“Excuse me?”
The duke was on his feet now, too, his expression steely.
“You can’t work for Lord Bassett,” he said. “He... he isn’t a good man.”
Letitia felt strange, as if this were happening to someone else. It was all too bizarre to be real, otherwise.
“The Duchess of Godwin recommended that I speak with his wife,” she pointed out. There wasn’t anything that the Duke of Rutley could say that would make her question Helen’s judgment.
“That’s because Helen is a nice person—her insane decision to marry my cousin aside—and doesn’t know the things I know,” the duke countered, sounding frustrated and… Was heworried? No, that truly would be madness.
She narrowed her eyes. “What do you know?”
He pressed his lips together. “I know that Bassett is not the kind of person to be trusted with a young woman alone.”
Her mouth went dry. She knew what he meant. Every woman in service knew what that meant.
“I don’t have any assurances of your character, either,” she said, though she likely should have kept this thought to herself. “The duchess didn’t send me toyou.”
He didn’t seem to have an argument about this, but he didn’t back down either.
“Don’t accept that offer, Miss Knightley,” he said firmly. “You will be sorry that you did.”
She clenched her jaw. He didn’t understand. No man like him ever could. Being a woman in service always meant courting regret. All she could do was choose the safest option, even though she knew she could never be entirely sure she would be safe.
But she trusted Helen. She had to let that trust bear out.
“Good day, Your Grace,” she said. She wouldn’t win an argument with him, so the only thing to do was to just leave. “I wish you luck finding a governess. But it will not be me.”
* * *
Ezra was, by nature, a schemer. He schemed. He plotted. He planned.
He thought very quickly about how he might keep Miss Knightley.
Many men of his status—the ones with fragile egos—would have hated the way she’d stood up to him. So few people outside his family ever did that, cowed either by his title or his connections.
But Miss Knightley had not wilted like a flower. She’d blossomed with defiance.
He had been telling the truth when he told her that he liked that. That he likedher.
And Christ knew he could not let her go live with that scoundrel Bassett.
He needed to move quickly, though. As he pushed to his feet, considering what he would say when he caught up with her, something went right for the first time in a very long time.
“Oh, goodness,” he heard Miss Knightley say. “I didn’t see you there. Good afternoon.”
Nobody responded, which could only mean one thing.
Miss Knightley was speaking to the child.
She was definitely a little girl. Her bath had confirmed that. Not only had the housemaid who helped her reported as much, but with the layer of dirt washed away, she looked perhaps four or five years old. That was all he had learned about his new charge, however. For she still had not uttered a word.
He crept to the door of the parlor and watched.
Miss Knightley knelt down to be at the same eye level as the child. She was smiling sweetly, and although the girl didn’t return the smile, she seemed slightly less guarded than usual. Ezra stayed hidden out of sight.
“My apologies for nearly bumping into you,” Miss Knightley went on breezily, not acting as though she found it the least bit odd that the girl was staring at her silently. “I was woolgathering—though I have always thought that a silly phrase, since I would think, if I were shearing a sheep, I would pay very close attention indeed.”
