Page 21 of Sir Andrew and the Authoress

Good. Simon ought to laugh more. Even if it wasn’t out loud. And at Andrew’s expense. The duke’s eldest took himself far too seriously sometimes.

With that, the subject of Josephine’s abilities dropped, and Rosalind took up her cause for a trip to the village of Lambsthorpe.

“I want to look in on the shops and be sure our friends know we have returned,” the young lady said, oblivious to her brother’s frown. “We needn’t purchase anything. I used all my pin money in London. But it would be lovely just to walk about the little village freely.”

“It would serve you better to write letters to your friends, rather than hoping for a chance to run into them in the village.” Simon looked to their governess. “Do you not agree, Mrs. Robinson? Letter writing is an essential skill for any lady, is it not?”

“It is indeed, my lord.” The governess had the grace to sound thoughtful rather than disapproving of her charge’s attempts to escape the castle. “Perhaps we might instead petition you to issue an invitation to the young ladies your sisters most wish to see.”

Isabelle sighed, and Rosalind sunk somewhat in her seat with her bottom lip protruding. Of the duke’s three daughters, Josephine had always shown the most sense and decorum, even when she had been their age.

He remembered her at that age well, as she had been only a little younger than Isabelle when he had come to live with the family on a nearly permanent basis. At fourteen, nearly fifteen, she’d wasted no time in putting him in his place when he’d attempted to tease her.

Neither of them had stopped trying to get the better of the other since.

Which made it quite easy to keep their banter light, to make it his excuse for being near her and countering her every argument with one of his own, without anyone suspecting Andrew’s perception of Josephine had changed. If he kept treating her as he had when he saw her as a child, no one would ever guess how much he had grown to admire the woman she had become.

When Josephine excused herself from the table without any attempt to bring up their argument again or start one afresh, Andrew watched her withdraw from the room with curiosity. She looked over her shoulder once, at Simon, and in a single unguarded second, Andrew saw a look upon her face she had worn rarely—an expression of guilt.

It reminded him of when he’d caught her in the corridor two evenings previous. Her gaze lowered to his, and her expression went blank, then she vanished through the doorway.

Curiosity piqued, Andrew looked to see if anyone else had noticed the odd behavior. Yet breakfast continued as normal—or as normal as it could without the ducal parents present—and no one said a word about Josephine.

If Andrew meant to discover what she was up to, he would have to go about it by himself. Perhaps not the best course of action, but certainly the most entertaining.

He hid his grin from the others as he considered spending yet more time in Josephine’s company.

CHAPTER 8

Misleading her family members as to her whereabouts wasn’t something Josephine enjoyed, though she had become quite good at it since the previous summer. It was all a matter of timing and of leaving room for others to infer her whereabouts without actually confirming her plans.

After Josephine left her grandmother’s favorite sitting room, implying she went to the nursery, Josephine instead took herself to her room to dress for a walk. If anyone saw her leave the castle, she would suggest that the gardens were quite lovely and the weather perfect.

Even if the clouds were looking a touch gray, it wasn’t actually raining.

With a few careful turns in the garden, she would come out on the road that led to the castle at a distance far enough that no one would see her. The escape hardly counted as one, given the ease of her plan. Her sisters currently thought she was with their grandmother, who they would avoid before tea while they saw to their studies. Their grandmother thought Josephine had business in the schoolroom. She had hinted to one of the footmen tasked with the protection of the family that she had every intention of taking a nap.

When she slipped into the servants’ staircase near the chapel, and then out the chapel doors to the lesser-used garden of topiaries, she did not see another soul.

Her plan went well. She was soon free of the gardens and upon the road to Lambsthorpe. After traveling down its length a short distance, she could take the shortcut she and her siblings frequently used to lessen her time in full view of anyone coming or going from Clairvoir.

The canopy of bright green leaves above made the path more shadowed than usual, and the spring growth of ferns, grasses, and hedge leaves created a living wall to block out the sound from surrounding fields. Bird calls sounded in the distance, but rarely from above. And while Josephine knew sheep and cattle dotted the fields on either side of her path, she did not hear them.

Dried leaves from the year before crunched under her boots. Occasionally, the wind made the leaves above ripple and shiver, sounding like they trembled beneath raindrops, though the clouds above had yet to break.

“A perfect spring day,” Josephine said aloud, needing to hear a sound other than the quiet rustle of leaves. Had she ever made this walk on her own? No. Never. Always she had been with her sisters, or her brother, or at least her dearest Emma. How, at nearly twenty years of age, had she never been alone on their path before?

She had never taken the road by herself, either. Even on horseback, there had always been a guard or groom to accompany her on her rides or brief visits to friends nearby.

“I am perfectly capable of going about on my own,” she murmured, looking through the trees at a stretch of green field, empty of livestock. The clouds above shifted, and the sky darkened enough that the path before her appeared less cheerful than before.

Her step faltered, then Josephine forced herself to laugh. The sound was rather lonely. “I know this path as well as the castle gardens. I have taken it a hundred times before. I am perfectly capable of walking to the village on my own.” She adjusted the ribbons of her reticule, then patted the top of her bonnet, and stepped forward again with confidence—

The mad shriek of a pheasant burst from a bush beside her while the animal itself took off at a run across the track, startling Josephine so much that she screamed and moved backward. Her boot heel caught the hem of her skirt and tore, but she kept from falling by stumbling sideways into the trunk of a young tree. Her shoulder knocked into the unyielding bark, and Josephine had to bite her lip to keep from crying out again.

Glaring at the break in the undergrowth where the pheasant had disappeared, she thought several choice words about the horrible fowl. Never in her life had she undergone a fright such as that one.

“I hope the gamekeeper catches you,” she called out to the bird. “And that Cook stuffs you with chestnuts and raisins, then serves you for dinner!”