Before they could argue, Carole all but sprinted up the duke’s stone path toward his front door.
Just as her fingers closed about the brass knocker, Judith materialized breathlessly at her side.
“How… dare you,” she panted, shoving a silver ringlet from her damp forehead. “I’m your… chaperone.”
Silver ringlets? Judith had stopped to curl her hair before chasing after Carole?
“You’re my lady’s maid,” she said firmly, although they both knew she really meant surrogate mother.
Carole hadn’t been older than Annie and Frederick when the fever stole her mother away. As her father retreated more and more into himself, Judith quickly became the only constant Carole could count on.
“I was letting you rest,” she added. “You said your knee was hurting because it was about to rain, and—”
“Shh!” Judith swatted a hand at her in horror. “Never mention arthritis where someone mighthearyou.”
Carole rolled her gaze skyward. “Who would even care whether or not you—”
The door swung open, revealing Swinton, the Duke of Azureford’s authoritative, unflappable, recently coiffed butler.
Her heart sank. He was never going to let them in.
Chapter 4
“Why, Mr. Swinton,” Judith cooed, twisting a silver ringlet about her finger. “Every time I see you, you look more handsome than the last.”
Carole tensed. That was it. Swinton was going to toss them both into the street. Or the closest madhouse.
Instead, he preened—and immediately tried to hide it with a cough. “I felt it time for a new coiffure.”
He felt it time for a new coiffure? What in the world?
Carole looked from her blushing lady’s maid to the stoic white-haired man blocking the doorway and back again.
Oh, for the love of geometry. The Duke of Azureford’s butler was flirting—or rather, carefully not flirting—with the maid Carole had known since childhood. Or thought she knew. Apparently, there was a cure for seasonal arthritis after all: The next-door neighbor’s butler.
Carole flashed the letter she’d received from Azureford. “May we come inside?”
“Of course.” Swinton stood to one side to allow them passage.
Carole stepped past him quickly, eager to be on her way to the duke’s library.
Judith oozed into the entranceway, accidentally-on-purpose brushing her every ample curve against the increasingly flustered butler.
“You are everything that is kind and thoughtful,” she fawned with a flutter of silver eyelashes.
“I wassummoned,” Carole hissed behind her hand. “Hehadto let us in.”
But the truth was, Judith’s not-exactly-unrequited infatuation was fortuitous indeed. Rather than hover like a mistrustful chaperone, Swinton would be too distracted by Judith’s attentions to bother trailing after Carole.
In fact… A smile tugged at her lips as she inched away from them toward the library. Just because Carole had determined to live the life of a spinster, didn’t mean Judith was destined to share that fate. The man had visited abarberon the off chance the neighboring housemaid might drop by. It wasn’t exactly posies and roses, but it was as good a first step as any. If this was love, Carole wouldn’t stand in the way. She—
A wall of tall, solid man blocked her path.
Carole narrowly avoided smashing face-first into his snowy white cravat. Perhaps that was why her nose hovered next to his broad chest for an extra second, breathing in the warm scent of sandalwood and spice, before she jerked backward to properly greet her host.
“Your Grace.” Was that a curtsy? It might’ve been a curtsy. Right now, her legs felt too much like a wooden marionette to register whether she’d bent her knees or not.
“Miss Quincy.” His voice was aloof and cold, just like the impression he’d always given her… until today.
