Chapter 7
“Good morning, Iris,” Ezra said as he settled into his seat across from the little girl, a plate of breakfast in his hand.
She cast him a brief glance, then turned back to her breakfast. She was eating porridge. The entire spread of a ducal household’s breakfast had been laid out before her, and this child had chosen porridge?
“Is that your favorite thing to eat?” he ventured, feeling utterly imbecilic.
She looked up at him again. Then down at her food. Then up at him.
She went back to eating.
“When I was a boy, I loved orange marmalade best,” he said, trying to maintain some good cheer. “Have you tried some? Would you like to try some?”
This time, she didn’t even glance in his direction. The silence in the room was cavernous.
“Our cook makes very good marmalade,” he continued. “So good that I don’t ever want the kind that comes from the shops. She isn’t the same cook as when I was a child, of course. But the recipe is the same.”
Iris gave him an utterly withering stare.
This, Ezra decided, was fair enough. He didn’t know how to talk to children, and especially not little girls.
With boys, at least, he had the advantage of having been one.
Though probably most lads didn’t care to talk about orange marmalade or the employment history of Rutledge House, either.
Jesus Christ, I am out of my depths.
He diligently applied himself to eating a plateful of fluffy eggs, kippers, and, yes, toast with orange marmalade, because it was delicious, damn it all.
If he had hoped that eating silently would be less excruciating than his wretched attempts to charm this child, those hopes would have been well and truly dashed.
Iris kept eating as if the food might be taken away from her—and didn’t that thought cause a miserable twist in Ezra’s guts—but every so often, she would steal a hidden glance in his direction as if he were the person she should be worried about.
It was, in a word, crushing.
Ezra prided himself on his competence. He was a man who got things done. When there was a problem, he figured out how to fix it. When information was missing from a situation, he found it. He liked to be on stable ground. He liked to know what he was about.
And then there was this little girl, who was an utter mystery to him.
Who, in a way, seemed to take everything about her changed circumstances in stride.
She had not spoken, except to Miss Knightley.
That was true. But she also had not pitched any fits or performed any mischief or any of the other things that Ezra understood children often did.
She just watched. Stared. As if she were keeping a record of everything around her for later, in case she needed it.
It surprised Ezra how much he wanted to see the little girl laugh. Smile. Give him any kind of hint—any at all—that any of the things he was doing were the right kind of things.
“Do you remember Miss Knightley?” he asked when the silence became more than he could bear.
Ezra could not even count the number of times he’d used silence as a weapon—refusing to speak so that someone he was questioning would become nervous and start babbling.
He’d known it was effective, but he was really feeling those effects.
Iris looked up at him, her big blue eyes wide as saucers.
Lightholder eyes, Ezra thought, not for the first time.
“I see you do,” he said, trying to keep his tone conversational, though inwardly he was crowing with triumph.
“Well, she is going to arrive today. She will be your governess. She will help you learn all sorts of things—your numbers and your letters, if you don’t know them already.
You shall play games with her, do art projects—”
Iris didn’t smile at that, not precisely, but there was a sort of lift to her head that suggested she might have almost, maybe, very nearly considered smiling.
Ezra didn’t have such restraint. He beamed.
“I see that appeals to you. Well, I am sure we can tell Miss Knightley about your special preferences. Would you like that?”
And then—miracle of miracles—Iris gave him a nod.
A tiny nod.
But a nod.
“Good,” he said. “Now, let us finish our breakfasts. We should want to be ready when Miss Knightley arrives, I should think.”
Iris started shoveling the rest of her porridge into her mouth with a speed that Ezra worried she might choke. Still, he didn’t interfere and finished his own meal at a rather more sedate pace.
This was a victory, albeit a small one.
Thank the good Lord above for Miss Letitia Knightley.
* * *
“Can you believe it?” Sarah had actually put her valise down on the ground so that she could use her good hand to tug excitedly on Letty’s arm. “We are actually going to work in a duke’s house. Together!”
Sarah’s enthusiasm was infectious, but Letitia didn’t dare let herself get her hopes up.
“That duke is a madman,” she reminded Sarah—but very quietly.
