“Does yer leg hurt worse today?”
Mags shrugged and went to get her knife to peel the potatoes.
“Will ye let me look at it later, Mags?”
“Aye.”
Helen took out the potatoes they would eat for dinner tonight.
“I am hoping it will be a good thing. Maybe the duke will have a duchess and he’ll bring her here. And I would be able to talk to her. Get her to help us. The new duke might do some good.”
“Maybe, my lady.”
“But he might nae be married. The man who told me dinnae know.”
“If the new duke is nae married, ye could marry him yerself, my lady. Then ye widnae need to convince the new duchess of anything. Ye wouldbethe new duchess. And ye widnae need to go to Lord Reeves for money again.”
The neatness, the rightness of it made Helen almost drop the potatoes she held in each hand.
To be Duchess of DunmoreandCountess of Kinmarloch. Then things would be as they had been before, as they had been for centuries.
She looked at the girl who was intent on sharpening her little stub of a knife so the peels would come from the potatoes with the least amount of flesh wasted.
Why had Mags seen this as an answer and Helen hadn’t? Helen was the one tasked with coming up with the plans and the schemes to allow them to survive one more month, one more season, one more year.
Because Mags was blind where Helen was concerned. Mags didn’t really see Helen. Not how a man would see her. Not how mendidsee her.
Helen knew, deep in her heart, no duke would ever want her. Couldn’t want her.
But, still, she could pretend to have hope. And for her own sake and for Mags’ sake and for all of Kinmarloch’s sake, Helen must at least try to become a duchess.
Wet,cold. Hoarse from yelling at the sheep. Lungs burning, muscles aching. After six hours out in the weather, she and Luran had finally chased her own sheep east, off the lands of the duchy of Dunmore, back onto the safe grasses of Kinmarloch.
Several times today, Helen had wanted to throw herself down in the mud and scream in frustration. She wanted to do that now. To lie down. To rest. She was so tired. And after all, she could not be any wetter than she already was. But the thing that stopped her, besides the coldness of the ground, was the knowledge that shecouldbe muddier. And she would be the one washing the mud out of her clothes tonight.
Yes, best not to lie down and wallow. There would be, as always, a price to pay for that.
She began the long, slow trudge home to the keep, behind her own small flock, Luran racing back and forth to make sure none strayed. She might be lucky and some tea would be waiting for her, fixed by Mags. There would be no hot bath but there might be a clean bit of cloth she could use to wipe off the mud. A peat fire. Potatoes. More than many others had.
And after that, if the rain stopped, she would gird her loins, put on her brown dress, and go see the duke’s man at the castle of the duchy of Dunmore. He should have arrived by now.
She heard something. She looked around. Behind her, several hundred yards away, a rider on horseback came through the duchy’s lands toward her. Probably from the castle.
He was here. The duke’s man was here, and he was going to meet her when she was exhausted, cold, wet, and wearing muddy breeches. Damn it all to hell.
She stopped walking. At least, she could rest while she waited for him. Luran would continue, good boy that he was, chasing the sheep back to the paddock.
The man had a good seat, she noted as he slowed his horse. Still at least fifty feet away, he shouted at her.
“Ho, boy, whose sheep are these and where are you taking them?”
She waited until he came closer to answer. After all, her voice was already hoarse.
‘They are the Countess of Kinmarloch’s sheep.”
As he pulled his horse to a stop, she heard the most glorious sound she had ever heard. A full-throated laugh. It rippled over her like sunshine rippled on her own loch in the summertime.
She hadn’t ever laughed like that. She hadn’t ever met anyone who laughed like that. She wanted to be drenched in that laugh, feel it against her skin.
