This was nonsense. The woman was talking utter nonsense.
But the girl…
Shenodded.
Everything in Ezra went very still.
“But look at me again, forgetting my manners,” Miss Knightley went on with a little self-deprecating laugh. “My name is Miss Knightley. I have just come from a meeting with the duke. Do you have a name?”
She asked it so lightly and sweetly that somehow, even Ezra was almost unsurprised when the little girl answered.
“Iris,” she said, her voice scarcely above a whisper.
He could hear the smile in Miss Knightley’s voice as she went on, speaking as though this—the first word the girl had spoken in days—was not monumental in the least.
“Iris,” she repeated. “What a lovely name! Well, I am afraid that I have to be off, Miss Iris, but it was very nice to meet you.”
The girl—Iris—didn’t reply, but she nodded again, which was more than Ezra had ever gotten out of her. More than any of the other applicants for the role had gotten out of her.
He knew then, no matter what she might say, that he could not let Miss Knightley just leave. Unfortunately, she was, at the moment he had thought, standing up to leave.
Only cads and bastards chased after women who were trying to get away. Ezra was neither.
Except, right now, he was absolutely chasing after a woman who was trying to get away.
He didn’t even stop to get his hat.
“Miss Knightley!”
CHAPTER 4
It was settled. The Duke of Rutley was a madman.
“Miss Knightley!”
He was following her! She was walking down the street, and he was following her! Calling her name!
She was sorely tempted to ignore him, to just keep walking. But having an aristocrat shouting after her wasnotthe kind of attention she wanted to garner. She might not be a fine lady, but a governess’s livelihood lived and died on her reputation just as much as did any high society marriage potential.
“What?” she asked through gritted teeth, which shehopedresembled a smile. It wasn’t a polite response, but she could either appear polite or actually be polite, and she was choosing the former.
The duke’s smile looked as though it came a great deal more easily, though he could not have been nearly at ease as he seemed, not if he was pursuing her down a Mayfair street without even a hat on his head.
“Miss Knightley,” he said conversationally, as if this was entirely normal. “Might I offer you a ride back to your lodgings?”
Hewasmad. He wasactually, legitimately, one hundred percent mad. Should she write to the Duchess of Godwin? Surely she deserved to know about the lunatic in the family.
“No,” she said slowly, as if explaining herself to a child in the middle of a particularly ridiculous tantrum. “You cannot. I might not be a lady by birth, Your Grace, but I am a woman. And I am not under your employ. Doing so would be highly improper.”
He paused to consider this, then nodded. She was too sensible to hope that this meant that he would go away. Indeed, any such hopes would have been disappointed, because then he said, “In that case, I shall offer you an escort to your hack.”
And then he extended his arm as if she were a lady, after all.
She looked at it the way she might have looked at someone offering her a live snake. He shook her arm. Encouragingly. Cajolingly.
There was an old man nearby walking an extremely small dog. Both man and dog were watching this interaction with interest.
With a sigh, Letty took his arm, if only to stop making a public spectacle.
