Page 10 of The Countess Caper

They hauled the buckets to the one window that opened, mostly because it was broken. A pigeon flapped at their heads in protest. “I know you lived here first,” Tessa muttered. “But we live here now.”

They tossed the dirty water outside, dragged the buckets back into place, and then added the chamber pots under the new leaks. Tessa wiped her hands on her breeches. “That should do it,” she said. “Rain’s starting to let up, too, so that’s a help.”

“When the floor gives out, we’ll be crushed in our beds,” Holly said. She did not sound concerned. She rather liked being morose. Eerie, even. Tessa was used to it. She found it oddly charming.

“Think of the poems they’ll write.” Tessa patted her arm.

Holly’s eyes twinkled. “I would love that.”

“I know,” she said. “You might want to start on one now.”

“You know, I think I shall. This house could do with a ghost. Someone bloodthirsty.”

“Yes,” Tessa agreed wryly. “That’s just what we need.”

Holly had joined them three months ago, clearly increasing and yet thin from hunger and wary of help. Her sister—Daphne now—had heard that Tessa might help, and they had both landed on the doorstep. Daphne offered to do the gardening in exchange for their room and board. Tessa would have taken them in regardless. Which was a good thing, as the gardens were only slightly less of a disaster than the attic.

Daphne had slightly oversold her talents. Apparently liking flowers was the not same thing as knowing how to grow them. Nor was being a lord’s daughter with a team of gardeners. But she had managed to save the rosemary and mint bushes, and some of the thyme. And she discovered some carrots and leeks still growing in the corner of the abandoned kitchen garden. At the time, it had felt like a feast.

Tessa was the last to complain. Before buying Magpie House, she’d had no idea how to boil water or bake bread or cook anything at all. She’d never learned. A viscount’s daughter wasn’t meant to know such things. She was meant to decorate every room she entered like an expensive bauble. A diamond.

A viscount’s daughter also wasn’t meant to have her inheritance stolen by the next in line for the title.

Damn George, anyway.

She could bake bread mostly without turning it to rock now, boil water for tea with only minimal burns to her fingers. She even knew how to make a decent cottage pie. And keep the slugs off the lettuce.

She did not, however, know how to patch a roof.

Sighing, she changed out of her wet highwayman’s costume into a regular dress, dark blue with ribbons at the hem. If she added a spencer with lace points at the sleeves and brushed her hair, it was only because she was accustomed to dressing for guests. Any guests.

Roarke wasn’t special.

She’d been telling herself that for ages.

She still didn’t believe it.

Chapter Five

It was Tessa who had bounded carelessly up the stairs, but it was Lady Tessa Kilkenny who entered the parlor.

She wore a dress that brought out the fire in her hair, the glint in her eyes. Roarke was more familiar with this version of her, the one who knew how to curtsy, who smelled like roses and amber. He remembered that scent. Dreamt of it, despite himself.

But now that he had seen the other Tessa, the one who gadded about in breeches and stole carriages—he knew he was done for. He’d thought about her more than was likely right even before this moment. Wondered at himself for it. Wondered where she was, what she was doing. When he might spy her through a crowd or in the crush of a ballroom. Where she went when she disappeared from London.

Which, considering he abhorred both crowds and ballrooms, was a feat in itself.

He’d worried for days. Weeks. Only Summer’s casual comment that she had just had a letter from Tessa had calmed him.

But this Tessa…this Tessa would break him.

It was not a particularly helpful development. Especially with a marriage offer on the table. He was here because she was unconventional. Not because found her intriguing. If anything, that was a point against her. Whatever strange ribbon connecting them was entirely in his mind. Or, more likely, firmly planted in his lower body. That was to say, nothing she would have felt or noticed. He didn’t delude himself. Noticing a sunflower glowing on a gray day did not mean that the sunflower noticed you.

And he knew full well that most people would take his need for solitude personally. He had evidence of that, clearly. He had not been able to keep his wife happy, and she had run off to London within days of their marriage. Which had suited him fine.

What happened afterward did not. Even before the rumors, before ladies paled at his approach, and gentlemen blustered.

But if that need for solitude was preferable, if it was understood from the beginning…