Page 51 of Her Duke By Accident
Throwing him a wink, the baron called out, “there’s always money to be earned, Your Grace!”
The duke tipped his hat at him and slipped out of Lew’s and Crake’s, skating by anyone else who might feel the need to speak with him. As he rode the carriage back to Garvey Manor, Matthew imagined living a life like the baron’s, and could only feel pity. Despite how it looked with Alicia, he found it better than anything else he could have been tricked into.
CHAPTER 14
Ms. Crawford set a basket of fruit down on the drawing room’s table, directly in front of Alicia. The duchess jumped, pulled out of her daydreaming. The morning light streamed into the room and lit up the bountiful basket. Alicia leaned forward, smelling the sweetness and floral notes.
“What’s all this, Ms. Crawford?” Alicia asked.
“If you had been paying attention, Your Grace,” the housekeeper said with a lifted brow, “you’d know it was the local tailor’s token of appreciation for ordering new curtains from them. I told you all about it over breakfast. It’s only been an hour.” Ms. Crawford took a seat across from Alicia. “Where has your mind been as of late?”
“The same place it’s always been,” she muttered. “Forgive my forgetfulness, Ms. Crawford. I fear I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Might I call the physician for you?”
“Oh, no,” Alicia reassured her, “it is nowhere near an issue that grand. My mind races too much for my own good.”
Ms. Crawford flattened her skirts. “Does this have to do with the garden incident?”
“I wish you wouldn’t call it that.”
The housekeeper smirked. “Your Grace, it was Renfield’s doing. You know he’s?—”
“A gossip, yes, so I’ve heard.”
“In all the excitement, did you manage at all to bring up the ball again?”
Alicia shook her head. “Of course not. He was far too angry to hear any of it.” She held her chin up proudly. “And I already came to the conclusion that it will be happening whether he likes it or not.”
“Right,” Ms. Crawford drawled. “He isonlythe lord of the house. We wouldn’t need his permission at all.”
“I don’t appreciate the sarcasm,” Alicia snapped.
Ms. Crawford bowed her head, turning her attention to the papers displayed across the table. “Well,” she began, “if you are going to insist upon it, the food has been decided.”
“Mrs. Barker will make an assortment of meat pies,” Alicia said, “and we’ll have salmon, if the lakes are successful. Cakes will follow with teas and coffee.”
Ms. Crawford passed a paper across the table to the duchess. “I believe the import of sweet Madeira wine will arrive before then.”
Alicia looked over the form. “Very good, Ms. Crawford. See that it is collected as soon as possible.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” the housekeeper said. “And I suppose you are done with furnishing?”
“There isn’t much I feel comfortable changing.”
“It is your manor to run, Your Grace,” she said. “As the duchess, you are the one who decides how it looks.”
“I understand that,” Alicia said.
“Then what is it?”
Alicia met the housekeeper’s aging eyes. “It is the look the duke gives me whenever I do something of which he does not approve.”
The housekeeper frowned at her in a pitiful way.
“It is the venom that drips from his words when I do not live up to his standards,” she said with a sigh. “If I am to be a stranger in his home for the rest of our union, then I will not change a thing.”
“That seems rather petty, Your Grace.”
