The color in her cheeks deepened. “I behave like someone trying to dosomethingin a house where I am being treated like an object placed on a shelf between appearances.”
James’s mouth tightened. The accusation hit too close to his own guilt.
He turned away from her, pacing once, then stopping before the fireplace. The fire threw light across the room, illuminating the precise order she had imposed.
Order he had not asked for.
Order he did not want.
“You are not an object,” he said, more controlled now.
Eleanor’s voice softened slightly. “Then stop treating me like a symbol you drag into public and then put away again.”
James held still.
He had heard, of course. Servants spoke. Even when they tried not to. They did not gossip in his hearing, but they breathed around truths the same way any house did.
He turned back to her. “I am aware you have been in the kitchens.”
Eleanor’s expression flickered. “Yes.”
“You have been helping Cook prepare meals.”
“Yes,” she repeated, as though daring him to object.
“I pay people to do that,” James said, voice low.
Eleanor lifted her chin. “Then perhaps pay them more, if you believe their labor so valuable.”
James’s eyes narrowed. “That is not the point.”
“What is the point, then?” Eleanor demanded.
“The point,” James said, “is that you are not to take their work from them.”
Eleanor blinked, thrown. “Take their work?”
“Yes,” he said. “A duchess does not go into the kitchens to knead dough and sort linens. If you insist on doing the tasks of servants, you blur the line that keeps this house functioning.”
“The line,” Eleanor echoed.
“Yes,” James said, patience thinning. “Do you think those positions exist for decoration? Those wages feed families. If you occupy their duties, even for a few hours, you create disruption.”
Eleanor’s brows drew together. “I was not dismissing anyone. I was helping.”
“You were interfering, at best.”
Her eyes flashed. “How is kindness interference?”
“Because kindness without sense becomes chaos,” James replied, the words clipped. “And chaos invites talk.”
Eleanor’s shoulders stiffened. “Talk?”
“Yes,” James said. “If a footman mentions to another footman, who mentions it to a groom, who mentions it to a coachman, who carries it to town – soon enough the servants of half the neighborhood will be saying the new Duchess of Langford is so desperate for purpose she scrubs her husband’s study and scurries in the kitchens like a scullery maid.”
Eleanor’s face went pale with fury. “You think I am desperate.”
“I think Society will decide you are,” James said.
