She Gave a Lost Stranger a Ride Home—Hours Later, the Duke Knocked on Her Door

Chapter 6

Lady Thornbury received the notice at the breakfast table with the expression of a woman being handed a personal insult from a divine source.

She read it twice. She set it down beside her teacup with exquisite precision, the way a woman sets down something she intends to pick up again shortly, and looked at Nell for a long moment across the silver and the marmalade.

“Blackmoor,” she said.

“Yes, my lady.”

“You are leaving my household to become housekeeper at Blackmoor Hall.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“The Duke of Blackmoor’s household.”

“Yes, my lady.”

The pale eyes narrowed to something very focused. Lady Thornbury was forty-eight, the widow of a moderately prosperous baronet, possessed of a thin calculating face and a talent for cruelty that she had learned, over three decades of practice, to dress in the language of maternal concern.

“And how,” she said, “did this opportunity present itself?”

“His grace required an experienced domestic manager. I was recommended.”

Not technically a lie. She had recommended herself. She had, in fact, done so by standing in a kitchen yard with a basket of dried herbs and refusing to be flattered.

Lady Thornbury studied her with the calculating intelligence of a woman who had made a profession out of reading situations to her own advantage. Something moved behind those pale eyes — some private calculation, run and completed.

“The Duke of Blackmoor,” she said slowly, “is a bachelor.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“He is conspicuously eligible. He is our nearest neighbour.”

Nell said nothing.

“I intend to write to him today,” Lady Thornbury said. “Suggest Friday dinner.”

“As you wish, my lady.”

“You will deliver the note on your way north.”

It was a test wrapped up in a command. Nell knew it the instant it landed. Her ladyship wished to measure how she carried the instruction — what her face did, whether the neutrality was genuine or performed, whether she flinched at the word bachelor.

“Of course, my lady,” Nell said, with total equanimity. She picked up the tray and walked out.

Behind her, she heard the teacup lifted and set down again. She did not turn around. She had discovered, at nineteen, that the single most useful skill available to a woman of no fortune was the ability to leave a room as though she had never been in it.

Rowan was in the stable yard when she arrived with the note, consulting with his farrier over the grey’s near fore, his coat off and his sleeves rolled to the elbow. Nell filed this away as not her concern and did not look at it twice, or rather looked at it exactly twice, which was once more than she had intended.

He took the note. He read it in four seconds.

“She is inviting me to dinner.”

“Yes. Friday.”

“Are you the messenger or the bait in this arrangement?”

The bluntness of it startled her — not because it was rude, but because he had seen the shape of the thing so cleanly and had declined to pretend he had not.

“I am the messenger,” she said. “Her ladyship has three unmarried cousins visiting from Bath. The intention is that you will find one of them agreeable.”

Rowan folded the note and held it out to her.

“Tell Lady Thornbury I am engaged on Friday.”

“She will suggest another evening.”

“I am engaged on most evenings. I have a house to restore.”

She took the note. He looked at her with that level, direct gaze that had already begun to feel less like an interrogation and more like a room she knew the shape of.

“I am also already aware of the cousins from Bath,” he said. “One of them dispatched a note directly to my estate office three days ago.”

“Oh?”

“The note contained a watercolour she had painted of the Blackmoor gates. Which I had not requested and cannot account for.”

Nell looked down at the folded note in her hand. A laugh pressed hard against the inside of her throat. She suppressed it completely, which took effort, and which she considered a personal victory.

“What would you like me to tell her ladyship?”

“Tell her I thank her warmly for the invitation and will call upon her when the house is in order.”

He turned back to the farrier.

“Also,” he said, without looking at her, “burn the watercolour.”