Page 217 of Dukes for Dessert

Rhoda followed Carole to her father’s study and pushed open the door.

There was no point in knocking. He wouldn’t notice a rhinoceros stampede through the room, much less a daughter bearing tea and biscuits. She set the tray on a table in the rear of the office as she always did and turned to face the back of her father’s head.

As always, Rhoda had left as soon as Carole entered the study. Either the maid intended to give Carole and her father privacy, or she wished to politely avoid witnessing the humiliation of being no more noticeable to one’s father than the motes of dust dancing before his window.

“Your tea is here, Father. Please try to eat some sandwiches.”

A small grunt of acknowledgment.

Not that Carole had expected more than a swift nod. She even understood.

When her father wanted to escape life, he lost himself in his work. When the world frustrated Carole, she’d duck into a private corner and jot a quick sketch of how she would rather life be.

If she had her sketchbook at this moment, she’d draw a family taking tea together in their sitting room, just like Carole’s family used to do before her mother died.

She had to get that sketchbook back before the wrong person found it. Not just because she mourned the loss of that particular volume, but because she didn’t want the reason her father finally glanced up to be because she’d become a laughingstock. The last thing she wanted was to embarrass her father. Her goal was to make his life easier, not harder. He’d never remarried. They were each other’s only relative. She wouldn’t let him down.

Even if he never noticed.

Carole exited her father’s study and eased the door closed behind her.

Mrs. MacDonald, the housekeeper, stood in the corridor.

“How is your sister?” Carole asked.

Mrs. MacDonald’s shoulders relaxed in visible relief. “Much better, miss. Gave us a scare, she did, with those chills and all that coughing. Thank you for letting me spend the week with her.”

“It was no problem,” Carole said with a smile. Without much else at home to entertain her, taking over the housekeeper’s duties had been a welcome way to fill the void.

Now that Mrs. MacDonald was back, however, Carole really needed to slip out of her house and over to the Duke of Azureford’s cottage.

“Did you need me?” she asked.

“Tonight’s menu does.” Mrs. MacDonald winced. “The butcher was out of mutton, so we can’t prepare the pies. What would you like instead?”

Blast. Mutton pie was Father’s favorite. “Do we have fowl?”

Mrs. MacDonald nodded. “Several chickens.”

“Then those will do. Thank you.”

Crisis resolved, Carole made her way down the corridor and almost to the front door before her elderly lady’s maid inserted herself between Carole and the door.

“Where are you going? Would you like me to plait your hair?”

Judith had been Carole’s companion since birth. For as long as Carole could remember, the grandmotherly woman’s favorite activity had always been braiding hair. Her own silver curls were fashioned into a crown of looping plaits.

“No need,” Carole assured her. “It’s not a social call. I’m just going to pop over to the Duke of Azureford’s cottage for a quick moment in order to—”

“Azureford,” Judith breathed, with the sort of giddy sigh some women used to say Beau Brummel. “I’m coming with you.”

“He’s not there. I don’t need a chaperone.”

More importantly, why was her sixty-year-old maid suddenly breathless over a duke half her age? Judith hadn’t shown any interest in Azureford when he had first purchased the cottage. She hadn’t even asked to come along as companion when His Grace had hosted his first and only soirée.

“Please?” Judith batted her bright blue eyes.

Something was clearly afoot, but Carole did not have time to waste ferreting out answers to mysteries. She had a sketchbook to recover.