“Fifteen or so years ago, I think.”
“I find it more interesting than dark. I am glad this section was not changed over time.”
“It sounds like you are a budding antiquarian. My brother will regret not meeting you. There is another estate holding, a castle just over the Scottish border, that he would insist you see.”
“I will regret missing that. Every girl dreams of living in a castle. Now, before this woman pulls me away to my chamber”—she gestured to Mrs. Braddock, who waited at the staircase—“did I hear correctly that you called for a horse for me?”
“I did. Do not try to beg off by saying you own no riding habit. No one will see you but me. You will ride today, Amanda. You will not leave here until you know how.”
“In that case, I may prove very clumsy. Be careful what you decree, Langford.”
The servants had drifted to the edges of the hall, maintaining a discreet distance from the man and woman talking in the center of the tiles. “There is one other rule, Amanda. I would prefer that you address me as Gabriel. When you use my title, it increasingly sounds inappropriate to me.”
“When we are alone, you mean.”
“Whenever you like, but especially when we are alone.”
“I will try. It may prove . . .” She turned and took a step toward Mrs. Braddock without finishing her thought.
“Difficult? Surely not.”
She looked back. “Not difficult. Heartbreaking.”
She accepted Mrs. Braddock’s escort and began to wind her way to the eastern wing.
* * *
Gabriel looked down while Vincent knelt by his feet, feverishly rubbing his riding boots. “Would it not be more efficient to do that before I put them on next time?”
Vincent glanced up before returning to his buffing. “I expect that is how it is normally done, now that I try it, Your Grace. In the future, I will know.”
Vincent had discovered quickly that footmen and valets differed in their duties, and a man who excelled in one area might not in the other. Dressing had been a lengthy process, with Gabriel having to give a few lessons. It went without saying that he had to tie his own cravat.
Vincent presented him with his signet ring, then attached his watch to his waistcoat.
“Tomorrow I will not require your services as valet,” Gabriel said. “Instead, I want you to ride into Devon and do a few errands.”
Vincent’s eyes lit with the relief of a young man who much preferred galloping through the countryside to dressing a duke. Amanda had been correct about him. Gabriel suspected that Vincent’s servant days were numbered.
“I want you to buy a county directory,” he explained. “I will need you to find a place where you can read it and find the name of a man. Then I need you to find an inn within easy riding distance of that man’s home.”
It sounded mysterious even to his own ears. It definitely did to Vincent’s, from the brightness it brought to his eyes. Not only riding through the country, but on a mission that sounded secret, at the behest of his master the duke. Adventure called. Vincent would be in heaven tomorrow.
“Discretion is vital. Do not sit with the directory in a tavern where people wonder who you are and whom you seek.”
“Of course not, Your Grace. I am very discreet, as you know.”
I’ve told no one about your odd doings with Miss Waverly, for example. Poor Vincent was probably bursting with the urge to tell someone. Anyone.
“His Grace, the Duke of Brentworth, threatened to have my head if I spoke a word of any of this,” Vincent added. “I respectfully questioned whether dukes had that right.”
Gabriel pictured Brentworth being challenged by this footman who was forgetting his place. “You asked Brentworth that, did you? I am sure that displeased him.”
“I feared it would, but he explained how ordering beheadings was a special right of peerage reserved to dukes alone. A secret one rarely mentioned publicly lest the other peers be jealous.”
Gabriel held back a smile. “Prepare to leave in the morning, then.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
