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“Really?” She looked so relieved by the proposal that he almost laughed. They effected the switch with little bother, and Aimee looked a lot happier on his manservant’s well-behaved mount. “What a sweet horse,” she commented patting the chestnut’s neck. “What is her name?”

“’Tis Ivy, milady,” Jakeman told her cheerfully as he swung up into her own horse’s saddle. “This one’s a beauty.”

“Yes,” Aimee winced. “Deirdre is very headstrong, though I can see she is in expert hands.”

Jakeman grinned and touched his cap to her. At the dig of his heels into her sides, the white horse took off, and they watched as they disappeared into the distance.

“How long has Jakeman been in your employ?” Aimee asked curiously.

“It must be some five years all told.”

“That long?”

“Why do you look so surprised?”

“It is just that,” she glanced down at her hands. “Well, he’s a southerner. When you employed him, the war must not have been long over.” She shrugged. “I suppose it surprised me that you would have taken someone into your service who had been so recently your enemy.”

Konrad considered his answer. “Jakeman was a soldier on Wymer’s forces, it is true,” he acknowledged. Aimee’s eyes grew wider. “But I did not hold that against him. A man fights for his king and country as he is honor bound to do.”

“Did you have no manservant from home that served you?”

“I did,” he acknowledged. “But he was killed in battle. Strictly speaking, I ought to have taken another from the estate, but …” He shrugged.

“You did not wish to uproot anyone from their home?” Aimee suggested.

Konrad dismissed this notion with a wave of his hand. “Most of the servants were scattered to the four winds when the estate was razed. Very few were retained by the Crown to oversee a ruin.”

“Why, then, did you not employ one of them?”

He was quiet a moment. “It seemed easier to just take on a new man. One who had not known me before.”

“Before the war, you mean?”

He nodded and Aimee was silent a moment, likely in deference to his dour tone. When she spoke, her tone was thoughtful. “Ingrid said that one of her sons is happier in his new place than in his old, though the other misses the castle life.”

“Ingrid told you that?”

“She did.”

“She likes you,” he growled. “Has done from the start.”

“Ingrid?” Aimee sounded startled. “Did she say so?”

“As good as. She said if you and Trude were sows fighting for dominance, you would come out the victor.”

Aimee’s mouth fell open, and Konrad felt the absurd impulse to laugh. This time he did not stifle it.

“Did she really say that?” Aimee sounded incredulous.

“She did.”

“What an odd thing to say!”

“She’s an old countrywoman,” he pointed out. “The comparison would be a natural one to her.”

“Yes, but to voice such a thing aloud to her master!”

“That’s the thing with old family servants. They get away with a good deal. Ingrid’s gnarled old hands boxed my ears when I was a lad. She will never forget the fact.”