Page 30 of A Duke Changes Everything
“Only in carriages.”
“Pity. I find nothing so invigorating as a dash across the fields on a sunlit morning.” As she stepped outdoors, the young woman looked around the estate. Her eyes lit when she spotted Tobias’s brawny figure leading a horse out of the stable yard.
“Now that’s a fine specimen.”
Nick swallowed a guffaw when he realized the debutante was referring to the horse, not his servant.
“In fact...” She held a hand over her brow to block the sun and peer through narrowed eyes. “That raven coat and mane puts me in mind of Hades from the Lyle stables. Has the viscount sold you one of his stallions?”
Before Nick could explain that he had no interest in or knowledge of Enderley’s stables, Miss Thorne appeared at his elbow. She wedged herself between his body and Lady Lillian’s to approach Lady Claxton, who was making her way toward the stairs.
“Send any details you have regarding provisions for the ball, my lady.”
“Yes, of course,” the older woman said. “We shall prepare a list of all that’s required. Come along, Lillian. Don’t dawdle.”
Nick helped each lady into the Claxton carriage, even offering one palm up gesture in return for Lady Lillian’s frantic waves as the vehicle rolled away. Their departure loosened more knots of tension. Somehow he’d lost nothing in the bargain, except the cost of food and drink. A small outlay of funds to finance the ball? Nick considered that a worthwhile expense if he could be back in London before the dancing began.
He turned to find his steward hovering nervously on the threshold. “Was that true, Miss Thorne? About the ballroom?”
“Yes, unfortunately. The plaster is peeling and there was a good deal of water damage last winter. May I show you?”
“Lead the way.”
He didn’t truly need her to guide him. He remembered the ballroom with perfect clarity. Once, he’d stolen down while his parents hosted a ball and spied his mother dancing with one of the local noblemen. He’d never forget the sight of his father seething in the shadows.
Thomasina Thorne used a key to unlock the double doors, then gripped each handle and pushed them open, giving Nick his first glimpse of the room in decades. Dust bellowed out and he pressed a finger to his nose to keep from sneezing.
A musty scent hit him, and he noted a scar on the far wall. Water had trickled down, warping and discoloring the wallpaper. A matching dark splotch stained the ceiling.
“We try to keep the damp from the rest of the house. Rain comes in from an opening in the outer wall, or possibly the roof. We’ve had a mason out to look, but he couldn’t find the source.” She bit her lip before turning to say, “He said he’d need to take part of the wall down to find the problem, and it was a cost the previous duke refused to bear.”
Not a cost Nick wished for either, but he could hardly lease a country house with a rotting ballroom.
“Isn’t it beautiful? Magical, even.” Miss Thorne stepped toward the middle of the room, lifted her arms, and spun around as if the sconces were lit and the walls glittered as they had that night Nick snuck out of bed as a child.
She swept the toe of her boot through the grit and dust to reveal the curving pattern in the parquet floor. “I love how the pieces of wood are arranged to suggest movement. Perfect for a ballroom. And the chandeliers.” She pointed skyward. The crystal-heavy light fixtures had been covered with white cloth and looked like enormous beehives ready to crush them both. “When they’re lit, it’s as if every star had been pulled down from the firmaments.”
Shewas the only beauty Nick could see in the room. Her vibrance trumped all the ruin and rot. He could even admire her sense of loyalty to Enderley, but he could never feel the same. “This place doesn’t deserve your lyrical praise.”
She deflated before his eyes, and Nick hated himself for snuffing out her joy. Her chin went down, tucked toward her chest, and the fingers she’d used to point to all the beauty she saw in the room curled into fists. “Perhaps it doesn’t deserve your loathing either.”
“Perhaps it does.” She didn’t know its secrets. If she did, Miss Thorne would have fled years ago.
“You think me naive, Your Grace?”
Nick gripped the back of his neck and stifled what he most wanted to tell her. That her faith in these walls was misplaced. That her belief that he’d come to cure all of Enderley’s ills was mistaken.
“Just look around you,” she urged. “Do you not see what this ballroom could be with repairs and a bit of cleaning?”
“I see unexpected expenses.” Hundreds of pounds to fix the wall. Hours of work to paint and scrub and polish the place back into a proper ballroom.
“But if you invested in repairs, you could host a ball next year and impress Lady Claxton and everyone else in Barrowmere society.” She smiled at him. An open, warm grin that made something in his gut flutter in ways that set him on edge.
The smile wasn’t for him, he told himself. She was simply imagining the ballroom alight, thronged with bejeweled ladies and gentlemen in their finery.
“I have no intention of hosting a ball, Miss Thorne.”
She flinched as if he’d burst whatever vision she had in her mind’s eye.
