And, despite herself, she thought about the Duke more.
A man with secrets of his own…
A man who could be kind one moment and reckless the next apparently. A man she absolutely should not be thinking about at all.
Eliza rolled onto her side and closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep. Tomorrow would bring new work. New challenges. New opportunities to prove herself. And if she was lucky, fewer thoughts of the enigmatic Duke of Kirkhammer.
Though, somehow, she doubted it would work out that way.
Chapter Six
“Stop! Come back here!” Cook’s voice rang out, shrill with panic. “Those aren’t for playing with!”
Eliza was scrubbing the floor near the kitchens when chaos erupted.
Two small figures shot past Eliza in a blur of movement. Arthur and Philip, identical grins plastered across their flour-dusted faces, bolted into the hallway. Between them, they clutched a large bowl filled with what appeared to be half the contents of Cook’s pantry.
“Boys!” Eliza called, but they were already disappearing around the corner.
Cook appeared in the doorway, red-faced and furious. “Those little devils! They’ve taken my flour! I need that for tonight’s dinner!”
Eliza dropped her scrub brush and scrambled to her feet. “I’ll get them!”
She hitched up her skirts and ran after the boys, following the trail of white powder that marked their path. Their laughter echoed through the corridors, gleeful and utterly unrepentant.
“Arthur! Philip! Stop right there!”
They didn’t stop. Of course they didn’t.
Eliza rounded another corner and skidded to a halt. The boys had vanished. She stood in the hallway, breathing hard, listening.
A muffled giggle came from somewhere up the stairs, and so she ran up them quickly. She listened as she came to the landing, hearing their voices coming from down the left.
The family wing.
Oh no.
Eliza hurried down the corridor, her heart sinking as she reached the door to what she knew to be the Duke’s bedroom and private quarters. The door was ajar, and white powder dusted the threshold.
With a deep breath, she pushed the door open.
The scene that greeted her was somehow even worse than she’d imagined.
Flour covered nearly every surface. White powder coated the bed, the dresser, the Turkish rug.
Arthur and Philip stood in the center of the destruction, the now-empty bowl at their feet, looking suddenly far less confident about their adventure.
“Boys,” Eliza said, her voice tight. “You can’t come in here. You know that.”
“We didn’t mean to make such a mess,” Arthur said quickly. “We were just…”
“We were playing snow,” Philip finished, his lower lip trembling. “Like when we lived in France.”
Footsteps pounded down the corridor, and Miss Winslow burst through the door, her face pale as the snow they sought out. She took in the scene and clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Oh no. Oh no, no, no.” She looked at Eliza with wide, panicked eyes. “His Grace will dismiss me. He’ll…the boys…I should have been watching them more carefully… This is all my fault!”
“Miss Winslow,” Eliza said, her voice calm. “We can handle this. It will be all right, I promise.”
