suggested. “They can afford to lose a bit of the ready. They’ve been at the cards for the past two nights.”
“We don’t get above ourselves,” Jeffrey replied, quietly. “Bad enough you involved me in that little situation in the haunted woods. I’m not about to fleece four lordlings who’ve been fleecing each other for two straight days.”
The haunted woods had not been Herman’s fault. Any estate that had gone for years without the attentions of a proper gamekeeper was likely to be overrun with varmints, and snaring a few rabbits was purely in the way of public service.
Would that Brightwell was more than five scant miles away.
“What kind of woman pulls a gun on a pair of peaceable fellows like us?” Herman inquired of his empty tankard. “We never harmed nobody, and every rabbit meets with his eventual reward.”
The skinny little woman with the gun was giving him nightmares. Bad enough the landowner had come stumbling by, but he hadn’t been waving any firearms, hadn’t raised a hue and cry over one wee rabbit.
“Forget the woman,” Jeffrey replied, taking a sip of his ale and letting out a slow, froggy belch. “We got away, while she likely didn’t fare as well.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“She were underfed and twitchy. Her clothes were dusty and missing a few buttons. That was a woman with troubles. I’m guessing his worship added to her trouble after we so kindly left them their privacy.”
“Maybe she added to his. She had the gun.” Though now that Jeffrey remarked upon it, what was a woman doing with a loaded gun, alone, deep in the peaceful Berkshire countryside? No decent, sane female traipsed around a forest by herself.
Or brandished a weapon when she might have gone quietly about her business.
“On second thought, get the cards, Herm. It’s late enough the swells are the worse for drink. We’ll start up a friendly game, you ’n’ me, and them as wants to join in will be welcome.”
“I thought you said—”
“Get the cards. If this snow doesn’t soon melt, I’ll be talking gibberish, and not because I’ve imbibed too much ale.”
Herman got the cards.
Chapter Five
What to tell a woman who’d not surrendered even her full name?
Duncan raided the biscuit tin to the tune of a half dozen pieces of shortbread and brought them to the table. While Miss Maddie watched, he wrapped two pieces in her table napkin and passed them over.
“For later.”
She held out the plate containing the remaining four pieces. “For now. You were kind to that boy.”
“While I suspect life has not been kind to you.” Duncan did not want her confidences, for secrets were a burden on all who kept them. He also did not want her secrets wrecking his attempts to set Brightwell to rights. The conundrum was irksome, while a late-night sweet shared with another was comforting.
“Life has been very good to me,” Miss Maddie said, nibbling the smallest piece. “I am in good health, I am at liberty, I have been well educated and seen much of the world, relative to many. What of yourself?”
Lead by example, one of the bishop’s few admonitions that had been useful where Stephen was concerned.
“I was raised in straitened circumstances, though I was better off than most. My father took the king’s shilling and promptly got shot for desertion. I have no memory of my mother. An uncle took me in. My aunt was a good woman who mitigated my uncle’s harsh notions of discipline where she could.”
That factual recitation brushed over nights spent locked out of the vicarage in bitter weather, meals set before a famished boy that he was not permitted to consume, blows to the head—those left no marks—without number, and knees so sore from kneeling to pray that Duncan still occasionally limped after overtaxing himself.
“Finish my cider,” Miss Maddie said. “A little sweetness goes a long way.”
Was she speaking metaphorically? Duncan poured the rest of her drink into his mug. “What else would you like to know?”