That, and the look on her face when he wheeled Dante about and urged him to a canter—with her pair of matched grays pulled free of the traces he’d loosened and following behind, their bridles securely connected to the leather lead he held in his hand.
“You—you thief!Those are my brother’s horses,” she yelled after him.“Come back here at once!”
“I told you I wouldn’t leave with nothing,” he shouted back, heart bucking in his chest, cock thumping in his trousers, fully fucking alive for the first time in what felt like forever.“See you in two weeks, Lively!”
ChapterFour
“And then I had to walk into Maidenhead and find a stable that was open and willing to lend me a couple of horses to get the curricle back to Ashbourn House— It’s not funny, Charlie!”
“Begging your pardon, miss,” grinned Charlie Truitt.“But it’s a little funny.Serves you right for sneaking out without telling Molly and me what you were about.You know we would’ve helped you.”
“I didn’t want to presume on our friendship, or get either of you in trouble,” Lucy protested.
“No fear of that.”Charlie leaned the kitchen chair back on two legs, hands behind his head.“Mrs.Drummond quite dotes on me.And Mr.Goring has been training me up to serve as underbutler, in case he ever wants to retire.”
“Oh Charlie, that would be wonderful,” Lucy exclaimed, immediately distracted from her own troubles.“You’ll be the youngest butler in the history of Ashbourn House!”
“First duke’s butler with West Indian grandparents, I’d wager.”He slanted Lucy a look.“First married one, too.”
Joy lit Lucy up like she’d swallowed a candle.“You finally asked Molly!”
“And she said yes.”Charlie accepted Lucy’s excited congratulations with a pleased, proud smile creasing his face.“So as I say, miss, Molly and I would do just about anything to help you.As we know we owe a lot of our current happy situation to you.”
“Nonsense,” Lucy said, flopping back into her own seat with a satisfied sigh.“You owe it all to your own hard work and personal charm.I’ve had no hand in it!”
“Aside from saving my life that day on the Thames riverbank,” Charlie said, arching a thick, skeptical brow.“And then visiting me in the surgery and convincing your brother to hire me on as a footman.And sending Molly home from France when by rights she ought to have been keeping you out of trouble!She still feels badly about that.”
“Nonsense.I didn’t want anyone to keep me out of trouble.”
“But you need it,” Charlie said with the flat certainty of someone who had known Lucy for years and been party to some of her wilder schemes.
Lucy smiled around the bustling kitchen, still bubbling over with happiness for him and his romance with her ex-lady’s maid, Molly Jenkins.Her friendship with them—her comfort with everyone belowstairs, she supposed—was quite unusual among ladies of her class.
Most of her childhood friends had never set foot in the kitchens of their own houses, much less been on intimate terms with any servants.But even before Lucy’s father died, she’d observed her mother’s warm, cordial relationships with her own lady’s maid and the ever-efficient housekeeper, Mrs.Drummond.
And then, of course, Papa had left them with nothing to their names but a derelict coaching inn in the middle of nowhere.Lucy and her sister, Gemma, had brought that place back to life with their own hands, working alongside the inn’s cook, Bess—who was now their sister, and a duchess.
Social distinctions were a mass delusion, Lucy thought.A fragile fiction that people of the ruling class clung to out of fear of what would happen if they were forced to acknowledge the humanity of those who served them.
Moving to Little Kissington to live at Five Mile House had been a wrench at the time, but now Lucy could only be grateful she’d spent so many formative years outside of that poisonous bubble of privilege.
Who would she have been if she’d been raised at Ashbourn House, debuted at eighteen with all the girls her same age, thrust onto the Marriage Mart to be passed directly from her father’s care to a husband’s?Lucy could hardly imagine that woman.She wasn’t sure she’d want to be friends with her.
Certainly not at the expense of her friendships with people like Bess, Charlie, and Molly.
She wondered if she could make The Gentle Rogue see that.Perhaps if she explained, he’d lift the ridiculous condition he’d placed on their continued meetings.
There was no point in Lucy spending time with a duke.Even the best duke in London—which Thornecliff positively was not—would not interest Lucy.
She had no desire to lock herself back into the prison she’d only barely escaped as a teenager.
“Was His Grace angry about the grays?”
Lucy bit her lip.She did feel badly about having lost her brother’s horses after taking them out without asking.At what age was one too old to still be getting into scrapes?
“I told him I’d replace them, but he just shook his head and said I could have come to him if I needed anything.”
“A common theme this morning,” Charlie commented mildly.
