Page 75 of Miss Dignified
“I’ll kill him.”
“He’s not the first,” Marged said quietly. “Osian Jones has been pestering me for ages, no matter how firmly I dissuade him. The lazier tenants are cheating you, and your steward is too old, or too weary, to put a stop to it.”
The Hundred Days had felt like this, when Napoleon, exiled after nearly twenty years of wreaking death and hardship on a whole Continent, had slipped the leash and advanced through France. The very army that had repudiated him less than a year before had flocked to his side, and town after town had welcomed him as a returning hero.
Britain and her allies had watched with incomprehensible dismay piled atop growing horror.
“My tenants are cheating?”
“They claim they have only sixty spring lambs when, in fact, they have seventy-two. They poach, Dylan, and they sell the game, which means the professional sorts of poachers have also been seen in the area. If Lydia Glover has fled the protection of her family seat to hide in service in a London household, she is not off on a lark. She is in trouble, andof courseshe would wait to secure your trust before she confided in you.”
“She is not in trouble. She is merely trying to find her…” Dylan shut his mouth, because he’d sounded exactly like Papa launching into a sermon. Lydia would never admit that her own situation was becoming perilous. She’d alluded instead to an estate falling into disrepair, relatives with their fingers in the earldom’s pockets.
“Merely trying to find her brother?” Tegan suggested airily. “We well know what a thankless undertaking that is. Tremont inherited quite young, ran off to play soldier, and hasn’t been seen since. Lost on the battlefield, so they say. The drunken uncle’s running matters back in Shropshire.”
I am not lost.Dylan kept that protestation to himself, because he suspected his sisters would hear it as another falsehood. “How do you know this?” Lydia had not mentioned that her uncle was a sot, but then, Dylan hadn’t given her a chance to mention it.
“Reconnaissance,” Marged said, “is not a skill limited to the male of the species. We have little else to do on rainy days, but correspond with friends and distant relations, and Wales has its share of rainy days.”
Some years, rain blessed their part of Wales every other day on average.
“Nobody likes a liar,” Marged went on, “and we know you miss home, but even fewer people care for righteous prigs. Witness, Papa’s bleating piety and probity were what sent you off to Spain in the first place. I’ve always wondered how he reconciled ‘thou shalt not kill’ with driving his only son off to war. Not very well, I gather.”
“He had regrets,” Tegan said, getting to her feet. “I expect you will too.” She gathered up her bowl and spoon. Marged and Bronwen similarly held empty bowls.
“Might you ladies return to the house without me?” Dylan said. “I feel a need to stretch my legs rather than take the carriage.”
That was a lie—another lie—but one he needed to tell.
“Of course,” Tegan said. “It’s a pleasant day for a walk.”
Tegan kissed his cheek, and Marged patted his arm. Bronwen stood before him, her gaze as solemn as Dylan had ever seen it.
“Come home soon, Dylan, or we might not be there when you do. We hardly have a brother as it is, and we are tired of playing steward and squire in your place.” She touched his shoulder, then Dylan’s sisters left him alone beneath the maples, without a map, compass, or clue.
Chapter Fifteen
Lydia was balancing the household accounts, a task she usually enjoyed, except that today her mind refused to focus on the numbers. The kittens weren’t helping. Regular meals and the passage of time were working their magic, turning a pair of bedraggled strays into energetic and playful young felines.
“I will miss you.” Lydia spoke the words softly, trying them on aloud. The kittens, tackling each other, wrestling, and racing about the kitchen, ignored her.
She would miss so much. The pleasure of having the authority to put a house to rights. The joy of earning a wage that she could do with whatever she pleased. The comfort of simple clothing and a measure of privacy she’d never had at Tremont.
She would not miss the odd moments when she’d caught Dylan regarding her with a veiled sort of puzzlement. She would not miss sleeping in the bed where he and she had become lovers—though she would misshim.
She would miss the Dylan who’d taken such pains to ensure that his advances were welcome. She’d miss hearing his boots thumping about on the floor above, and even more, she’d miss those boots thumping down the steps, presaging another raid belowstairs.
The kittens ceased their antics and stared at the steps a moment before Lydia heard the measured tread she used to take such delight in. Boots first, then breeches, morning coat, and broad shoulders appeared as the captain descended into the kitchen.
He looked weary, though Lydia could not read his mood. She rose and curtseyed, because in this house, she was Mrs. Lovelace the housekeeper, as far as anybody other than the captain was concerned.
He visually inspected her, from her mobcap, to her shawl, to her hands. “I no longer know what to call you,” he said. “May I sit?”
Lydia nodded, prepared to be civil. Clearly, Dylan had come to ask for her resignation, and she had been steeling herself to proffer exactly that.
“Ladies first,” he said, standing behind the chair Lydia had occupied.
She allowed him to seat her, though the courtesy put her off-balance.
