Page 85 of A Duke Too Far (The Way to a Lord's Heart 4)

“She’s coming! She’s coming home at last!” Treegum fairly quivered with the joy of his announcement, while Thatcher went on polishing the good silver, not that anybody would ever use it. “I knew if we were patient and persistent, if we kept to our course, our efforts would be rewarded.”

“Her Grace is coming north?” Thatcher asked, peering at his reflection in the bottom of a soup tureen. When had he grown so old? “The duchess leaves her sons to muddle on for years with no help, and now, when we already have a meddling female on the very next property, the duchess is putting her team in the traces?”

Treegum accepted a tankard of ale from Elf, who had come in from the stables for his nooning, or for his mid-afternoon cup of tea, or one of his increasingly frequent restorative pints. Cook often joined them as they sat about in the kitchen, while Thatcher still had to bounce up and down the steps like a lad of seventeen.

“Yes, the duchess is coming, but that’s not who I meant.” Treegum slid onto the bench at the worktable, sighing an old man’s sigh of pleasure simply to sit his arse on a familiar plank. “Miss Sarah is coming home with her. After all these years, Miss Sarah will be home too. They are to bide at the dower house, and I will make it my business to see that they dwell there in comfort.”

Elf pulled his pipe from his mouth. “You’re the head chambermaid now?”

The head maid was a bouncy little lass of fifty-odd years who went by the name of Penny Piebend. She did not suffer fools, and she and the housekeeper were in a competition to see whose knees gave out first.

Thatcher had them beat, not that he would admit as much to anybody when the family still had need of him.

“You’ll have to hire from the village,” Thatcher said. “Strict orders never to presume to set foot at the Hall itself, all of that keep-to-your-place nonsense upon pain of excommunication from the holy ranks of ducal servants.”

“Any new maids will be so busy putting the dower house to rights they won’t have time to wonder about the Hall,” Elf said. “Her Grace coming home is a good sign.”

“Is she coming home to stay?” Thatcher asked, taking up a particularly tarnished gravy boat.

Treegum peered into his ale. “Only for a visit, but when she sees how badly she’s needed here, and when I can explain to Miss Sarah exactly what’s afoot, then I’m sure Her Grace will change her plans. What can London offer that’s more pressing than the situation at the Hall?”

Elf stumped over to the hearth and used a taper to relight his pipe. “You will not be telling Miss Sarah anything, Everett Treegum. That’s for the duchess to do, if the duchess chooses to do it. We agreed that we don’t violate His Grace’s confidences.”

Thatcher dipped his rag into the polish, though his knuckles ached and his fingers hurt. “When Master Robbie first came home, we were all happy to give him some time to adjust. Now he says he’s done with strolling by the river, and that is a very discouraging sign indeed.”

Treegum took up a second rag and dipped it into the polish. “York wasn’t built in a day, Billy Thatcher. So there’s been a little setback. We’ve weathered other setbacks. You never used to be such a pessimist.” He went to work on a platter that by rights ought to be trotted out for company dinners at least monthly.

“Not a pessimist,” Thatcher replied. “A planner. I’ve planned for my dotage, for example, putting aside a bit from my wages year after year. I’ve planned to stay spry and sharp so I can tell the next generation of Rothmere boys all the mischief their papas got up to. Now I’m apparently not to have a dotage, no matter how often I trot ’round waving toast racks at all and sundry and pretending to have misplaced my wits. I’m happy to do an honest day’s work, but I did look forward to tellin’ those tales.”

Elf returned to the table, the pleasant scent of tobacco lightly fragranced with vanilla accompanying him. “You have us to tell your tales to, God knows.”

A fine sentiment, though growing tattered about the elbows and knees. “We’re all getting on, and Master Robbie has improved a great deal. Something has to change.”

“The duchess is coming,” Treegum said. “That’s a significant change.”

“For a visit,” Thatcher retorted. “And she won’t stay in the Hall. When a woman can’t even bide with her own boys…” Except Nathaniel and Robbie weren’t boys. Hadn’t been boys for years and years. “Everything has to change.”

Elf cradled his pipe in hands gnarled by years in the stable. “I had hoped Lady Althea might inspire some change.”

“Not meant to be,” Treegum said, his comment on nearly every injustice, frustration, and confoundment in life. “Not at this time, anyway. She’s giving a ball, you know. The whole shire will turn out in all their finery.”

“And we won’t see any of it,” Thatcher said, setting down the gravy boat. “Rothhaven Hall should be hosting balls. His Grace of Rothhaven should be opening the dancing, and somebody in this damned house should be finding a wife, or what in the bleedin’ hell is all our sneaking about for?”

“For our Master Robbie,” Elf said, tiredly. “Drink your ale and mind your silver, Billy Thatcher. We’re all doing the best we can.”

“I am no longer so sure of that,” Thatcher retorted, pushing to his feet. His left hip objected, but then, his left hip also objected to biding on a hard bench for any length of time. “I’m going to make some toast. You lot can finish with this silver, though why we polish cutlery nobody uses, I do not know.”

He made as dignified an exit as old joints and tired bones could, knowing that a tantrum would also not change anything. The Duke of Rothhaven had set his course, and nothing, not common sense, royal decrees, comely visitors, or wandering hogs, had swayed His Grace from his chosen path.

So far.

Learning to ride had been one of the last obstacles Althea had tackled on her campaign to conquer a lady’s education, and it had proved to be no obstacle at all. She approached horses with the assumption that domesticity was a compromise they made in the name of ease and safety, but a compromise subject to renegotiation at the equine’s whim.

A good system, for those with the muscle to carry it off. Her mounts had always seemed to sense her respect and return the courtesy.

As the sun neared the western horizon, she trotted her mare along the lane to the home farm, then cantered past the beekeeper’s cottage and the dairy. The horse was eager to stretch her legs, and when Althea sent her over the pasture that marched with Rothhaven land, the mare lifted into a pounding gallop.

Ye gods, the speed felt marvelous, the freedom even better. The horse cleared the stile in a foot-perfect leap and continued on until Althea’s objective came into view.

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