“No,” he said after a long moment, more to himself than to Harker. “I doubt that I do. But I would like to know whether the choice is mine.”
Harker nodded slowly. “I will see to the documents, my lord, but I assure you that you would not be the first person to attempt to violate the agreement.”
“And the others were unsuccessful?”
“It never went far enough to either succeed or fail,” the steward replied. “Your predecessors always met an unfortunate and sometimes untimely fate once they began poking into the Ashcombe business.”
“I’ll not be put off by superstitious nonsense and scary stories for children, Harker. See to the task at hand.”
“Of course, my lord. Will there be anything else?”
Gabriel didn’t answer audibly. Instead, he simply shook his head.
When the steward had gone, Gabriel remained seated in silence, his hands loosely clasped before him. He told himself that it was practicality driving his curiosity — prudence, caution, the simple need to know the boundaries of his own authority. And yet, if he were being honest with himself, that was not the whole of it.
It was the memory of soft brown eyes meeting his without fear. The faint curl of disdain in her voice when she reminded him that his authority did not extend as far as he assumed. The faintest trace of rosemary and crushed leaves on the air as she brushed past him.
And above all, it was the knowledge that his life — so recently thrown into chaos — had just grown more complicated still.
Chapter
Three
“Irritating,” Eliza muttered, tossing a sprig of rosemary into the basket with far more force than it deserved. “High-handed. Arrogant. Unbearably proud.”
She paced the narrow confines of the cottage’s main room, still wrapped in her cloak, her cheeks flushed with color and her words growing sharper with each one she spoke. “And utterly insufferable,” she added for good measure. “He accused me of trespassing —me— when I have walked those woods since I was barely old enough to toddle. How dare he!”
Helena Ashcombe looked up from the kettle she was coaxing into a gentle simmer and hid a smile behind her teacup. She had seen her granddaughter annoyed before. She had seen her vexed by weather, by illness, by an unexpected visitor at the door. But she had never — not once — seen her quite like this.
“Did he, now?” Helena asked mildly, her tone carefully neutral.
Eliza spun to face her, skirts swishing about her ankles. “He did. And then he informed me that I ought to ‘confine my herb gathering’ to the garden as though the entire forest did not offerbounty enough for all of us. As though I were a thief creeping about in the shadows rather than a woman tending to her work.”
“Mmm.” Helena stirred the tea, the spoon clinking gently against the porcelain. “And I take it you told him precisely what you thought of that suggestion?”
“Of course I did.” Eliza huffed as she crossed her arms and lifted her chin. “I informed him that he has no authority over me — which he does not — and that he might consider tempering his opinions until he has a proper understanding of the land he’s so recently come to possess.”
Helena set the spoon aside and regarded her granddaughter over the rim of her cup. “I see. And did he take offense to being corrected?”
Eliza hesitated. “Perhaps. I cannot say. He was—” She paused, her brow furrowing as if the word itself eluded her. “—difficult to read.”
“Difficult to read?” Helena repeated softly. In all her years, from the time Eliza had been little more than a babe in swaddling clothes, she’d been an undeniably fine judge of character. And while Eliza herself did not see the magic in that, Helena always had.
“Yes.” Eliza began pacing again, gesturing animatedly as though the motion might help burn away the strange, restless energy coiling inside her. “He’s so… composed. Too composed. Infuriatingly so, in fact. He hardly raised his voice, not even when I contradicted him. And yet there was something about him — something in the way he looked at me, as if he were trying to puzzle out what sort of creature I was and hadn’t quite decided whether I was dangerous or merely inconvenient.”
Helena’s lips twitched. “Perhaps he has not encountered many women who speak their minds so freely.”
“Well, heshould,” Eliza huffed. “It might do him good. If he intends to remain here — and I dearly hope he does not — thenhe will learn that the Ashcombe women do not shrink from titles or temper their words to soothe the fragile vanities of men.”
There was silence then, save for the soft hiss and pop of the low burning fire and hissing of the simmering pot suspended near it. Helena watched her granddaughter with the same quiet patience she had always possessed, but behind that calm exterior, her mind was spinning.
Flustered. That was the word for it. Eliza — her fiercely independent, unflappable, maddeningly self-possessed Eliza — wasflustered.
She had seen her angry before, yes. Seen her unbothered, unimpressed, even openly disgusted when some village youth had dared offer a compliment or — on rare and regrettable occasions — an indecent proposal. But this was different. This was not indifference dressed up as disdain. Nor was it the righteous fury she had displayed when once confronted with a clergyman’s accusations of witchcraft.
This was agitation. Restlessness. And something beneath it that Helena had not seen before — a spark she had long been waiting for.
“You dislike him very much, then,” she said at last, carefully casual.
