gain employment. She ran her fingers down the coarse fabric of her dress, the violets and creams of the soft greyish color jumping out at her. Two years ago, Patience would have never thought grey to be a color. She had missed color. Not as much as she had missed Papa, but she had missed it nonetheless. Her humble dress was too short, her jacket too big, and her boots? Her boots were the one thing she hadn’t been able to borrow. They had been beautiful until she had rubbed mud all along the sides and back of the black leather.
Nothing felt right, but she would show Nicholas that even though she was the daughter of a duke, she could work and think of others. She wouldn’t become bossy and stuffy like her brother. Nor would he be able to claim her thoughtless and flighty like Mama. Her two remaining family members were such opposites. Papa had been able to hold them together, but with him gone, the house had turned into a tomb. When Mama left for France one month after his death and without packing her black clothing, Nicholas had declared he would mourn Papa for two years instead of the customary one. When Mama returned trying to brighten the household, Nicholas made it a point to darken his visage.
If nothing else, this was a chance for Patience to be away from both of them. She was tired of springing back and forth between heady optimism and gloomy realism. This was her chance to see a different world from her own. Once she’d told Nicholas she could manage to live and serve under General Woodsworth for a month, she had to do it. Otherwise she would always wonder if he was right. Besides, she would have no other chance for something like this once she entered society. She didn’t want to go from her brother’s protection to her husband’s protection without ever proving to herself that she could stand on her own two feet.
All that had led her here—to General Woodsworth’s home in borrowed servant clothing. She may not be able to serve under him in the army like Nicholas had, but she could serve under him in his household. If she could just find a convincing way for the housekeeper to hire her.
Nicholas had left for Bath three days ago. Before leaving this morning, she’d supervised the packing of her clothing and sent it ahead to Bath with a note explaining to Nicholas that she would be joining him in about a month.
Mama thought she was on her way to Bath to meet Nicholas.
And she was on her way to Bath.
She was simply taking a longer route. By the time she actually showed up in Bath, she would be able to tell Nicholas of her accomplishment, and he would never again be able to say that she was incapable. The timing had worked out so perfectly that divine intervention must have taken a role. As long as Nicholas and Mama continued the lack of correspondence they had enjoyed while Mama was in Paris, nothing should go wrong.
She raised her hand to knock on the door but stopped.
She had come to the front door.
What was she thinking?
Patience slinked down the stairs, then strolled to the far-right side of the house. How would it look to be wandering about the property of one of the most powerful men in London? No one could suspect her of any wrongdoing just by being here, could they? The home wasn’t as large as her London home, but it was freestanding. The servants always entered her home from the right toward the rear of the house. The evening wind whipped at her hair as she trudged along the outside of the building. There was no path, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when she ran into a hedgerow without finding a door to knock on. She returned, this time looking for a path to the left of the home, but again . . . nothing. Still hopeful, she walked over the grass and gravel only to find that, just as on the other side, there was no door on the left, and thick bushes blocked the entry to the back garden.
The Woodsworths weren’t a family of rank, but based on the size of the home and the general’s reputation for order, there must be a servants’ entrance at the back. But how to get to it?
The hedgerow had a thin spot where