Perhaps this was a stroke of luck.
Theo slid his gaze toward the writing desk lying forgotten beneath the tea table. He had been hesitant to write to his father. In part, because he had no eagerness to receive the imminent haranguing, but also because he did not want Azureford’s staff to deduce Theo’s identity from the address on the letter.
Virginia changed all that. If the letter included no return direction and was smuggled into the castle’s outgoing correspondence by way of his self-appointed nurse, no one need be the wiser.
The wild card in the plan was Virginia.
Would she follow his instructions? He suspected she would. She seemed eager to help. Would she recognize his father’s name? He suspected she would not. She lived in the furthest possible point from London Society. She had no reason to memorize lineages of the peerage.
But it was still a risk. He would have to decide whether to trust her.
“No crutches,” was all he said aloud. No crutches in front of her, anyway. He preferred his facial contortions and grunts of pain to stay private.
“Not yet,” she agreed. “Put ice or snow on your knee once an hour. Tomorrow we’ll start the exercises.”
With that, she picked up her basket and was gone.
Chapter 4
Virginia turned to her cat. “Heel.”
Duke sent her a sullen glance but settled outside the aviary to wait for her as he did every morning.
He was not angry at her for refusing him entrance to a buffet full of birds. He was miffed at having been disinvited to yesterday’s constitutional.
“Maybe this afternoon,” she promised him, and slipped inside the aviary.
He knew as well as Virginia did that she would not be able to leave him behind for long. She loved him too much. They understood each other. Virginia never asked Duke to be anything but what he was or do anything but what he did.
In return, Duke kept coming back because he liked her just as she was, too.
She fished in her reticule for a bag of seed and began tossing the treats about the aviary. After having sat in half-finished construction for years, the aviary had finally opened three months prior. On its first day, it contained a single partridge. One month later, Virginia had taken it upon herself to donate one of her own rescues she’d recently rehabilitated.
Although she had doubled the population with a single gift, a two-bird aviary did not attract many guests. In fact, after the opening celebration, Virginia was the only resident who bothered to return. She was here so often it almost functioned like her private nook.
Virginia had been using a pair of abandoned outbuildings near the castle as temporary shelters for the various strays she had helped over the years. One was for birds, the other for any animal she dared not leave alone in an enclosed structure full of wounded birds.
Last month, she had decided it was silly to tend both to overcrowded outbuildings and an underpopulated aviary. One by one, she smuggled each of her rescued birds from her secret sanatorium into the castle aviary.
No one had noticed.
Virginia didn’t care. She wasn’t tending strays for tourists’ sakes. She was saving tiny lives.
“Dasher,” she called softly as she wound her way through the aviary’s greenery.Aha.There he was.
The chaffinch had hurt its wing when it had crashed into her friend Penelope’s chimney. In the weeks since Virginia had rescued him, his wing had healed, and he could once again fly. The latest in a long line of successes.
She hugged herself as she gazed about the aviary. It was now her second home, but it hadn’t begun that way. When Virginia had first arrived in Christmas, she had been skittish around animals of all kinds. The loud squawks and sudden flaps of wings startled her.
Learning not to flinch had been the first project she had given herself. Little by little, she lost her fear and learned to love animals instead. Now they were her family.
With a creak, the door to the aviary swung open.
Virginia looked over in surprise. Occasionally one of her friends would seek her out, but the man who had just entered was the solicitor handling Mr. Marlowe’s estate.
She glanced away.
“Good morning, Miss Underwood.” He stepped further into the aviary and scribbled something in a small notebook. “I didn’t expect anyone to be here.”
