Page 43 of His Mad Duchess
“Well,” she said lightly, though it scraped her ribs raw, “you’re not so terrible yourself, Your Grace.”
He stood, smoothing a hand over his waistcoat as if to settle whatever had shifted inside him.
He hesitated just a moment, then reached down and brushed his knuckles, almost clumsily, against the back of her hand where it rested on the keys.
“You soften this house, Margaret,” he said, so quietly she almost wondered if she imagined it. “It’s good, I think. Don’t stop.”
She looked up at him, startled into stillness. For a heartbeat, he seemed about to say more; his mouth curved, then faltered, then caught itself in that crooked half-grin that had undone her so easily.
And then, as if it cost him nothing at all, he plucked one of the small white roses from the dusty vase perched on the old piano’s edge. He set it carefully on the keys beside her hand—a single bloom, absurdly fragile on the battered wood.
“For tomorrow’s encore,” he murmured, and the warmth in it hit deeper than it should have.
He stepped back before she could find any words at all; the door cracked open, then shut softly behind him.
Margaret sat very still, staring at the tiny white rose. The keys beneath it gleamed faintly where his fingers had brushed.
The cat stirred at her feet, tail flicking against the bench leg. Outside, a wind rattled the old window latch, the only other sound in the large room he’d left her in.
Margaret’s slippers whispered over the old hallway runner as she climbed the stairs, the tiny white rose pressed carefully between her fingers. Its faint sweetness clung to her wrist.
Friend. The word should have brought relief. It did, in some practical corner of her mind, the corner that kept tally of what they were meant to be. The part that said they were just convenient, temporary, polite strangers bound by a scandal neither had truly wanted.
But the rest of her… the rest of her turned the word over like a stone that wouldn’t warm in her palm.
A friend. She should be grateful for that.
CHAPTER 14
Margaret paused where the path curved past a half-wild rose bed. Briars tangled around half-spent blossoms, nodding heavy in the breeze. She stooped to pluck a dead bloom, frowning at the wild snarl of stems that should have been pruned days ago.
“Mr. Phipps,” she called, spotting the gardener by his wheelbarrow.
He straightened, brushing soil from his hands. “Your Grace.”
She held out the spent blossom with a faint smile. “I think these are trying to take over the path.”
Phipps followed her gaze, lips quirking. “Aye. They’ve been busy this summer.”
“Shall I fetch my gloves and help you trim them back?” she asked, only half-teasing.
That earned a quiet chuckle. “Best not, Your Grace. These’ll scratch worse than a barn cat.”
Margaret let the bloom fall into the wheelbarrow. “Then I’ll leave them in your capable hands. Just promise you’ll keep the path safe for my skirts.”
At her hem, the black cat prowled through the weed-choked borders, tail twitching in regal irritation at a beetle it could not catch. Margaret gave a soft, amused hum.
“Oh, you fierce thing,” she murmured. “No roses for you, either?”
She turned and walked further along the sunlit path, skirts brushing the overgrown thyme that crowded the stones.
The air was warm and sweet with it; she thought absently that the kitchen ought to have more. Fresh thyme, rosemary, honeysuckle, or lavender for the linens.
I shall ask Mrs. Fowler to order seed. And perhaps a stand of lavender by the south wall, enough for the laundry and the stillroom both. And mint. For summer cordial.
Her mother had always spoken of a lady’s garden—that it was not merely for show but for usefulness. Herbs for the house, cut flowers for the church altar, posies for the village when coughs came through in winter. Margaret could almost see thelittle beds tucked neatly between the hedges, each one properly labeled in a fine copperplate hand.
She smiled at the thought. Perhaps she might write to Cecily about it. A quiet garden, hers alone to tend when the house felt too wide, too bright with its hush.
