Time he had rapidly run out of patience for.
“Hansen?” Lord Averley clicked his fingers in front of his face. “Are you deaf?”
“No, Sir, nor dumb.” George gave a sardonic bow. “Pray excuse me; I have just conceived a pressing engagement. Consider this a formal resignation of my services.” Leaving the Marquess standing open-mouthed, he strode away. This was the outside of enough.
If it was the last thing he did, he would find his brother and he would demand to know the meaning of this. Frederick was not entirely unreasonable, and if he could justspeakwith him, there was a fair chance of success.
But remain as a footman any longer he would not, even if that meant casting off his family for the rest of his life. As soon as Frederick married, anyway, and had a son, his claim to the title was as good as negligible, and he would have to make his own way, anyway; if by cutting ties, he was forced to do so without their goodwill and support, he would manage it.
After all, wasn’t that what he had done in Italy?
It took him very little time to collect what few belongings he had, pack them into his bag, and take two of the finest bottles of wine from the study. If Old Foley found out, it mattered little to him—after all, what could he do?
George had no intention of ever coming back to this place.
The stables were quiet at this time of day, and although a wide-faced groom came running as George entered, once more in his clothes, there was little he could do as he exited in a gallop.
“I don’t know your name,” he told the beast with a pat on its neck, “but I can tell you and I are going to serve each other very well.”
As if in agreement, the stallion picked up its speed, and when George aimed it at a nearby fence, cleared it in a smooth jump that assured him of the stallion’s power.
He would have continued like this for a long while if he hadn’t seen a figure hunched by a gurgling river, and reined in his horse. As far as he could see, they were in the middle of nowhere—perhaps still on Averley’s estate, but not at all close to the house—and some part of him felt like heshouldcheck on the figure.
When he got closer, he understood the urge that had brought him to stop and investigate. Because the girl that was sitting by the bank, her knees brought up around her chest and her arms wrapped around them, was none other than Lady Sybil Wilson.
Given that she had made it plain she wanted nothing more to do with him, he wasn’t entirely sure why he approached now, but the look she gave him when she saw him—stricken and terrified—clinched the matter.
He was not, generally speaking, a generous man, but there was something about the vulnerability of this lady, curled up as though she could hide from the world, that spoke to the oft-hidden chivalry inside him. Later, he would regret this, no doubt.
“I haven’t come to bring you back to the house,” he said, dismounting and taking the saddlebag from the horse. “If that’s why you’re looking at me as though I’m some sort of ogre.”
“You’re the footman,” she managed.
“And if we were operating on looks alone, I would think you a maid, though I know better.” He sat beside her and extended his legs. “Care to tell me why you’re in the middle of nowhere sitting by a river?”
She sniffed, her back straightening. “No, as it happens, I don’t.” From the look of her red eyes, she’d been crying.
Oh yes, he was definitely going to regret this.
He reached into his bag and brought out one of the stolen bottles of wine. “I’d thought about saving these for this evening, because I’m none too plump in the pocket, but I may as well have some now as then.”
Her eyes widened, revealing flashes of green among the brown, and they darted to his face and then to the bottle in his hand. “You stole it?”
“Perhaps I’ll send Foley a gift to make up for it,” he said, “but I probably won’t. Devil of a man, that butler.”
“He’ll—he’ll have the Constable on you. Or the Magistrate.” Eyes still wide, she hadn’t made an attempt to take the bottle he was holding out to her. “There’ll be such a fuss when they discover it—and you—have gone.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt my family will smooth that over,” he said easily. They might not like him, or at least his mother might not, but she disliked scandal even more. That was why she had agreed to keep him under her roof and bring him up as her son, even though she detested the constant proof of her husband’s infidelity.
“Your family?” Lady Sybil finally released her lower lip from her teeth, and he was at liberty to notice it was plump and well-shaped, currently bearing the marks from her teeth. “What could your family do?”
Seeing as she didn’t seem inclined to take the wine, he opened it with his teeth, spat the cork to one side, and took a large mouthful. “Do you know the Duke of Danver, Frederick Hansen?”
“The Duke of Danver?” She audibly gasped. “You cannot be serious.”
“Frederick is my older brother.”
“But you were afootman.”
