Nearly a Lady Read Online Free Page B

way that included the path around the vegetable garden, which, in all honesty, wasn’t a way to the house at all. But she needed the time and space to think, and she thought best when her hands were occupied.
    There was always something that needed doing, something that required her attention—a chore, a responsibility, an errand. Murdoch House and the land it sat on could scarce be called a farm. Besides the large vegetable garden, their only agricultural possessions were a cow, a calf already claimed by a neighbor, a goat, and a handful of chickens. But even those small trappings had been won with years of hard work and sacrifice, and now required constant care and upkeep. She and Lilly hadn’t survived the last twelve years by indulging in idleness.
    She stopped in front of the turnip patch, stooped to pull at weeds, and methodically considered the events of the morning and the man that had set them all in motion.
    Lord Gideon hadn’t come to evict them, and he wasn’t lying about his intentions. Of that much she was relatively certain. She’d watched him, very carefully, when she’d said she might have been able to keep the house open if she’d been capable of understanding the value of money. It had been, nearly word for word, a quote from the nasty letter he had sent her last year.
    He hadn’t recognized it. She’d seen the mix of confusion and humor in his black eyes.
    “The man should be in an asylum, or kept by his family, not running amok in the countryside,” she grumbled. Because if he couldn’t remember letters he’d written, and honestly believed a house could be run on five pounds a year, he was stark, raving mad.
    If he’d been anyone else, anyone other than a Haverston, she’d have pitied him, even put a concerted effort into making him comfortable while they searched for his family. But he was a Haverston—next in line to the marquessate, at that—and her compassion for his illness took a distant second to her concern for what that illness might mean for her and Lilly.
    Twelve years of lost allowance, plus bonus, and Lilly’s back pay. All at once. It wasn’t a great fortune, but it would be enough to buy more calves, a few pigs, and put aside a substantial savings in the likely event of lean years to come. With careful planning, they would never need to go hungry again. Perhaps she could even purchase a few luxuries like a new pair of shoes for herself and a pretty bonnet for Lilly.
    There was a great deal they could do with that money. Dreams of new livestock and comfortable shoes had danced into her head the very instant Lord Gideon had made the promise. In Lilly’s as well, Winnefred thought. Well, perhaps not the livestock, but the bonnet certainly. Lilly had always held a yen for things like that: pretty bonnets and frilly gowns, silly teacups that didn’t have a purpose.
    Winnefred had seen her friend’s eyes light with hope, and it had frightened her as little else could. What if Lord Gideon wasn’t in any position to be making such promises? What if Lilly set her heart on a pretty new hat and Engsly’s men showed up next week to take the mad lord away?
    Then again, what if her letter, like those Lilly had sent to Engsly, had simply fallen into the wrong hands?
    Or what if she was wrong about his honesty and he was simply a marvelous actor with a penchant for playing malicious tricks on the unsuspecting?
    She should have shown him the letter. She should have made him read it and explain himself.
    “Damn.” She straightened from her weeding, caught her foot in the hem of her skirts, and nearly tumbled headfirst into a row of turnips. “Blasted useless waste of material.”
    She yanked the offending gown over her head, not hard enough to damage it—that would have sent Lilly into fits—just hard enough to gain a small amount of satisfaction.
    “Well now, this isn’t something a man sees every day.” Lord Gideon’s voice floated through the fabric of her dress. “Not in