When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,86

the essay on Prague.

Sometime later—she lost track of the hours when she read Duncan’s travelogues—Jinks interrupted with fresh oil for the lamps. He had to stand on a chair to trim the wicks of the candles on the mantel, though he was a nimble little fellow.

“Will you get outside to enjoy the sunshine?” Matilda asked.

“’Deed I will, Miss Matilda. I fetch the post, you see. I take Mr. Wentworth’s letters to the inn, and I bring back any mail for Brightwell. I mustn’t drop anything in the snow, and I mustn’t tarry at the inn to gossip. Mr. Wentworth says fetching the post is a very important job. Sometimes, we get letters from our duke—Birdsong Lane, Mayfair, London—and those are franked because he’s a nob.”

The day was as pretty as a winter day could be. Brilliantly sunny, no wind, the sky as bright blue as Duncan Wentworth’s eyes.

I am hopelessly in love. “I have a packet to mail myself, Jinks. Can you wait a bit for me to join you?”

Jinks clambered off his chair. “You want to go into the village with me?”

Matilda could not entrust this correspondence to anyone else. “We’ll go straight to the posting inn and come straight back. I’ve been sitting long enough.”

The boy wrinkled his nose. “Should we tell Mr. Wentworth that you’re leaving the property?”

Matilda had left her father’s household on the spur of the moment, though even hindsight supported that decision. She could not afford to be reckless merely because the day was sunny and her heart was lighter.

“I’ll wait for you on the path in the woods and you can take my package into the inn with the other letters. I won’t leave Brightwell, but I’ll keep you company on the way to the inn.”

Still, his gaze was dubious. “You aren’t bringing a satchel or bundle with you? Mr. Wentworth won’t like it if you run off.”

What staunch loyalty for such a small boy. “I will bring nothing except my letter. If I wanted to run off, would I take you with me as far as the village, then leave you to tattle on me? Would I leave from the woods, where my footprints in the snow would reveal exactly which direction I fled?”

Jinks’s brow furrowed. “You’d pike off after dark, nobody the wiser. That’s what Manners says. Danvers says won’t nobody be piking anywhere, and Mrs. Newbury says idle talk never beat a carpet.”

“Give me ten minutes.” Matilda rummaged in the desk drawer for clean paper on which to jot a note.

Jinks pelted out the door, then banged it closed behind him. The entire house was livelier this morning in anticipation of the ducal visit, though Matilda wasn’t looking forward to meeting Duncan’s cousins.

She finished her note and sealed it, then met Jinks in the scullery, where he slung an oilskin pouch over his shoulder.

“In case I slip in the mud. Anybody can slip. Lord Stephen said so.”

“We’ll be careful.” Matilda pulled her hood up around her face. “There and back before anybody knows we’re gone.”

Chapter Fifteen

The gardens looked less unkempt, and a great pile of brush and bracken had accumulated in the lowest parterre. Duncan’s back ached, his arms burned, and his thighs were in a righteous fury, but the work was satisfying.

“Are we about damned done for the day?” Stephen settled on the edge of a large urn sporting the snow-encrusted remains of a dead chrysanthemum.

“Done for the morning. I will pay for this exertion, though I did not want Jane making one of her infernal housekeeping lists. Overgrown gardens are fine in fairy tales. In real life, they are evidence of sloth and eccentricity.”

Stephen’s cheeks bore a slight flush, and he, too, had shed his coat. “You’ve been at Brightwell a few weeks, and you’re already an expert on country life. Such a quick study. Perhaps an overgrown garden is evidence of ambitions beyond one’s abilities. A fellow plants a hedge, thinking to provide shade for a few rabbits, some geometry for his parterres. The English climate comes along and turns one hedge into an annual Herculean labor.”

Duncan set down the scythe in a dry fountain. “Plans go awry. True enough.” He fished a whetstone from the pocket of the coat he’d draped over the bench.

“Shame to have to leave all this,” Stephen said. “Brightwell has possibilities.”

“You are leaving us?”

“I’ll wander on, or I’ll look after the place for you if you like. You and Matilda will have to travel soon. Winter makes a journey harder, which is