quietly. “The crown will have it back.”
A light tap at the door failed to penetrate Olivia’s distracted state, so Lord Roland bade the newcomer to enter.
A young serving maid appeared, a lovely girl whose mass of wavy, honey-gold hair was more out of its chignon than in. Her eyes remained downcast.
He could not help but notice the young woman’s delicately crafted face, with skin as clear and sweet as fresh cream. By her looks, she could have been a highborn lady, he thought, but for her subservient manner and the reddened, chafed skin of her hands.
The justice turned his attention from the serving maid and spoke to the well-dressed woman who stood before the fireplace, her expression one of controlled fury. “I had hoped to find Lady Maria and discharge my duty to her this afternoon, and be well on my way to Chester before nightfall,” he said, easily dismissing Lady Olivia’s unpleasant mood.
Olivia tightened her lips slightly before speaking. “I am sorry. As I said before, there was no chi—” she said, then spoke sharply to the maid. “Go on! Out with you!”
The servant girl turned and moved quickly from the room, closing the door gently behind her. Perhaps she was simple, Roland thought.
“I am loath to keep you from your appointment in Chester….” Olivia said. But perhaps, she thought, if she kept him at Morley, she would manage to convince him of Geoffrey’s right to Rockbury. Then the justice would prevail upon the ruling council in London to grant Rockbury’s title to her son.
“Please,” she said, extending a gracious arm toward the food that Ria had just placed on the table. “Refresh yourself before you continue on your journey. Chester is a good two-hour ride from Morley. But the weather is fine and after your meal you will be fit again for travel.”
Ria stood outside the door trembling. She had not been able to hear all of what had been said behind Lady Olivia’s door, nor did she know what to do about what she had heard. ’Twas more than likely she’d misunderstood everything. Certainly that possibility made her hesitate to speak up, along with knowing she’d take a beating later for impertinence if she spoke to Lady Olivia’s guest. Especially if Ria happened to be wrong.
If she had heard correctly, and she was to have an inheritance from her mother, then there was time enough to receive the news. One hour, or even two, did not matter, not when her whole life was about to change.
And what a change ’twould be! She would have a home, a place where she belonged, without question.
Empty-handed, floating on air, Ria made her way down the stairs and entered the kitchen, where an oversize basket full of dirty laundry was shoved into her hands.
Ria smiled and took it outside.
Chapter Two
Nicholas Hawken, Marquis of Kirkham, set several small stones upon a wall of rock. Then he picked up his whip and walked twenty paces away.
Snapping the lethal strip of leather several times in quick succession, he hit each rock separately, without touching its neighbor, and knocked every piece down.
At one time he’d have thought it quite an accomplishment. Now ’twas just another idle pastime.
Nicholas was restless. At the rate he and his companions were traveling, ’twould take another two days to reach Kirkham. That is, if the men didn’t decide to stay here at the Tusk and Ale Inn, where the serving wenches were uncommonly pretty and more than accommodating.
Mayhap he would avail himself of their services later, but for now, this exacting exercise would work to dissipate his foul and melancholy mood. For it had been on this day, exactly twelve years before, that his brother, Edmund, was slain on a blood-soaked battlefield in France.
The two brothers had fought side by side under King Henry himself, proud and happy to be part of the conquest of France. They’d been determined to distinguish themselves on the field and achieve glory for the Hawken name.
Nick lined up the stones again and once more whipped each one off with the precision he’d learned from an Italian nobleman.
So many years, so many regrets.
’Twas his own fault Edmund had been killed before his twentieth year. Had Nicholas not persuaded his brother to accompany him to France, Edmund would be firmly ensconced as marquis at Kirkham, with Lady Alyce Palton as his wife.
Instead, poor Alyce had wept herself into an early grave over Edmund’s loss, and Nicholas himself had become the heir, a man as unworthy as any could be.
He turned and, with a flick of his wrist, viciously whipped the long, narrow strip of leather around the trunk of a nearby tree. Would the icy grip of guilt ever let him free?
Nick didn’t think so. He could not imagine living without it.
“There you are!”
Nicholas turned to see two of his traveling companions crossing the narrow field to approach him. The two intruders retained their cheerful demeanors in spite of Nick’s scowling face.
“Lofton sent us in search of you, Kirkham,” one man announced.
“He said to tell you he saved the frisky one for you,” the other added.
“Frisky what?” Nick asked, winding his whip into a neat loop.
“Frisky blond wench!” the man said with a hearty slap on his back. “Knows you’re partial to ’em!”
Blond or bald, it hardly mattered. Oblivion was all Nicholas sought. He raised an eyebrow and gave a good impression of a knavish grin, then started the walk back to the inn.
Oblivion.
Ria wondered why, after so many years, anyone bothered about Sarah Morley’s—no, Sarah Burton’s—child. No one had thought of her since her birth twenty-two years before. What did they want with her now?
Rarely did she think of herself as Sarah’s daughter, or even as Olivia’s niece. Ria was no one, had never been anyone. At least, not since the death of her nursemaid, Tilda, the old woman who’d brought her here to Alderton Keep when her mother had died.
Tilda was the one who’d started calling her Ria, a pet name, really. But when Tilda died, it had become something less. It was no longer a name, but merely a sound people barked when they wanted something.
Happily, that was about to change. No longer would she be the no-name girl of Alderton. She was Maria Elizabeth Burton, a legitimately born person of consequence.
And if she were legitimate, it meant she had a father.
Ria stopped in her tracks when that thought dawned on her. The man in Aunt Olivia’s solar had referred to her mother as Sarah Burton, Duchess of Sterlyng. That would make Ria’s father a duke—the Duke of Sterlyng.
Ria scrubbed the soiled linens in the washtub, wrung them out and hung every piece on the line that was strung across the bailey. She frowned and wondered what all this meant, reminding herself she could very well have been mistaken about what she’d heard. Why had she never heard of the Duke
