Page 29 of Better Off Wed

“Oh, aye, milady.”

A truthful answer? Laura fancied she heard a little hesitation. And the other maid’s words suggested that Dinah had received warnings from the housekeeper about things other than whistling.

When Laura’s curls were arranged, Dinah helped her rise and served as a willing crutch as she hobbled back into the bedchamber and made her way to the little sofa by the hearth.

“Breakfast for you, milady.” The maid brought the tray closer once Laura was comfortably seated, with a pillow atop a footstool propping up her injured ankle. “Shall I light the fire? It’s a damp, drear day—more like November than the start of September, if you ask me.”

“Thank you, Dinah. I would like that.” A fire would help to cement her place as a sympathetic invalid.

“Be there anything else, milady?” Dinah asked when the fire was crackling merrily. She was red-cheeked from the exertion and really quite pretty. Good God, but Laura hoped the girl had little occasion to cross Thornton’s path.

“No, thank you. Unless…” She remembered suddenly the part she was meant to be playing. “Unless you have some notion of when the gentlemen might return from their sport?”

“No tellin’ that—his lordship’s been known to tromp through the woods all day.”

It was excellent news, really. Jeremy would have more time to gather information that might prove valuable to her cause. But as a new bride, of course, she must pretend disappointment at being left alone. “Oh. I suppose I should not—” A strategic pause, as if she feared she had said too much.

“Ma’am?”

She let a small, mournful smile slide onto her lips. “I was so cool to him during our courtship. I suppose I should not be surprised if the tables are now turned.”

As she’d hoped, Dinah’s eyes widened as she took in Laura’s expression and words, no doubt storing them up for relating below stairs. Not knowing what to say in reply to such a confession, however, the girl curtsied to signal that her work was done. “Lady Thornton has said she will come see you this morning, if you wish it.”

How much did the countess know about the man to whom she was married? Lady Sterling had, on occasion, found unhappy wives to be most useful, if occasionally unwitting, allies to her cause. Others, unfortunately, blamed their husband’s victims for their own unhappiness.

“Please tell her a visit would be most welcome.”

When Dinah left, quiet fell over the room. Wondering about the time, Laura glanced behind her at the bedside table, where both Phelps’s vial of laudanum and her reticule still lay. She despised her lack of mobility, her near helplessness. But, most of all, she disliked the fact that she found it genuinely unsettling to be alone.

Missing Jeremy was supposed to be an act.

An eternity later, a tap on the door signaled the arrival of Lady Thornton and her two daughters, who evidently had accompanied their mama to practice their company manners and to learn how to display ladylike compassion for the less fortunate. Lady Eleanor and Lady Margaret were sallow-faced girls of twelve and fourteen whose rather petulant expressions made Laura pity Miss Godfrey afresh.

Half an hour’s vapid conversation with their mother, in which Laura was forced to conjure details of Lord Sterling’s proposal and yesterday’s wedding ceremony, left Laura pitying herself.

It was an opportunity of which she ought to have been glad, a chance to engage these strangers’ sympathy and interest, to help them forget any previous association they might have had with the name Lady Sterling. And since it was unlikely that Lord Thornton had spent the morning quizzing Jeremy along similar lines, she need have no fear of exposing inconsistencies in their stories.

But she was beginning to resent the time she was required to spend thinking of her supposed husband. Hearing parlor maids sigh over his good looks. Watching a grown woman who ought to have known better grow misty-eyed over his made-up request to be made the happiest of men.

An almost inaudible tap on the door brought the visit to a merciful close. Miss Godfrey opened the door. She looked, if possible, more wan than she had last night, a timely reminder that Laura must use whatever resources were at her disposal to prevent Lord Thornton from crushing the poor governess’s last spark.

“My lady,” Miss Godfrey said, curtsying to Lady Thornton. “I came to fetch Lady Eleanor and Lady Margaret for their geography lesson.”

“Oh, is it one o’clock already?” Lady Thornton said, rising. Her daughters followed suit, though displaying no enthusiasm for a return to their schoolwork.

“Will the gentlemen stay out all day, Lady Thornton?” Laura asked, catching Miss Godfrey’s eye, hoping to convey encouragement.

“Why, I couldn’t hazard a guess,” said Lady Thornton.

“Papa is a great sportsman,” declared Lady Margaret.

Miss Godfrey cleared her throat, then looked stricken by the attention that slight noise brought her and the subsequent expectation that she was about to speak. “The gentlemen returned more than an hour ago,” she said at last. “I happened to see them from the east window in the schoolroom.”

An hour? Laura let a sharp sigh escape her lips, though she refused to feel actual disappointment, particularly not when Lady Thornton’s next words were, “Then I daresay they shall spend the rest of the day in the billiards room—or perhaps Thornton’s study, if your Lord Sterling is the sort of man willing to listen to endless stories about the acquisition of this treasure or that.” Jeremy had been given another excellent opportunity to gather information about their host.

But Lady Thornton’s fond smile at her husband’s self-indulgence spoke volumes. Laura knew too much about the sort of gentleman who bragged about his conquests, of whatever variety. She knew something, too, of the sort of people who let them. In that instant, she felt sure that the female staff of Thornton Hall could expect little support from their mistress.

She glanced toward Miss Godfrey, thought of Dinah. She needed to act, and quickly.