A Lady's Dream Come True - Grace Burrowes Page 0,1

don’t walk. Keep moving enough to not get stuck again, not so much that you careen into another ditch.”

“I really wish—”

Whatever she wished was cut off by a crack of thunder that had Dante’s head coming up sharply.

“The idea is to rock the gig gently,” Oak said as the rumbling faded. “At the opportune moment, I will lift the wheels, and you will be on your way. Agreed?”

She nodded, causing droplets to fall from the jet beads weighting the hem of her veil.

Oak slogged around to the rear of the cart, put his shoulder to the back of the seat, and found what purchase he could in the slick footing. He knew what was coming, he knew what honor required, and he knew he truly should have remained in Dorset sketching butterflies and threatening to make a trip to Paris.

Except he couldn’t afford a trip to Paris. “Ready?” he asked.

She took a firmer hold of the reins. “Get up, Dante.”

The horse really was a saint. He seemed to grasp exactly what the exercise was about, and when Oak hefted the back wheels straight up at the apex of a particularly vigorous rocking arc, the gelding gave a mighty heave forward.

The driver let out an unladylike whoop, and the cart jaunted off down the lane.

Without the support of the vehicle, Oak pitched to his knees, as he’d known he would. Unsticking carts was not a business for the faint of heart or high of fashion.

“Thank you, kind sir!” came trilling back to him over the splash of the wheels, the drip of the rain, and the moan of the wind.

He pushed to his feet and waved. “Godspeed!”

What a fool he’d look if the lady could see him. He’d ruined his boots and his breeches, his hat had gone tumbling into the bracken, and he still had another half a mile to slog. A shiver passed over him, and another crack of thunder boomed as the gig bounced out of view around a grassy swale.

What little daylight there was would soon be gone.

Oak wasted another ten minutes locating his hat, picked up his valise, and trudged in the wake of the cart. If he’d pondered for the rest of the summer, he could not have conjured a gloomier scene. The sky was shifting from bleak to positively dire, and with every step, Oak’s boots squelched.

And yet, that whoop of joy, that merry, “Thank you, kind sir!” cut through all the misery and chill, as a single shaft of sunlight confirmed the existence of heaven even in the midst of the most desolate, sodden wasteland.

Oak traveled the rest of the way to the manor, mentally composing a sketch of the stuck gig, the lowering sky, and the brooding house in the background. All quite Gothic, quite dramatic, and awfully muddy.

A similarly doleful and Gothic butler let him into the entrance of Merlin Hall, after keeping him waiting on the front step for a frigid eternity. Oak’s prospective employer was apparently a thrifty sort, for only a minimum of sconces had been lit, sending flickering shadows dancing along the stone walls.

“We did not expect you until later this week, Mr. Dorning,” the butler said, casting a meaningful look at Oak’s much-abused valise. “I’ll have that taken up to your room, and perhaps you’d like a bath.”

“A bath would be lovely, and a tray if it’s not too much trouble. Bread and cheese, a pot of tea, nothing complicated.”

The butler was white-haired, solid, of African descent, and about as disapproving as a butler could be without audibly sniffing in disgust. Oak’s mother would have adored him.

“I will alert the kitchen to your arrival. The mistress won’t expect to see you until breakfast tomorrow.”

An entire lecture lay in that last sentence: By which time, you, Mr. Dorning, will be presentable, in dry clothing, free of mud, and no longer wearing the stench of Eau du Hampshire Hog Wallow.

Such a scold, added to cold, fatigue, and ruined boots, might have provoked Oak to sketching a most unflattering caricature of the butler, but Oak’s habitual visual inventory of his surroundings at that moment fell upon a hat on a peg beside the front door.

And not just any hat. This hat was a mourning bonnet, all black, and the veil that would cover the lady’s face to below her chin was weighted with jet beads. A slow, steady drip fell from the trailing end of the veil onto the stone floor. In the subdued illumination of the sconces, no