I’d picked up on it when I’d visited with Jesse all those years ago, but the only other times I’d ever spent time with aristocracy had been in much less formal settings. Clubs in London. Meetings back home.
I was also starting to realize there was an entire ecosystem of staff I was only beginning to understand, but it seemed important to learn about them. Refocusing on Aaron, I noticedthat while he was there and paying attention to me, he wasn’t staring, a real skill as far as I was concerned.
“Okay,” I said. “So we’ve got Dudley, the butler, Miriam, the housekeeper, Thomas, the valet, and you, my personal guide to not embarrassing myself.”
Aaron finally allowed himself a ghost of a smile. “I’m here to assist, sir.”
“Excellent. Because I have a very important question.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Where does Eliza normally eat breakfast?”
Aaron winced. It was subtle, but I caught it anyway. For a beat, I thought it was because I’d referred to her so casually, but as soon as he responded, I realized it hadn’t been that. Or at least, notonlythat.
“Lady Elizabeth doesn’t usually join the household for breakfast,” he said carefully. “She keeps a very regimented schedule.”
Sounds about right.But it still didn’t tell me where I could find her. “A veryregimentedschedule? What exactly does that mean?”
“She takes her coffee in her room, then goes for her walk. After that, she returns to the castle to work.”
Work. The way he said it made it sound like the word had at least twelve different meanings. “Work doing what?”
Aaron hesitated for a second before offering another very diplomatic answer. “She oversees quite a lot of the estate’s operations.”
A polite way of saying she runs everything, then. Tours. Film crews. Staff. Finances. The entire machine.
I had a sudden urge to ask if she was paid for the amount of work she clearly did around here, but something told me that question would open a door I wasn’t ready to walk through, soI kept eating instead. Halfway through my breakfast, however, movement outside the window caught my eye.
Fog hung low over the lawns outside, curling around the trees like something out of a Gothic novel, but there she was. Eliza stepped out of the woods at the edge of the property with two dogs trotting happily beside her.
She was bundled in a coat, her golden brown hair pulled back loosely, the dogs weaving around her legs as they made their way across the grass. I just watched her for a beat, not missing how serene she looked out there. The entire scene was so peaceful, so unlike the chaos my own life had become, that it kind of made me jealous of my brother.
“Does she walk every morning?” I asked, abruptly turning back to Aaron. This wasn’t the time for jealousy. It was time for action.
“Yes, sir.”
I watched her for another second, taking in the serenity on her features and the way the dogs moved around her like she was their center of gravity. Then I stood up. Aaron looked mildly surprised but immediately snapped to attention.
“Change of plans,” I said, grabbing a jacket from the back of a chair and sliding it on.
Aaron frowned. “Sir?”
“I’m going to go catch her before she comes inside.”
He blinked hard but nodded as soon as I started toward the door. “Very good, sir. I’ll be here if you require anything.”
I nodded, but even as I headed out, I wondered why the first thing I wanted to do this morning, after the best sleep of my life, was chase my fake fiancée across a foggy English estate. Five minutes later, however, I’d realized three things.
First, you actually had to know where the other person was to chase them. Two, English castles were unnecessarily confusing.Three, I was lost. So lost that I had no idea where Eliza was anymore.
This had not been the plan. The plan had been simple. Leave my room, find the back door, intercept Eliza before she came inside, and casually suggest a walk around the grounds to get to know each other better.
Instead, I’d taken a turn somewhere near a hallway that had looked identical to the last hallway, descended a narrow staircase that definitely hadn’t been there a moment ago, and now, I was standing in a dim corridor that looked significantly older than the rest of the castle.
The stone walls were rougher here. Uneven.Possibly medieval. Fuck. Am I in the dungeon? Do they even have a dungeon here?
Either way, it felt like a bad sign since this corridor sure as hell didn’t lead outside.
