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She raised her eyebrows.
“Well, not nearly as much as I might have. It is rather dull here, Cecelia. Aside from your company, of course. But you do go off on mysterious errands.”
“Poor James.” She pressed his arm. “I’m puzzled about Harriet Finch. There’s something odd about her lately.”
“So you have said before. She is a bit unusual compared with other debs, but surely…”
“She is behaving oddly, I mean. Haven’t you noticed?” When the duke made no reply, she looked up at him. “You would if you tried. You are an acute observer.”
He put his free hand to his heart. “My dear, I am overwhelmed.”
“Tease all you like, James.”
“Thank you, I will.”
The duchess laughed. “As long as you help me discover what’s going on.”
“Is this one of those unspoken requirements of marriage? To become a coconspirator?”
“Yes,” answered the duchess with a bland expression. Her eyes danced, however.
“Then I must rally ’round, of course.”
“I will be very grateful.”
Their eyes held, and a familiar, delicious heat rose between them. They smiled wickedly.
“No, my lord!” cried an urgent voice behind them.
The Terefords turned to see the earl and the old caretaker Mr. Riley on the other side of the garden, beside a decrepit trellis. Ferrington had put a hand to the structure, and as they watched, it trembled and fell over, burying Riley in grapevines. The earl sprang forward and pulled him out, brushing bits of leaf from his smaller companion’s clothing.
“I need a way to bring them together,” said the duchess.
“I don’t see how they could be more so,” replied her husband, watching the earl and Riley contemplate the unsupported mound of vines.
“Ferrington and Harriet, I mean.”
“Oh. Not another ride, I think.”
“Harriet wouldn’t come. I know! That’s perfect.”
***
Thus it was that Harriet found herself carried off to Ferrington Hall the following day to look over the house and note any changes she would like to make as countess. She’d tried to resist the invitation, but Cecelia was not a duchess for nothing. She’d been unstoppable, countering all the objections Harriet could muster and enlisting her mother and grandfather in the scheme. Mama had thought it a lovely idea. She’d positively beamed. Grandfather seemed to view it as planting their flag on a rival’s bastion. He’d had to be discouraged from coming along and making suggestions of his own. Harriet feared he was even now reviewing the clutter of objects that crammed Winstead Hall and choosing the gaudiest, most ostentatious to send with her when she married the earl.
Harriet had been driven back and back until she ran out of excuses. And so now, she was walking through the rooms with the rogue earl at her side and Cecelia lurking behind them, more instigator than chaperone. There was to be a luncheon in the garden afterward, for which the duke would join them. Harriet had prayed, unsuccessfully, for rain.
“The Rileys say there have been no changes to the furnishings in forty years,” Ferrington told her as they passed through the drawing room, dining room, and two parlors on the lower floor. “Only in the wine cellar. My predecessor was…”
“A connoisseur?” suggested Harriet.
“I would have said a drunkard. But I am a blunt colonial.”
“Is that your new designation?”
“I prefer it to barbarian. Or rogue.” His smile brought back a rush of memories. They’d tossed that last word back and forth in so many different tones. At this point, it seemed like an endearment.
Conscious of Cecelia’s sharp ears, Harriet walked on.
