Page 18 of The Lord Meets His Lady

“You’re not saying much.” Samuel toed the bottom slat. “You know we’ll both get something—”

“I’ll do it on one condition.” The words shot out of him, startling the bay. “Miss Abbott. She comes with me.”

“What?She’s not chattel I can trade.”

“She’ll be my housekeeper. I’d pay her the same as you.”

Samuel jammed his hands in his pockets. “Which isn’t much.”

“And when I leave, she returns to her post here,” he said, the idea catching fire. “You said yourself domestics are hard to find. Pallinsburn is in shambles, and I’ve not found any help.”

“Have you tried?”

Marcus stood taller. “Do you want my partnership and the land or not?”

Glowering under the brims of their hats, they could be two brawlers squaring off. Marcus wasn’t going to explain himself. The request was pure impulse; he didn’t fully understand what moved him. Her secrets? Her allure? The need to not be alone at Pallinsburn?

None of that mattered. Miss Turner excited him.

“What am I supposed to do?” Samuel snapped. “Ask Alexander to cook? I may as well eat my shoes.”

“Ask the old housekeeper to come back.”

“Mrs. Green suffers from infirmity. That’s why I hired a new housekeeper in the first place.”

“My apologies to Mrs. Green,” he said sharply. “Now decide. What areyougoing to do aboutmyoffer?”

A muscle ticked in Samuel’s jaw. Outside, an owl swooped past the open barn doors. One horse snorted and then another as though the animals had lost their patience with the late-night disturbance.

With an eye to the door, Samuel stepped around Marcus. “I’ll talk to her.”

“I’d be happy to.”

“No.” Samuel’s strides quickened. “I’m her employer. She ought to hear this from me.”

They exited the barn to find twin halos of light bracketing the front door. Such kindness had to be courtesy of Miss Turner. Both of them honed in on the welcoming flames, stiff and silent in the short walk to the cottage. The amber-haired housekeeper from London was a bartered prize this night, a truth not sitting well with either of them.

Samuel pushed open the cottage door, inside brightness flooding his tense features. “What will you do if she says no?”

“Just go ask her.”

Voices sounded from the parlor. A chair scraped the floor. The chess game had to be coming to an end.

Samuel jerked free of his coat and hat, his voice a low rumble. “Ifshe says yes, I’ll bring her ’round tomorrow. Are we agreed?”

“Agreed.”

Marcus tucked his spatterdashes under his arm and waited hat in hand in the entry hall. Light and warmth glowed from the parlor. Indeed, the whole cottage did. Its humble welcome bade one to stay, giving succor from the world.

“I won,” Adam crowed. “That makes three in a row for me.”

The snug scene, the brothers playing a game content in the sparsely furnished parlor, all pressed on him like bricks. Adam flashed a smile at Marcus, the lad’s upper lip darkened by fuzz. Samuel would soon teach his youngest brother the manly rite of shaving. The former military man played mother and father to these two, shepherding them in the world.

“Care for a game, Lord Bowles?” Adam asked, motioning to the board.

“You can have my place, milord.” Alexander slapped the chair’s arms and pushed upright. “I don’t have it in me tonight.”

Adam reset the game pieces. His oversize coat sagged off his shoulders, a castoff from his older brother. Square patches covered the breeches where his knobby knees bent. The lad was all limbs.