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Honoria whipped her head around to face the woman so fast her neck made a cracking sound. She quickly looked away and attempted to temper her rioting heart though her face burned. She did not know she was capable of such a visceral reaction.

“What? You don’t think he deserves to get married?” Lady Somerville thankfully misinterpreted Honoria’s reaction. “He is still very young despite his responsibility over the children, one of whom is almost of age herself.”

“It’s not about deserving,” Honoria hastened to say, her voice shaking. “I-I just never thought, I don’t think… I am not certain that’s what his lordship wants.”

Lady Somerville dismissively waved her fan. “We don’t always know what we want, dear. Sometimes we need to be given a little nudge in the right direction to figure it out.”

Honoria swallowed and pursed her lips together. She’d already said too much, reacted so impertinently to a few innocent questions. She didn’t want the marchioness to see her distraught.

The line of questioning had just caught her off guard. In all her years working for the earl and harboring a deep abiding infatuation for the man, she had never worried he would ever get married. Yes, she had grappled with the fact that she’d have to leave him soon, and maybe he’d someday wed, but she wouldn’t be there to witness it. Never, not in her wildest dreams, had she imagined seeing him courting another woman.

Oh God, what an unpleasant thought that made her stomach queasy.

Silence stretched between them, and Honoria worried her lack of response might arouse Lady Somerville’s suspicion.

She raised her head, expecting to see the marchioness’s all-too-perceptive gaze on her, instead, she was watching Elise with a warm smile.

Not so much a Thistle lady anymore. Rather a sunflower.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Well, every schemer needs a confidante,” Lady Somerville said with a grin. “And you shall be mine. My nephew has shown much admiration toward you. So, when he asks why so many ladies are invited to his balls, you can tell him that that’s important for Elise’s come-out. And when I send young ladies to our theater box, you will help him engage them in conversations.”

Oh. Honoria forced a smile. Of course. That explained why Lady Somerville pushed for her to be with them during the theater. She was not the chaperone for Elise. Rather a chaperone for the earl. Or even worse—a matchmaker.

Honoria turned to look at Elise, her smile turning more natural upon seeing her gleeful face, although her heart was bleeding a little on the inside.

Helping the man she dreamed of to court someone else was a challenge she’d hoped never to be a part of. And doing it while out in the open? She was risking exposure and the end of her life as she knew it.

Chapter 9

“Apologies, my lord. As much as I have loved working for your household, it is time for me to move on. I will, of course, work until the end of the month and make thorough notes for the person taking over my position. You will not have to worry about anything,” Honoria muttered to herself, rehearsing what she was going to say to Lord Caldwell concerning her resignation.

Yes, that sounded sensible enough, she thought as she walked up the stairs toward his bedchamber. She’d prefer to speak to him in his study, but of course, the one time she needed to talk to him was the only time he wasn’t working.

In fact, she couldn’t even venture to guess what he was doing as inexplicable loud noises were coming out of his bedchamber.

Following the noise, she made her way into his room, and even farther, inside his bathing quarters, her curiosity growing with each step.

Honoria paused outside the tiled room, uncertain whether the grunts and clanking from within meant it was not the best thing to interrupt whatever was going on inside.

She peeked her head in to see Caldwell crouched beneath a large iron frame, sleeves rolled to his elbows, shirt slightly rumpled from his efforts, sweat glistening on his forehead. He looked absurdly handsome in that disheveled way—his hair tousled, brow furrowed, completely absorbed in his work. Two footmen hovered nearby, holding a bucket and… were those chains?

Caldwell looked up sharply at her and smiled. How odd.

“Hart!” he called, straightening sharply. “Come see.”

She stepped carefully into the tiled bathing room, her gaze flicking up and down, taking in the strange contraption before her. Buckets, pulleys, and metal rods connected a tin bath over their heads to a basin rooted to the floor. Whatever it was, it bore more resemblance to the well than anything belonging in the bathing room.

“What is this?” she asked.

Caldwell’s mouth tugged into a crooked grin. “A shower bath. A proper one—not the usual sort where you stand there like a fool and have an entire bucket dumped on your head in one go. Wasteful, inelegant, and hardly efficient. You can let go, lads,” he addressed the footmen. “See? It hovers all on its own. Now to fix the pulleys properly, and the shower bath will be done!”

Honoria wasn’t looking at the shower bath anymore. She was drawn to the exuberant earl who had rarely spoken this many words to her in one day, much less in under a minute. “How does it work exactly?”

“See this lever?” The earl pointed to a metal rod. “You pull on this, and the bucket of water empties into the tin container over here.” He gestured upward to what looked like a modified tin bath suspended from the frame, with a thin spout protruding from the bottom. “The water flows through this nozzle in a steady stream. When that’s done, you pull again and the next bucket is poured. Twice the water but spread over time. Enough to lather and rinse without turning the floor into a lake. But do not pull on it now. The lever is too sensitive. It needs tightening up a bit. And the chain carrying the bucket keeps twisting. One pull might just pour water out onto my head.”

Honoria looked down. “And where does the water go?”