Page 23

Chapter Twenty-Three

“ I swear, I blinked, and a goat trotted directly into the bakery.”

Evelyn leaned back on the settee with her stockinged feet tucked beneath her, laughter threading her voice. Her fingers curled around the delicate porcelain of her teacup as she watched her friends react.

Cordelia gasped, violet eyes wide. “Inside the bakery? Not just nibbling at the doorstep?”

“Oh no,” Evelyn replied as her eyes gleamed with amusement. “Straight in through the door as though it had an appointment. Knocked over an entire tray of currant buns. Poor Mr. Tilbury nearly fainted.”

Cordelia pressed a hand to her heart then let it fall dramatically into her lap. “That’s it. I’m moving to the country. Nothing interesting ever happens in London except scandal and the occasional duel. But goats in bakeries? That’s poetry.”

Hazel, seated with perfect posture by the hearth, merely arched a brow over the rim of her tea. “Perhaps you might reconsider after a week without hot water and a stable full of gossiping tenants.”

“Hazel, you wound me,” Cordelia sighed though her smile flickered, dimmed for a heartbeat too long.

Evelyn saw it, just a flicker, but it was there, the shadow behind the laughter. She was learning to look for it now.

She tucked it away for later. As always, Cordelia would not speak of it unless she wanted to, and pressing her was like chasing fog. Instead, Evelyn continued, “Goats aside, the duchy is… beautiful. Quiet. Wiser, somehow, than London.”

“You’ve gone soft,” Hazel said though her eyes were warm. “You always said you’d loathe being tucked away like a kept bird.”

“I did. And I still refuse to be tucked anywhere, I assure you, but it isn’t that. It’s…” Evelyn paused, searching for the right words. “There’s a rhythm to it. A stillness that makes one notice things.”

Cordelia tilted her head. “Like what?”

Evelyn set her teacup down, fingers trailing the rim of the saucer.

“Like the cracks in the plaster of the schoolhouse. The missing panes in the poor widow’s cottage.

The fact that the market square has had the same rotting cart blocking the drain for what looks like two years.

It’s not ruin. It’s neglect. Small things that have grown into… bigger things.”

“Isn’t that the steward’s duty?” Hazel asked, frowning. “To maintain such concerns?”

“Yes. But apparently the last steward was a cousin of a cousin, and he vanished with a suspiciously full purse sometime before Robert returned to claim the title. Robert’s been going through the accounts, but it’s a tangled mess. And while he unravels it, the village simply waits.”

Cordelia leaned forward, her voice softer now. “What will you do?”

Evelyn looked up, a fire lighting behind her eyes.

“We’ll fix it. I want to bring proper schooling.

Repairs. A new well for the south fields—they haven’t had fresh water in months.

Robert said it wasn’t my responsibility but.

..” She smiled, small and fierce. “He also said that just before I bullied the baker into accepting new shutters free of charge.”

Hazel huffed a quiet laugh. “You do have a certain… persuasive nature.”

Evelyn shrugged, unrepentant. “I prefer effective .”

Cordelia was watching her again, that glimmer of awe mixed with affection. “You’re going to change everything there, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know about everything,” Evelyn said with a quiet smile. “But I can’t live there and pretend not to see. And now that I have seen… how can I do nothing?”

For a moment, the drawing room was silent save for the ticking of the longcase clock in the corner and the soft clink of porcelain.

Then Hazel pointed out, “It suits you.”

Evelyn blinked. “What does?”

“The duchess of a place that needs saving.”

Cordelia’s voice was barely above a whisper. “You make it sound like a storybook.”

Hazel’s eyes didn’t leave Evelyn’s. “Perhaps it is. But you’ve always been more heroine than spectator, Evelyn. And the Duke clearly knows it, too.”

Suddenly, Evelyn shot upright, her skirts rustling like a storm of silk. “That’s it! I must go to Robert!”

Hazel blinked. “ Now? ”

Cordelia’s teacup nearly slipped from her fingers. “I beg your pardon?”

“I have to tell him everything: my thoughts on the schoolhouse, the well, the new carts for the vendors. Oh! And the hedge by the chapel that’s grown so wild it’s practically threatening small children.”

Cordelia collapsed in a fit of laughter. “Evelyn, it’s nearly half past ten!”

“You make it sound like I’ve announced I’m off to elope with a poet,” Evelyn said, already halfway to the door.

“I’ll be precisely five minutes. Perhaps six.

But I must tell him now, or I’ll forget something, and then it’ll gnaw at me all night, and I’ll end up waking him at some ungodly hour with a half-written list about wheel spokes and?—”

Hazel raised a brow. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Evelyn paused, only to toss a teasing look over her shoulder. “Oh, do stay seated. Honestly, you behave as if I were abandoning you to the wolves. I’ll return in a blink.”

Cordelia flung a cushion at her. “Tell your brooding duke that we want you back, Duchess of Urgency.”

“He’ll probably be grateful to be interrupted,” Hazel added dryly. “If only to have a moment’s peace from that dreadful steward ledger.”

“I shall pass along your affection,” Evelyn called with a grin, already sweeping through the doorway. “Don’t drink all the tea without me!”

The girls’ laughter trailed after her, muffled by the walls as she disappeared into the hallway. The moment she reached the stairs, she gathered her skirts and began to climb while her thoughts raced ahead of her.

