When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,35

the joy of your little projects. You are quarrelsome when bored, and I treasure my peace.”

Stephen’s little projects always became major, noisy, messy undertakings—also expensive—but they made him happy and made his life easier. If turning Stephen loose redesigning the back stairs made Quinn’s challenge harder to meet, well, Duncan hadn’t expected to succeed, and this morning’s outing only made the prospect more daunting.

“You should sack Trostle,” Stephen said, as the horses slogged through a particularly long set of mud puddles. “Sack him now.”

Stephen was right, of course. “You offered that opinion previously.”

“Think of it this way: If you allow him to continue his pilfering and petty tyranny over the staff, you are worse than he is, leaving a thief to run your estate and encourage more larceny. A competent fellow of spotless moral character is on hand to do the job, and he will attract others of similar integrity.”

“Do you refer to yourself?”

Stephen turned his face to the sky, where clouds were trying to crowd out the sun to the west. “You aren’t even jesting. I refer to you, Cousin Dunderpate. You don’t lie, you don’t pry, you don’t engage in fisticuffs when you know you could lay the other fellow out flat with one punch. You probably don’t even want to know that Miss Maddie’s last name is Wakefield.”

Stephen rode on, as if that revelation was on the order of a missing jar of jam having been found.

“Stephen, if you’ve been sneaking about, putting the servants up to sneaking about, or in any way—”

He held up a gloved hand. “How you wound my tender spirit. In the first place, I wouldn’t admit to sneaking about, if one of my lurching gait could be said to sneak. In the second, I didn’t have to. I was quibbling over a line of scripture, and Miss Maddie fetched her Book of Common Prayer, your library having none to offer. I happened to notice her name inscribed in the front, and a date of birth. She was christened at St. Andrew’s, Holborn. She’s twenty-eight, by the way. Nearly doddering, though not so venerable as you.”

“This is what you meant, about confiding without meaning to.” Every child was given a Book of Common Prayer by a doting godparent, auntie, or vicar. Even Uncle Victor had given Duncan a copy, a fine, sizeable version suitable for a vicar’s nephew.

“Precisely. If Miss Maddie didn’t want me to know her last name—truly, truly did not want me to know—she would not have passed the book into my hands.”

Not so. People slipped, they mis-stepped, they grew weary and careless. Sometimes.

“You will tell no one,” Duncan said. “You will forget whatever you glimpsed or thought you saw. A prayer book is highly personal and likely one of few possessions she values.”

Stephen turned his horse up the Brightwell driveway, another expanse of muck, ruts, and mud bordered by dirty melting snow.

“I’ve already forgotten that her last name is Wakefield, her mother’s name was Delores Gunning, and her father’s name is Thomas Wakefield.”

Maddie had people. Duncan had assumed so, but knowing their names did not ease his worry. The worst betrayals came from the closest ties.

“Right,” Duncan said. “Forget the lot of it, unless you also saw her middle name. That you may forget as soon as you tell me what it is.”

Chapter Seven

A tactical retreat was called for, though Colonel Lord Atticus Parker had to give notice of the retreat to his quarry—his other quarry. Searching for Matilda while keeping a close eye on her father had become a complicated undertaking.

“You’re off to the shires to foxhunt in this weather?” Wakefield asked.

Parker poured himself a cup of tea. Wakefield served an exquisitely aromatic China black that was cause on its own to pay a call.

“To a soldier, weather is immaterial, though boredom is a constant foe. Racketing about the Midlands in pursuit of vermin passes the time.”

Wakefield used a delicate pair of silver tongs to drop a lump of sugar into his own cup. “Have you descended to crude innuendo where your former fiancée is concerned, Colonel?” Wakefield’s tone was mild, his manner pleasant, as always.

“My former fiancée? Has Matilda corresponded with you, communicating news I should be aware of?”

Wakefield used the sugar tongs to set a tea cake on Parker’s plate, though Parker didn’t care for sweets.

“If her actions don’t make her position on the matter of marriage to you apparent, then a full-page ad in the Times would be unavailing. Unless you’d have me believe the press