Page 41 of The Texan Duke
“I’d be happy to lend you one of my rifles,” Felix was saying.
Elsbeth glanced toward Lara, but she wasn’t looking at her husband. Instead, she was smiling down at her plate.
Did she think that Felix shaming the new duke would end well? There was no question that Felix was the better shot. The man practiced hours every day. Crates of ammunition arrived at Bealadair every week. When he wasn’t telling someone what a good shot he was, he was out proving it. She couldn’t walk along the edge of the forest without seeing a tree riddled with Felix’s bullets.
“There’s no need for His Grace to prove his marksmanship, Felix,” she said.
Connor turned his head slowly until his attention was directed solely on her. For a moment, she thought there was something in his eyes that surely wasn’t there: a warmth, an understanding of her fear. In an instant it was gone, leaving her to wonder if it had only been her imagination.
“It’s all right, Elsbeth,” he said. “If Mr. Gillespie feels the need to display his ability, I’ve no objection to giving him a chance. If he wants to make a fool of himself, that’s on him.”
She bit back her moan with some difficulty, certain that she was witnessing the beginning of a terrible tragedy. And that was before anyone knew Connor was selling Bealadair.
Rather than follow the family into the parlor, Elsbeth murmured some excuse about having to talk to Addy and escaped from the dining room.
Instead of heading toward the kitchen, however, she made her way to the fourth floor, knocking on Mrs. Ferguson’s door as she did every evening. When she heard the housekeeper’s voice, she pushed open the door, the odor of camphor reaching out to surround her.
She wasn’t surprised to see Molly there, the upstairs maid tucking in a few heated bricks around Mrs. Ferguson’s hips as she sat in her rocking chair.
The older woman had always been like a surrogate mother to the girls under her charge. Molly, like several of the maids, had chosen to go into service rather than take a factory job. Since the staff numbered over a hundred people and the house was so large, Bealadair was like its own village.
All in all, she thought the staff was happy here. What would happen to them when Bealadair was sold?
Elsbeth greeted Molly before crossing the room to close the curtains. She held out her hand, testing the seal around the window, pleased when she didn’t feel any drafts. The room was, she was grateful to see, warm and comfortable despite the frigid night. The air was clear and crisp, stars blinking at her from a midnight sky.
She closed the curtains and took a chair beside the fire, all three of them chatting before Molly left.
Once they were alone, Mrs. Ferguson extended her hands toward the fire. The winter months had been difficult for her, and it seemed as if Elsbeth could see the nodules grow larger on the other woman’s fingers every day.
Mrs. Ferguson’s face was moon shaped, her cheeks plump and her lips full. Her body, however, didn’t seem to match. She was tall and thin, with bony shoulders and sharp elbows. Her brown eyes were expressive and could go from approval to censure in an instant, as easily as they could from irritation to amusement.
She was a favorite of the staff and when they could, almost every one of them took time during the week to come and visit her. Even the majordomo, Mr. Barton, unbent enough to call from time to time.
Elsbeth hadn’t expected the duke to visit, however. When the housekeeper announced that he had come to her suite, she simply stared at the older woman.
“He came to see me, he said, to make sure there was nothing I needed.” Mrs. Ferguson smiled. “A very handsome man, is he not?”
Elsbeth nodded.
“He is very...” Mrs. Ferguson’s voice trailed off, then resumed a few seconds later. “Not overpowering, exactly, but there’s something about him. You would never miss that he came into a room.”
“No,” Elsbeth said. “You would not.”
“How do you find him?”
She’d never lied to Mrs. Ferguson. Next to Gavin, she was probably more honest with the housekeeper than with anyone else at Bealadair. As much as she liked Muira, Elsbeth was hesitant to be too frank with her. Muira often used information as a weapon or a way to protect herself from her sisters’ caustic words.
“Intriguing,” she said.
Mrs. Ferguson sighed. “I found him the same. He certainly reminds a woman that she’s female.”
The comment so surprised Elsbeth that she studied the housekeeper. The woman’s cheeks were pink and her eyes sparkling. She hadn’t looked so well in weeks.
The duke had evidently made a friend.
“Did he say anything else?” Elsbeth asked. Had Connor told Mrs. Ferguson of his plans to sell Bealadair?
“He asked about my health and told me that they used something in Texas on their horses that might prove to be beneficial to my arthritis.”