She had to tell him… had to ! Before it scattered, before the excitement faded, before the memory of that goat in the bakery dulled even slightly.

Her mind spun with plans and purpose.

But most of all, it spun toward him.

The ink had long gone cold. Numbers danced in tidy columns across the parchment before Robert’s eyes, orderly and restrained.

They were exactly as he preferred them to be.

He was bent over the latest of the estate’s ledgers, brow furrowed in stern concentration, when the door to his study burst open without so much as a knock.

He wasn’t startled. He didn’t even need to look up to know who would dare such a thing.

“Robert, I am so sorry,” Evelyn breathed, already halfway across the room, her cheeks flushed, and her hair was in charming disarray from running up the stairs.

“But if I don’t say this now, I’ll forget, and it will bother me all night, and you know how I get when something bothers me, like that time I misplaced my pearl hairpin, and I was convinced a magpie had stolen it?—”

“I recall,” he said, dry as dust, but she was already off.

“I’ve thought about it, and we absolutely must repair the schoolhouse.

No, not repair, restore. The plaster’s cracked like old bark, and the windows barely keep out the wind, and the teacher, bless her, uses a rock to prop the door open.

A rock , Robert. That cannot continue. And I know it’s not a disaster by London standards, but if you had seen the way the children looked at me when I said I’d come back soon… ”

He leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed, watching her with a look that might have seemed impassive to anyone else.

But in truth, he was… well, amused wasn’t quite strong enough of a word.

He was enthralled. She was pacing now, her hands gesturing wildly, the fabric of her gown swishing at her ankles like an impatient tide.

“And the widow Barrow’s roof is barely standing. Thatch is falling off like it’s been insulted. She smiled at me, Robert. With two teeth missing and a kind of dignity that made me feel like I was the one in need of help, not she.”

She turned, eyes bright and alight with purpose. “And the well in the southern field is dry. Entirely dry. The tenant farmers are walking a mile and a half for water, and it’s not clean, and I just— I can’t let that continue.”

He gave a quiet nod. Just enough to let her know he was following.

“And someone ought to look at that hedge by the chapel,” she added. “It’s attempting murder, I’m certain of it.”

He blinked once but still didn’t interrupt. She looked like a thunderstorm in silk.

Finally, finally, she stopped, still breathing hard, her hands on her hips, and her eyes wide with a fire he’d never been able to look away from.

“So,” she finished, “I was wondering if that would be… all right.”

There was a breath of silence as Robert rose from his chair slowly with the quiet, deliberate grace that made people instinctively step back. He didn’t move toward her, not yet. He just stood there, one hand braced on the desk, looking at her like she’d just rewritten the order of his world again.

“All of that,” he said evenly, “is more than all right.”

Relief softened her features for a moment before curiosity narrowed her eyes. “You’re not going to say anything else? No notes? No objections? Not even about the hedge?”

He allowed himself a small smile, that rare, slanted thing that only ever appeared for her. “I wouldn’t dream of interfering with you and your crusade for order among village shrubbery.”

She gave him a look. “You’re mocking me.”

“Never.”

She squinted. “You are.”

Now, he stepped closer, not too close but close enough that her presence warmed the space between them. “You want to rebuild our duchy. You’ve thought of things I haven’t. You’ve seen what I missed. That doesn’t deserve objection, Evelyn. That deserves admiration.”

Her mouth parted slightly, surprise flickering there before she masked it with a scoff. “Well, don’t go writing sonnets about me just yet.”

His gaze lingered.

I already have in the quiet corners of my mind.

But he only said, “I wouldn’t insult you with verse. You’d correct the meter.”

She grinned, delighted. “I absolutely would.”

He didn’t say that watching her storm into his study like that, so utterly breathless and entirely herself, had made his heart ache in that slow, bewildering way it had begun to whenever she was near. He didn’t say that loving her was the most reckless, inevitable thing he had ever done.

Instead, he reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Don’t let your friends drink all the tea.”

She blinked up at him then laughed and turned for the door, her steps already lighter.

She was already halfway to the door when she unexpectedly paused, almost as if she had forgotten something in that long list of hers.

Robert barely had time to process the sudden shift in her movement before she crossed the floor in a few light steps and threw her arms around him in a spontaneous, breathless hug.

“I know you don’t like surprises,” she whispered, her cheek briefly brushing against his chest, “but this one felt important.”

Then, before he could utter a word, before he could think to raise his arms and hold her properly, she pulled back just enough to press a swift, soft kiss to his cheek.

It was fleeting.

But it shattered him.

He felt it like an arrow loosed from some hidden part of her, a thing she hadn’t quite meant to reveal and perhaps didn’t realize she’d given. Her lips left behind a trail of fire and her scent, that ever-present mix of something wild and something comforting, lingered like a secret.

She turned on her heel, skirts swishing, and with a flick of her wrist and a grin tossed over her shoulder, she called out, “Don’t touch anything in here! I’ve just managed to learn your system of… terrifying order!”

And then, she was gone.

He stood rooted, a quiet man felled by something far mightier than steel or flame. He reached up, slowly, and touched the spot on his cheek where her lips had landed.

Then, he sat back in his chair, utterly still, except for the ghost of a smile tugging at the edge of his mouth.

The ledger before him was forgotten. His ink had dried again.

But Robert didn’t care. Not when his whole world had just flown out the door like a bird on the wing, laughing, and left his heart fluttering in its wake.