Although from the way they were eyeing the comfortably worn interior of the Five Mile, they were accustomed to somewhat more luxurious indoors than this.
“Oh Gemma, what shall become of us?What are we going to do?”The older lady wailed suddenly, breaking out of the knot of distressed ladies to fling herself onto one of the squashy old armchairs arranged around the hearth.
Gemma.Her name is Gemma.
The ladies had yet to introduce themselves, but Hal found it interesting that though it was the woman with the dead bird on her head who had to be Her Grace, Lady Henrietta Lively, the Duchess of Ashbourn—whose name was on the official papers granting her ownership of the coaching inn—yet she deferred to her eldest daughter.Gemma.Who was even now hurrying to her mother’s side and sliding a comforting arm around the older woman’s trembling shoulders.
The deep mourning they wore made him wonder who they’d lost—and what it might mean for his hopes of buying the Five Mile.
“Mama, don’t take on so.The plan hasn’t changed.I’ll get us out of this, don’t worry.”
Lady Henrietta continued to quake as the other daughter, the one who appeared to be barely out of the schoolroom, came around to perch on the other arm of the chair.“I don’t see how your plan can work now, Gemma.Look at this place.What are the odds that an unattached duke is going to wander casually in and allow himself to be seduced?”
Hal startled, managing to turn his shocked laugh into a cough at the last moment.
Shooting her sister a quelling look, Lady Gemma Lively suddenly seemed to remember they weren’t alone in the public room of the inn.
She swiveled her head and her gaze clashed with Hal’s, her eyes narrowing as she took in his unabashed eavesdropping.
Lifting that damnably dimpled chin, she said, “You there.My mother is unwell.Could you perhaps see to a cup of tea for her, and then our things will need to be brought in from the coach.The coachman will spend the night and return to London tomorrow morning.”
Her voice was clear and cool, like the well water Hal had splashed over his head and the back of his sweaty neck after an hour of shoveling and shifting rocks.It trickled down his spine and sent a pleasant thrill along his skin—along with the dawning realization that she thought he worked at the Five Mile.
Arrested by the thought, Hal glanced down at himself.He was wearing what he always wore to work with the farmers: sturdy brown trousers, white linen shirt long since dirtied to a dull beige, covered by a dark green waistcoat that clung to respectability by a single button.
He’d rolled his sleeves up to the elbow in the midday heat, he’d lost his hat somewhere between the plough and the pigsty, and he’d used the kerchief he usually knotted around his neck to wrap the handle of the shovel at the well.
So he could see where he perhaps looked somewhat disreputable, but it had been so long since he’d met anyone who didn’t already know who he was, he hadn’t?—
“Are you listening to me at all?By all that is holy, what will it take to get some tea for my mother?Must I find a kettle and boil the water myself?”
The cutting voice, accompanied by an actual snap of Lady Gemma’s fingers, brought Hal’s head up sharply.“Make the tea yourself, with your own fair hands?Oh no, your ladyship.That would be unthinkable.”
She went a little pink in the cheeks and those fine eyes of her flashed blue fire.She really was uncommonly pretty.“I won’t tolerate insolence.”
Hal smiled, as slowly and insolently as he could, just to see if her cheeks would get any pinker.They did.“What will you do?Dismiss me without references?”
Straightening up to her full, not-terribly-impressive height, Lady Gemma put her hands on her hips and said, “If I must.We are the owners of this establishment.And you cannot be the only man in the county capable of pouring an ale.”
In point of fact, the Five Mile had been without a dedicated publican for almost three years, since the last one left to take over his father’s sheep herd—a prospect that offered more hope of financial stability than the meager budget the pub could afford.There was barely enough income to pay Bess Pickford, the cook, who acted as a sort of general manager.
They were lucky to be able to keep the pub going when most people hereabouts were struggling to hold onto their farms after the neglect and outright mismanagement of their string of terrible landlords, the Montroses, Dukes of Havilocke.
With no owner on the premises for decades, the Five Mile had become a sort of unofficial community hub.People gathered there for a drink and a good meal after a day of arduous labor, yes, but they also came together to laugh about their children’s antics, to talk over new farming methods, and to commiserate over the unpredictable English weather.
Hal had been coming to the Five Mile since he was old enough to toddle there on his own.Beyond its function of receiving the mail coach, it was a fixture of Little Kissington, an indispensable part of what kept the town going.
These spoiled, silly women didn’t belong here.Hal couldn’t let them run this place into the ground.
He wasn’t technically employed by the Five Mile, but he had a responsibility to the community and the town and the people here that he took very seriously.
There was really only one thing to be done.
Standing up, Hal braced his hands on the bar and swung over it in a practiced move, well-honed from nights of pouring his own pints and helping out when Bess got busy in the kitchen.
Landing lightly enough on his feet to keep his grimy boots from leaving clods on the floor, Hal looked up when the younger sister murmured, “Are youabsolutelycertain you need to marry a man with a title, Gemma?”
All three ladies were staring at him, rapt, and even as warning bells clanged in his mind, Hal gave a slow grin and braced his bare forearms on the scarred, pitted oak of the bar.
