Page 50 of His Mad Duchess
When they returned and Sebastian merely nodded at her—a small, almost fond gesture before he vanished back to his papers—Margaret lingered for a moment at the top of the stone steps that led down into the kitchen garden. Below, two gardeners kneeled in the damp earth, coaxing order from a tangle of carrot tops gone half-wild among the rows.
At the far edge of the plot, she spotted Mr. Phipps, the head gardener, standing stiffly upright beside a border of gooseberry bushes. At her approach, he straightened further, tugging his hat from his head and pressing it respectfully to his chest.
“Your Grace,” he said, voice pitched carefully, respectful but with that faint pinch around the eyes that told her he still wondered what sort of mistress she would be. “I’d not expected you this side of the orchard today.”
“I needed a breath of air, Mr. Phipps,” Margaret said, her tone warm but certain. She stepped down onto the path, skirts brushing the row of early leeks. Miss Fortune trailed after her, tail high. “And I thought I might see the state of things for myself.”
Phipps cleared his throat. “We’ve some tidyin’ yet to do before the next planting, Ma’am. Spring’s been rougher than expected.”
“So I see.” Margaret crouched to inspect a row where the nettles had begun to creep in. She looked up at him through the drifting sun. “Would you mind calling for two more boys from the lower fields? They can help clear these nettles today before they set seed.”
Phipps hesitated. “Aye, Your Grace. If you wish it.”
“I do,” she said simply. “And here, this patch under the orchard wall. I think we might put in sweet marjoram or hyacinth there. And rosemary and a stand of mint for the kitchens. Mrs. Fowler tells me the stillroom is short of good sprigs.”
One of the younger gardeners nearby risked a glance at her, eyes round. Margaret turned to him with an easy nod. “What’s your name?”
“Ben, Ma’am.”
“Well, Ben, would you see to it that the kitchen door gets fresh mint each week? And no more of those tough stalks the cook complains of. We shall have proper sweet mint, tender and green.”
Ben flushed red and bobbed his head. “Yes, Ma’am.”
She straightened and dusted her gloves off lightly. “Very good.”
Phipps shifted, his hat twisting between his hands. “It’s kind of you, Your Grace, to see to such details yourself.”
Margaret let herself smile, certain enough that the garden crew would remember it. “I’ve learned there’s no detail too small when it feeds the house or keeps the household well. We shall have a garden to be proud of, Mr. Phipps. You’ll help me see it done?”
His mouth twitched in the faintest smile of approval under the careful blank. “Aye, Ma’am. You’ve my word.”
“Good.” Margaret turned, feeling the sun warm on her shoulders as she looked back toward the old hedge. “I should like fresh flowers for the dining table, too. Sweet peas when they come, and roses enough to fill every empty room if we can coax them.”
Phipps ducked his head. “It’ll be done.”
Margaret tipped her chin higher, meeting the eyes of the boy and the older gardener behind him, as if to say, ‘see, this is ours now.’ “Thank you, gentlemen. I’ll leave you to it.”
She felt Miss Fortune brush against her ankles as she stepped back onto the stone path.
Margaret paused at the end of the row, Miss Fortune circling her hem like a living scrap of midnight. She tipped her face to the sun, breathing in the mingled scents of turned earth and stubborn weeds.
It helped, this small order—a bed tidied, a plan noted. It helped more than she liked to admit. But beneath the quiet flicker of pride warming her chest, something cold coiled stubbornly low in her ribs.
Two days. In two days, she would be back in London. Back under the Dowager Duchess’ hawk-eyed scrutiny and the pressof drawing rooms that would quieten the moment she stepped through the door.
Sebastian had said,I’ll protect you.She believed him, or she wanted to. But his stories of that grand house lingered in her thoughts like a draft through old walls. The late Duke with his clipped praise and colder hands. The Dowager Duchess, who kept every corner perfect and every word sharper than any knife.
And Margaret, the girl who brought ruin trailing behind her like a torn hem, would stand in front of that steel-spined matron and try not to flinch.
She plucked at her glove absently, mind drifting back to her half-tamed reflection in the guest mirror that morning. A duchess now, they said. The staff bowed and called her Your Grace, and they obeyed her word in the garden, but inside the parlors and drawing rooms of London, there were eyes sharper than shears. And the Dowager’s were the sharpest of them all.
CHAPTER 16
Margaret had not meant to stray so far. Truly, she had not. The day had begun to end with a gentle sun—a soft, deceiving warmth that slipped across the walled gardens and promised a quiet sunset among the hedges while Jenny fetched her writing case from the morning parlor, the small blue one she always kept near, stuffed with estate notes and last week’s letters from Cecily.
The roses were not quite tamed yet. Margaret drifted from bed to bed, plucking spent heads between thumb and forefinger, tracing the climbing runners that needed new ties. The air smelled of wet earth and unopened buds. Each step further from the house made her chest ease just a fraction, as if the wide grounds might stretch the tight coil at her ribs.
Miss Fortune, who ought to have been napping by the kitchen hearth, had sprung up the moment Jenny left, tail flicking like a banner of mischief. No sooner had Margaret turned to peer at a drooping rose than the little black creature vanished through the gooseberry hedge in a flash of whiskers and bright green eyes.
