“I apologize,” Dietrich said. “But if it makes you feel better, I am just as confused about this as you are.”
“It’s not your whole world that’s been turned upside down,” Ella said sharply before she sighed. “I apologize, Eugenia.”
“You’re allowed to have emotions,” Eugenia said kindly, “but I think that perhaps you’d better go see Duke Vaughn.”
“I can’t,” Ella said instantly, turning to Dietrich with a horrified gaze. “I don’t know anything about being nobility.”
“They will teach you,” Dietrich said. “If it’s true...they’ll teach you everything you need to know.”
Ella shook her head. “No.”
“They will,” he began, but she shook her head again before he could say anything else.
“I’ve been looked down upon every day for as long as I can remember. If I’m going to become a duchess, I need to know more about it before I start. I don’t want to be laughed at or hear them say that I’m only a simple peasant girl pretending to be a duchess.”
She stood straighter, tilting her head a little as she looked at Dietrich. “You can teach me how to be a duchess.”
“No,” he said instantly.
“Yes,” she said, her tone growing more commanding, as if she was practicing how to be nobility. “You work for Duke Vaughn, don’t you?”
He didn’t like where this was going. “I do.”
“So, if it’s true and he is my father, then you should want his daughter to put her best foot forward,” she said. “I need you to teach me how to be a duchess. You know more than anyone else I know here, since you’re the only one who works for him, and I know that you care about the missing girl, because otherwise you wouldn’t be trying to find her still. So I need you to help me.”
The tone in her voice changed from something haughty and commanding to vulnerable and scared as she added a quiet, “Please.”
Dietrich sighed. “I can’t promise anything,” he said. “You may be a peasant girl right now, but I am just a peasant boy, and I know little more than you do.”
“Then teach me the little that you do,” she said. “Please, Dietrich.”
Dietrich took a deep breath. “I don’t know what you expect me to do,” he said. “I don’t know anything of tea parties or table etiquette or how to dress like a duchess. All I know is how to ride horses.”
“Then teach me that,” she said primly. “Surely a duchess knows how to ride a horse.”
Dietrich groaned. He shouldn’t have brought it up, but all the new horses in the estate stables could use some exercise, so it wouldn’t be too out of the ordinary for him to take a couple of horses for a ride in an afternoon.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “And as for the rest of it, I might have an idea.”
He turned to Eugenia. “Can you send a note to Beatrice?” he asked. “I have to get back to work. I’ve already been gone too long.”
“Ah, yes,” Eugenia said with a grin. “Now that your Lord is home, you can’t go gallivanting off to Eldenwilde whenever you want to.”
“Unfortunately,” Dietrich grumbled. “I miss Beatrice.”
Ella and Eugenia grinned at him, and Dietrich glared back at them.
“It’s not funny,” he said.
“It kind of is,” Ella said.
“Just wait until she finds out you’ve been in the library,” Eugenia added.
“You wouldn’t tell her,” he said.
“I am supposed to report most of my visitors,” Eugenia said, tapping her chin with a finger as she pretended to ponder the thought.
Dietrich grumbled. “I’m getting out of here. Are you coming?”