She might not trust the Duke of Rutley’s motivations, but she wasn’t stupid enough to out and out insult a gentleman in his own home.
No, that kind of thing was why they had invented whispering.
“He came to our home to badger us into accepting the position.”
This did not have the effect that Letitia might have hoped for. Sarah sighed dreamily, then lifted her valise again.
“I know,” she said, stars in her eyes as she looked at the grand house. And this was just the view from the back, from the servants’ entrance. “He knew you were so wonderful as a governess that he needed you specifically. It’s like a—”
“If you say ‘fairy tale,’ I am going to wallop you,” Letitia warned.
Sarah sniffed. “I was going to say ‘romantic novel,’” she said with affront, then giggled and darted out of the way as Letty smacked at her.
Despite this bit of silliness, they were both the very picture of decorum when the butler came to greet them mere moments after one of the kitchen maids admitted them.
“Good afternoon,” he said, voice pleasant but formal. “Miss Knightley and Miss Greystone, I presume?”
Sarah looked liable to faint over so grand a person as a duke’s butler knowing her name.
“Yes, indeed, sir,” she said, nodding eagerly. She was going to bobble her head right off. “And we are ever so grateful for the opportunity, Mr.—”
“Marling,” the man supplied, looking unwittingly charmed by Sarah’s eagerness. “And the pleasure is all ours, Miss Greystone, I am sure.”
There was no irony in his tone; he had not so much as glanced at Sarah’s missing hand. Letitia liked him immediately.
That was, until he went on.
“We shall get you situated in your quarters presently, but first, His Grace would like to greet you.”
It took nearly all of Letitia’s self-control not to groan aloud.
Sarah was nearly trembling with nerves and excitement as they were led through the halls of the house, which was, Letitia could admit, very nice. It was clean, well-maintained, and decked out in all the splendor that a dukedom could buy.
Which was, she allowed, a great deal of splendor.
The duke was sitting in a bright room full of windows, holding a newspaper with one leg casually crossed over the other. He looked perfectly posed to appear as a gentleman at ease... which, of course, made Letitia immediately suspect that he had been waiting for them quite avidly.
Of course, he had rather given himself away by coming to her home and all but begging her to take the job.
“Oh, Your Grace, good day,” Sarah said at once, curtsying as deeply as she might have done for the king himself. Despite this show of deference, she was beaming in a far-too-familiar manner.
The duke, being what he was, grinned back with equal lack of formality.
“Good to see you again, Miss Greystone,” the duke replied. Out of the corner of her eye, Letitia saw the butler twitch slightly at this again, but he was too well-trained to do anything more. “And Miss Knightley.”
Letty wrangled her face into what might possibly pass for a smile.
“Your Grace,” she offered blandly.
And, because he was unquestionably one of the world’s most irritating people, he seemed simply delighted by this passivity.
“Marling, please show Miss Greystone up to her room on the third floor. I shall speak briefly with Miss Knightley and then direct her to her rooms near the nursery.”
“Of course, Your Grace,” Marling said with a neat bow. “Miss Greystone?”
Sarah was practically hopping as she left the room after Marling. She didn’t even look back at Letitia once.
So much for loyalty.
She braced herself for the duke to say something that made her want to smack him, but instead, he stood politely to face her, his hands clasped behind his back.
“You know many of the details of what will be required of you already,” he said.
“Iris still has not spoken. Your objective will be to get her to feel comfortable enough to do so. As she revealed during your last visit, she is capable. It is merely a matter of figuring out why she has henceforth been unwilling.”
“Of course, Your Grace,” she replied. She was thrown by his sudden professionalism, but she had been in service long enough that returning the attitude was second nature. But then he smiled, and it wasn’t charming. It wasn’t practiced. It was real. Genuine.
It was like the sun, and for a moment, Letitia was blinded by it.
“She nodded this morning,” he told her. “I asked her a question, and she nodded.”
It was such a small thing, and it clearly had made him so happy. Letitia felt the protective layer of frost that she had built around herself begin to thaw.
“That’s good,” she said softly. “And... I didn’t say thank you, Your Grace. For the job. For Sarah. As you can see, she’s… very excited.”