A Duke for Christmas Read Online Free Page B

hands on her thin hips, her woolen overskirt kilted up to show a flowered flannel petticoat underneath. Her white cap was shoved back on her graying hair and she bore harassed lines on her forehead.
    “I’m sorry for the extra trouble,” Sophie said. “What valet is this?”
    “A lanky pin-shanks by the name of Fissing. He’s poked his long nose into my kitchens, dug in my cellars, and sneered at my sheets. I’ll pull his long nose if I see it again, so help me.”
    “He’s the Duke’s man?”
    “Aye, he is. To hear him speak, you’d think this house had never entertained any titled folk before. Why, the Earl of Kinton himself was pleased to praise my shortbread. And Lady Moira O’Connell told me that if I ever was wishful to stop running this inn, she’d take me on as housekeeper without a second thought. And at a very good stipend too, for all it’d mean living in Ireland.”
    Though tired and desiring nothing more than a few minutes of quiet before the fire in a room that did not swoop with wave and wind, Sophie set herself to calming the landlady’s ruffled feathers. She stepped forward to catch the upper edge of the fresh sheet to pull it straight. “Mmm,” she hummed, breathing in. “Is that lavender I smell? Such a pleasant change from the ship’s bilges.”
    “So I should think indeed. Never will I lay a sheet away without sprigs of dried herbs between. Keeps off the moth and keeps the cupboard sweet Now, never you mind, missus ...”
    “It’s no trouble,” Sophie said brightly, reaching for a pillowcase. “Many hands make light work, you know, Mrs—?”
    “Cricklewood, ma’am. Mrs. Thomas Cricklewood. He’s been gone to his reward these five years come Michaelmas.”
    “I see. Do you find it difficult to carry on here without him?”
    Mrs. Cricklewood started to answer and then hesitated. A distant expression came into her eyes, as if she’d never considered the question before. Then she nodded. “There was so much to be done, and nothing to do but to see it through.”
    “So true,” Sophie said. “The first three months are a blur to me now. Then to find a way to come home and all that that entailed with no more help than I could find from the consulate in Rome. They were kind, but there was so much to do on my own.”
    “You’re too young to be a widow,” Mrs. Cricklewood said flatly.
    “I feel that, too. But here I am, nonetheless.”
    Mrs. Cricklewood pursed her lips and gave a last emphatic thump to the pillow. “I’ll bring you some hot water and a pot of tea. Just home from foreign parts, I reckon tea’s the first thing you’ll care to take aboard.”
    “Oh, yes, please. And the two young ladies that were with me ... where are they? They speak no English.”
    “They’ll be one flight up, Mrs. Banner, though what you want with a pair of handless foreigners when there are good English girls going wanting ...”
    “That’s a long story, but they have been good to me. I must see they are comfortable.”
    “Well, we all know our own business best. I’ll be about your tea, if that Fissing will let me near my own kettle.”
    After sharing a narrow cabin for ten days with both the Ferrara sisters, being alone was the greatest possible luxury. Neither girl was a difficult companion when not seasick, though Lucia’s sulky beauty attracted too much attention from the sailors. But the constant presence of other people had rubbed Sophie’s soul raw. She had grown used to solitude in the last year and had treasured it.
    Laying aside her bonnet and cloak, she caught sight of herself in the pier glass beside the washstand. Thanks to the cold, she’d been unable to see what the women of England were wearing under their warm outerwear. The last Ladies’ Magazine she’d seen was eighteen months old, and even had she liked the styles, she could not have afforded a new dress.
    She hardly believed herself to be in the mode, even if it might have swung back to the fashions of