“I don’t want to go away,” Sissy said, the tears back in her voice. “Wolfe was always so nice whenever he came to visit us before Father died.”
“Is he not nice now?” Grace knew she shouldn’t ask, but she had to know. She had already heard quite a bit about the children’s lives that she didn’t like. If there was more, she might have a word with Chance about confronting the Duke of Wolfebourne about his behavior. Papa had done that once at Mama’s insistence after they had discovered a peer mistreating a child. It had sent ripples of shock through theton, but Mama and Papa hadn’t cared, and the little girl they had rescued from the cruel guardian’s clutches, married now with children of her own, still sent letters singing Mama and Papa’s praises.
Grace slowed her pace and glanced back at the children. “Is your brother not nice to you?”
“He is nice whenever he is with us,” Sissy said. “But he says he knows nothing about being a father. Which I guess being our guardian makes him. I think he likes us still—just maybe not as much as before Father died and left us hanging around his neck. That is what our first governess told us.”
Grace wished she could hunt down those heartless women and scratch out their eyes. How could they say such hurtful things to these two?
Movement just above the tops of the tall, swaying grasses farther across the meadow caught her attention, making her squint to sort out what it was. She prayed it was nothing more than a deer having a good stretch of its legs. They were on Wolfebourne property now, and this particular bit of land was an undulating length of dips and rises. The small hills and valleys, paired with the tall grass, repeatedly hid, then revealed, whatever was coming toward them. The source of the movement topped a hill again. It was not a deer.
“Drat.” Grace adjusted her hat, making certain her hair was well tucked up inside it.
The rider headed their way was a man—a man the size of a freestanding continent—and he urged his equally enormous mount into a hard gallop as if the hounds of hell chased after them. The gleaming ebony shire stretched out its long legs, its nostrils flaring, its mane whipping in the wind.
“We are in trouble again, Connor,” Sissy said with a resigned sigh.
“And brother looks even angrier than usual,” Connor added with a low groan.
Grace resettled her footing and braced herself. So the beast of a man headed their way was none other than the Duke of Wolfebourne. Good heavens, had his ancestors descended from bears? She supposed he could be considered handsome in a dark, dangerous sort of way. She almost smiled, remembering one of her sister Fortuity’s stories about the devil taking the form of a stunning man to successfully seduce the maidens. The duke’s black hair was a tad overlong for the style of the day, and the streaks of gray glinting like silver at his temples surprisedher. She wanted to ask the children how old he was, but he was nearly upon them.
“Sissy! Connor! Where the devil have you been?” He leapt from the saddle before his horse came to a full stop.
“Poor Hector hurt his leg,” Sissy said.
“Gray helped us,” Connor told his brother. “Bandaged his leg and everything.”
As dark and glowering as a building storm, the duke bore down on Grace as if ready to break her in two. “I assume you are Gray?”
To protect Connor’s well-intentioned lie, Grace pulled her cap lower over her eyes and did her best to adopt the accent and mannerisms of one of the stable lads back at their townhouse in London. “I helped the children’s pup, if that be what you be asking. The wee one will be all right. Just a bit of a cut on his foreleg. Used some balm to take care of it.” She tucked her hands behind her back. A stable lad would not have her long, feminine fingers, nor would his hands be clean and lack calluses.
“Where did you find them?” The man’s dark eyes flashed with suspicion and the line of his square jaw hardened.
“Find them?” She tried to keep her head tilted so he couldn’t see her face, making a show of shuffling her feet and glancing away.
“Yes. It is not a difficult question,” he said with a low growl that reminded her of an animal caught in a snare. “Where did you come upon them?”
Grace tossed a nod and a vague flick of her hand at the land behind them. “Just over there a ways. Not far from here.”
“So you admit to trespassing on my property?”
She bit her tongue to keep from giving this ridiculous man the comeuppance he deserved. “I heard them crying. Would you have me ignore a child what might be hurt?”Drat!She had forgotten to maintain the accent.
“Do you know who I am?”
Grace really didn’t care who he was because her family was his equal—in her opinion, even better. But she couldn’t let him know that or her buckskins would be in the dustbin, and Connor would be in even more trouble for lying.
She shrugged. “Can’t say that I do.”
“I am the Duke of Wolfebourne, owner of the land on which you are trespassing.”
“But brother…” Connor said, but the duke silenced him with a glance.
Even though she would rather spit on his well-polished boots, Grace gave the surly man an elaborate bow. “Pleased to meet you, Your Grace.”
“It is customary for servants to remove their hats when in the presence of their betters.”
Well, fine.Dustbin or not. She had enjoyed enough of this insolent fool.Presence of their betters.Indeed. No one deserved to be talked down to in such a way, no matter their station in life.
