Page 4 of Miss Prim and the Duke of Wylde
Drago had made good inroads into the eggs and sausages, and the toast was almost gone. He accepted the mug, sipped, then took a long swallow. Setting the mug down, he nodded. “That should do the trick.”
“Tisdale and I were wondering whether we’re going to remove to the Court later today, after you do the deed. If not, we’ll need to go to the market in Rolvenden and get more food.” Maurice nodded at the nearly empty platters. “There’s nothing much left.”
Drago frowned. “Us repairing to the Court depends on whether Aunt Edith is still there and whether I want to avoid her.” He grimaced. “She probably will be, and I probably will. Her preening over my impending leg shackling will be insufferable.”
“So we need food.”
Drago nodded. “Get more than we need. We can leave the rest for Mrs. Kennedy in thanks for her hospitality.”
Maurice muttered something about Drago owning the damn cottage, but dutifully loaded his arms with the now-empty platters and headed for the kitchen.
Drago called after him, “Do you need more funds?”
“Still have what you gave us before we headed down here. That’s more than enough.”
Drago glanced at the small clock on the mantelpiece and raised his voice. “Tell Tisdale to put the grays to and leave them tied in the yard. I won’t be much longer.”
“Right you are. We’ll hire a gig from the inn.”
Replete, Drago drank his heavily laced coffee and, finally, shifted his gaze to the window. The sunshine outside still threatened to give him a headache, but having a full stomach definitely helped.
He sighed, drained the mug, then trudged back up the stairs. The mirror in the bedroom was small, but a duke about to propose really ought to look his best.
* * *
Margaret Cynster—Megto all who knew her—strolled through her cousin Christopher’s fields, the woods lining the Walkhurst Road her destination.
She’d come to Kent, to Christopher’s home, Walkhurst Manor, to spend the weeks before the Season commenced by helping Christopher and his wife, Ellen, cope with the demands of their three-year-old daughter, Julia, and their one-year-old son, George, after the birth of Marcus, the newest addition to their family.
For the past two weeks, while Ellen tended Baby Marcus, Aunty Meg had proved the perfect distraction for the rambunctious toddlers.
Meg and Ellen were much the same age, and although their interests were wildly disparate—Ellen being very much a country dweller while Meg delighted in spending most of her year in London amid the circles of the haut ton—after Ellen and Christopher had married, Meg and Ellen had quickly become close friends.
And in this instance, in the weeks leading up to what would be Meg’s tenth—tenth!—Season, she’d welcomed the chance to spend time in the country away from her immediate family and friends. She needed to think about where her life was heading. After ten years of trawling through the ton searching for the right gentleman, she’d grown disillusioned, disaffected, and even—gasp!—bored.
Bored, she’d discovered, was not a state that suited her.
Yet despite having spent the past two weeks weighing up this notion and that, she was no nearer to making any decision on what she should do next—on what to do with her life if her ideal gentleman never appeared.
She was no longer sure such a gentleman existed, and if he didn’t, she needed to develop a goal beyond becoming said gentleman’s wife. To date, her entire ambition had been fixed on attaining that state, but without her ideal gentleman deigning to appear, she saw no prospect of achieving it.
She was not a naturally restful person. She needed something to do, some active role to fill. That was an aspect of her character the past ten years had made plain.
Sadly, she’d yet to define any suitable role she might make her own.
Be that as it may, that morning, with the sun beaming down, warming the air and dispelling the last memories of winter, she had ventured out on a specific quest. She often sallied forth for a ramble once the first rush of the morning was past, and Mrs. Hambledon, the manor’s cook, had asked if Meg could gather some dandelions, wild garlic, and nettles.
Meg had agreed, and Mrs. Hambledon had assured her, “You’ll find plenty of good clumps of wild garlic and nettles in the woodland bordering the road, and you’ll pass any number of dandelions in the fields along the way.”
So it had proved. As Meg passed into the cool shade of the trees, the trug swinging from her hand was half filled with dandelions, roots as well as leaves as requested.
A gentle breeze caressed her warm cheeks. As usual, her straw hat had slipped back on her head and now hung over her nape, secured by the ribbons looped about her throat.
She wended her way between the trees, following the twisting paths made by wildlife. As Mrs. Hambledon had predicted, Meg found several clumps of wild garlic and had soon harvested a goodly pile of leaves, then she moved on in search of nettles. Possibly due to the lack of sunlight deeper in the woods, there didn’t seem to be any nettles growing beneath the trees. She vaguely recalled spotting nettles in the roadside verge the last time she’d ridden to the village and made directly for the road, but between her and the verge, brambles had grown into clumps higher than her head, forcing her to detour around the prickly masses.
Rounding a massive bramble bush, she glimpsed the road through the trees ahead.
Men were darting about in the lane.
