Page 43 of The Duke Who Loved Me (The Duke's Estates 1)

The boy fell silent.

He must be referring to James. She’d been right then. “Will you show me this door, please?”

Ned glanced at his mother for permission, received a defeated shrug, and led Cecelia through the dim, neglected stables and out into a cobbled yard behind the house. In better light she could see that the boy’s clothing consisted of layers of tattered garments. Beneath them he was even thinner than he’d first appeared. The family was obviously destitute with no home to go to.

He took her over to a low door at the back of the house. As he’d promised it opened without difficulty. Cecelia dug in her reticule for a coin and handed it to the lad, then shut the door on his incredulous delight. Not wishing to be followed, she shot the bolt.

She was in a small, dark space facing a stair leading down to the cellar. Light came through a half-open door on the right. She went through it into the kitchen, large and echoing. She saw no sign that the room had been used recently. The hearth was cold. But at least it was not crammed with things like the other rooms she’d seen here.

She made her way quietly across it and down the cluttered corridor to the front entry. There she stood still, listening. At first there was nothing, just the vacancy of a cold, empty house. Then something—a quick, sharp exclamation came from the hallway she’d just traversed.

She followed continuing sounds to a cross corridor and then to a small chamber at the back corner of the house. There she found James maneuvering a battered footstool out of the ceiling-high pile.

Cecelia stopped in the doorway, shocked by his appearance. He looked like a vagabond—dusty, unshaven, disheveled. She’d never seen James in such a state in all the years of their acquaintance. A small sound escaped her.

James whirled, dropping the footstool. He stared as if she was an apparition. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

“I was looking for you,” she answered. “Of course. Everyone is wondering where you are.”

His dark brows came together in a scowl, and his fists clenched. “It’s no business of theirs.” He glared at her. “I suppose you toldeveryoneyou were coming here to look for me.”

“No, James, I did not.”

His features relaxed a bit.

Cecelia breathed the stale mustiness that permeated the house. The air was full of dust. “How can you stay in this place?”

He grimaced. “Uncle Percival’s bedchamber is…not insupportable.” He put a hand to his chin as if suddenly conscious of its unshaven state. “So now you know where I am. You can go.”

“You won’t even offer me a cup of tea?”

“I have none.”

“There must be some tea left in the kitchen.”

It seemed he had not thought of this. “I have no idea.” There was a spark of longing in his blue eyes.

“Also, I brought you scones.”

The longing ignited into burning avarice.

“As well as some other things,” Cecelia continued. “Bread and cheese and apples. Because I couldn’t imagine, if you had come here, what you’d been eating.”

“Pies,” he said hollowly. “Horrible, greasy pies. With ominously unidentifiable fillings.”

“Oh, poor James.”

“May I have an apple?”

She took one from her basket and tossed it to him. He caught it and bit in as if he was starving. “I will even make the tea if we can find some,” she added.

James devoured the apple as they navigated past the piles of hoarding to the kitchen. Cecelia found a nearly empty box of tea in a cupboard and began to fill a kettle at the pump. “Will you make a fire? Can you?”

“Of course. May I have a scone first?” James reached toward the basket she’d set on the table and seemed to notice the dirt under his fingernails. He drew back. Cecelia set the kettle aside, took the cloth from the basket, and gave him a scone.

He took a bite. “Ah.” He gobbled it up in seconds.

He started a small fire in the hearth, then ate a second scone as they sat on a wooden bench and waited for the kettle to boil.

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