over the lease, or something of that nature. Show him to the study, Babbage, and I will attend him there.’
Babbage cleared his throat apologetically. ‘His Grace gave me to believe he wished to speak to Miss Sofia, my lord.’
Uncle Ned and Aunt Agnes both turned to gape at her. It was Uncle Ned who recovered first. ‘Nonsense! Must be some mistake. Sofia don’t know any dukes. Keep too close a watch on her, don’t you, Agnes? Where would she have met him? Eh?’
‘Nowhere,’ said Aunt Agnes decisively. ‘I can assure you of that.’
And so could Sofia, if he’d bothered to ask her. But that was not his way. Sofia was not, as he was so fond of saying, his niece. She was pretty sure he didn’t begrudge her house room. It was just that he held the firm conviction that raising girl children was a woman’s work. He’d said so, the very first day she’d reached Nettleton Manor, bedraggled and woebegone and half-sure they, too, were going to pass her on to yet another set of strangers. It had been the first time he and Aunt Agnes had discussed her as though she wasn’t even in the room. In the years that followed, they’d fallen into the habit of doing it on what felt like a regular basis.
Babbage cleared his throat, reminding them all, tactfully, that they were keeping a duke kicking his heels in the hallway. Not that she could account for a man claiming to be a duke turning up and asking after her. As far as she was aware, she’d never met a duke in her life.
‘Yes, yes, show him in here, then,’ said Uncle Ned impatiently. ‘Must be some mistake. Get it cleared up in a trice, I dare say. Ah, good morning,’ he said, tossing his newspaper aside and getting to his feet to greet the man who strolled in. As though he owned the place. Which was what he was claiming, though he couldn’t possibly. For this was no duke. This was the waiter from the evening of the fireworks that had gone wrong.
The waiter nodded to her uncle, then made straight for her, his ferocious brows lowering into an expression of concern.
‘Your poor face,’ he said, stretching out a hand as though he would have stroked her black eye, only withdrawing it at the very last moment, as though suddenly recollecting his manners.
But she felt as though he’d touched her all the same. Which gave her a very odd feeling. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had looked as though they had wanted to touch her with affection. Or concern. Certainly not Aunt Agnes. On first seeing Sofia, she’d shuddered with revulsion before sending her off to be stripped and scrubbed clean by a very junior housemaid. And had held her at arm’s length ever since.
‘Try to remember you are a lady born,’ was her most frequent refrain. Which had swiftly supplanted her first maxim: ‘You are in England now and must act accordingly.’
Although last night, after seeing Sofia’s ruined gown and not seeing Betty’s cloak, she’d bombarded Sofia with just about her entire arsenal of verbal weaponry. And this morning, when she’d arrived at the breakfast table sporting a black eye, far from reaching out to her the way this man had just done, she’d raised her hand to her own brow. ‘Just like your father,’ she’d moaned. ‘Never happier than when he was neck deep in mischief.’
Which was most unfair. Sofia had worked so hard to become a Proper English Young Lady that nowadays everyone within ten miles of Nettleton Manor thought she was a dead bore.
‘Has your niece,’ said the waiter who was masquerading as a duke, ‘received medical attention since the night of the bonfire?’ He rounded on her uncle, looking distinctly annoyed.
‘It is only a few bruises and scratches, nothing more,’ said Aunt Agnes in self-defence.
He then raised one of those eyebrows towards her aunt in a way that would have shrivelled Sofia, had it been directed at her.
For a moment, Sofia thought about telling Aunt Agnes that there was no need to quail under the force of those eyebrows. They might look lethal, but they adorned the forehead of a mere waiter. Not a duke.
However, it wasn’t often that anyone took her part against her uncle and aunt. And so she remained silent while Aunt Agnes flushed and began to stammer excuses.
‘She sees a doctor regularly. She is here for her health, after all. For the sea bathing.’
‘Her health?’ His voice dripped with such disdain even Sofia could see how he could pass for a duke. ‘Then what was she doing out at night, in the chill air?’
‘It’s all moonshine, the notion that Sofia is invalidish,’ broke in Uncle Ned. ‘This trip to the seaside is all down to my wife’s brother putting a lot of ridiculous ideas into their heads.’
Sofia blushed and hung her head, since Uncle Ned was closer to stating the truth than he knew. And she still felt a bit guilty about the way her Uncle Barty had manipulated them into bringing her here.
‘What you need,’ he’d said, the last time he’d been over to visit her, ‘is to get away from this devilish dull backwater and meet some people other than rustics. Go about a bit. Attend some dances. That will put the roses back into your cheeks,’ he’d prophesied. And then he’d proceeded to harangue his sister for neglecting Sofia to such good effect that they’d all decamped to the fashionable seaside town of Burslem Bay, to see if a course of sea bathing might help restore her appetite, so that she’d regain the weight she’d lost over winter.
‘Now, Ned, that isn’t fair,’ said Aunt Agnes. ‘Poor Sofia was wasting away...’
Uncle Ned snorted. ‘You wouldn’t have dreamed of spending all this money on a cottage by the sea if your pestilential brother hadn’t started throwing his weight around.’
‘But he is as much her guardian as either of us, Ned. Of course he thinks he has a say in her welfare...’
Sofia was beginning to curl up with embarrassment. It was bad enough when they argued about her as if she wasn’t there. But to do so in front of a stranger, as well?
The so-called Duke gave the bickering couple another look of disdain, before sauntering across the room and taking the chair next to hers.
‘You must wish to know how Mrs Pagett is faring,’ he said.
‘Mrs Pagett?’ Lord, but her voice had come out all squeaky. But then he was a bit overwhelming, up close. He exuded so much confidence and vitality.
Just as if he really was a duke.
‘The woman whose aid you went to when her dress caught fire.’
‘Oh, yes, thank you! How is she? Did you find a doctor for her—?’
‘Sofia, really,’ her aunt interrupted, roused from her quarrel with Uncle Ned by the sound of Sofia actually conducting a conversation which she was not supervising. ‘Remember your manners. Please forgive her, Your Grace. I am sure she does not mean to be so impertinent, peppering you with questions like that.’
‘Not at all,’ said the waiter-Duke. ‘She is merely expressing a very feminine curiosity and concern for someone whose unfortunate accident has clearly shocked her very much.’
Sofia promptly decided she liked him, no matter whether he was a waiter or a duke, or something else entirely. For nobody, apart from Uncle Barty on the rare occasions he could be bothered to visit, had
