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“Have we any milk?” Jane asked.
“I’m afraid not, dear,” Elizabeth replied, sliding an egg onto a plate. “Just enough for tea.”
Susan slapped a piece of bread on Jane’s plate and said to Elizabeth, “About Edict Number Two…”
“Not now,” Elizabeth hissed, with a pointed look toward Jane, who, thankfully, was too busy poking her finger into the bread to take notice of her older sisters.
“My toast is raw,” Jane said.
Elizabeth didn’t even have time to yell at Susan for forgetting to make the toast before Lucas came bounding in.
“Good morning!” he said cheerfully.
“You seem especially chipper,” Elizabeth said, tousling his hair before serving him breakfast.
“I’m going fishing today with Tommy Fairmount and his father.” Lucas gobbled three-quarters of his egg before adding, “We shall eat well tonight!”
“That’s wonderful, dear,” Elizabeth said. She glanced at the small clock on the counter, then said, “I must be off. You lot will make certain the kitchen gets cleaned?”
Lucas nodded. “I shall supervise.”
“You shall help.”
“That, too,” he grumbled. “May I have another egg?”
Elizabeth’s own stomach growled in sympathy. “We haven’t any extras,” she said.
Jane looked at her suspiciously. “You didn’t eat anything, Lizzie.”
“I eat breakfast with Lady Danbury,” Elizabeth lied.
“Have mine.” Jane pushed what was left of her breakfast—two bites of egg and a wad of bread so mangled that Elizabeth would have had to have been far, far hungrier even to sniff at it—across the table.
“You finish it, Janie,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll eat at Lady Danbury’s. I promise.”
“I shall have to catch a very big fish,” she heard Lucas whisper to Jane.
And that was the final straw. Elizabeth had been resisting this husband hunt; she hated how mercenary she felt for even considering it. But no more. What kind of world was it when eight-year-old boys worried about catching fish, not because of sport, but because they worried about filling their sisters’ stomachs?
Elizabeth threw her shoulders back and marched to the door. “Susan,” she said sharply, “a word with you?”
Jane and Lucas exchanged glances. “She’s going to get it because she forgot to cook the toast,” Jane whispered.
“Raw toast,” Lucas said grimly, shaking his head. “It goes against the very nature of man.”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes as she walked outside. Where did he come up with these things?
When they were safely out of earshot, she turned to Susan and said, “First of all, I want no mention of this—this husband hunt in front of the children.”
Susan held up Mrs. Seeton’s book. “Then you’re going to follow her advice?”
“I don’t see how I have any choice,” Elizabeth muttered. “Just tell me those rules.”
Chapter 3
Elizabeth was muttering to herself as she entered Danbury House that morning. Truth be told, she’d been muttering to herself the entire
walk over. She had promised Susan that she would try to practice Mrs. Seeton’s edicts on Lady Danbury’s new estate manager, but she didn’t see how she could do this without immediately breaking Edict Number Two:
