“Enough!” Noelle blurted. “I saw him. Fancy ascot. Attractive birdlike eyes. Please don’t keep describing him to me.”
Virginia narrowed her eyes in consideration. “The two of you would make a striking pair, don’t you think?”
“We wouldn’t even make it through an afternoon,” Noelle said flatly. “He is the last man I’d choose. When I marry, it will be someone who respects me, my town, and everything I love.”
“Interesting,” Virginia said as if Noelle had helped her to solve a great mystery.
“Interesting that I want a husband who loves and respects me?” she asked dryly.
Virginia’s brows arched. “Interesting that when I mention Silkridge, your first thought is marriage.”
“He is the embodiment of everything I do not want,” Noelle enunciated firmly.
She was in no danger of falling in love with him. Silkridge had not only left her, he had abandoned his own grandfather. That behavior spoke volumes. Noelle rather hoped the duke had been written out of the will completely.
“He hates Christmas,” she said. “He’s impossible.”
“Does he hateChristmasor Cressmouth?” Virginia asked.
“Same thing,” Noelle answered.
Rejecting Christmas meant rejecting Cressmouth. Rejecting Noelle. She was as much a part of this town and everything it stood for as the mountain breeze that blew through it.
Virginia lifted a shoulder. “Perhaps he has changed.”
“He has not,” Noelle said. Last night had proven as much. His position on Cressmouth had been clear. “Nor has he given any sign of wishing to bend on the matter.”
“Sometimes rigid is good.” Virginia’s lips curved wickedly.
Noelle slanted her a warning look. “Do not even suggest—”
Virginia blinked innocently. “That nature always finds a way? The woodpecker relies on a beak as hard as stone in order to seek sustenance. Dukes are not so different.”
Whatever Virginia meant, Noelle disagreed. Silkridge wasn’t seeking anything here, sustenance or otherwise. That was the problem.
She pushed him out of her mind as they reached the bottom of the stair. A queue had formed downstairs in the main corridor. They were early. The doors had not yet been opened to allow in those called for the reading of the will.
“Miss Pratchett and Miss Underwood!” A portly gentleman with a long white beard and an omnipresent worsted cap atop his head enveloped them in a jovial embrace.
Although he had been born Fred Fawkes, the battered white wool barely containing his frizzy white locks had earned him the nickname Old Fuzzy Wig. He had been delighted by the appellation and refused to respond to anything else.
Mr. Fawkes was also Noelle’s mentor, or at least he had been before age had begun to affect his memory and his hearing. Now he went nowhere without a trusty ear trumpet clutched in one hand.
“Good to see you, Fuzzy Wig,” she shouted into the ear trumpet. “You are looking handsome as ever today.”
She was never sure if he completely understood the things she shouted into his ear, but she did her best to include him all the same. He had been Mr. Marlowe’s clerk for decades. One could be forgiven for thinking Mr. Fawkes as responsible for turning Cressmouth into Christmas as his old master had been.
Noelle did her best to be just as indispensable. Mr. Marlowe was gone, and Mr. Fawkes was no longer a clerk, which meant Noelle was now the lynchpin of the counting house.
Or at least, she had been until now. She did not think Mr. Marlowe’s will and testament would strip her from her post, but she could not be certain whether the will had been revised recently enough to include her.
The doors opened, and the queue streamed from the corridor into a large chamber with hundreds of chairs.
“Now, Miss Pratchett.” Mr. Fawkes pinched her cheek. “I must ask you to mind the counting house for me while I attend the reading of Marlowe’s will.”
“I have been attending to the counting house since you retired four years ago,” she reminded him as gently as one could whilst screaming into an ear trumpet. “All of Cressmouth is under the castle roof attending the same reading.”
Mr. Fawkes looked startled. “Is that so? When do the proceedings start?”
