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Did you know that your minions have taken to calling you ‘Sir A’?

“Elephant’s Tusk” sounds a perfect, if fanciful, shade for the kitchen. You have my entire approval. Please reward your young lieutenant handsomely for the difficulty he endured in conveying your message to me.

Sincerely, C. L.

She folded her note and sent the boy off. Honoria had put her book aside and now watched Cassie.

“You’re smiling,” said Honoria.

“Am I?” Cassie asked. “I suppose the boy’s earnestness amused me.”

Honoria was watching her, really watching. “You know, dear, I think this move is good for you.”

“For me?” Cassie took another muslin out of the wardrobe, a chocolate brown with a small purple sprig and the worn elbows and frayed hem of one of Honoria’s writing gowns. She tossed it on the appropriate pile.

“Verwood is lovely, and no one appreciates it more than you do, but consider how refreshing new scenes are,” Honoria suggested.

“I never tire of the woods and gardens.”

“But you must admit that Verwood is a place of … loss.”

Cassie could not deny it. Her mother had died giving birth to her. The news of her brother’s death in the Anglo-Burmese War had reached Verwood in her thirteenth year. After that her father had lost all interest in the estate. In three years, he had wasted away. And when she emerged from mourning him, she met Oliver Torrington, Viscount Wycombe in London. For a few mad weeks in her abbreviated Season, Torrington had been her life. Then he had married another, and Cassie returned brokenhearted to Verwood and had her accident.

“I suppose one might associate Verwood with melancholy events, but I think of it as a safe, comforting place,” she said.

“Safe, but … dull. You were never dull in London.” Honoria began to twist the ends of her shawl. “I should have kept you safe, and now I make you dull here. It’s my fault, isn’t it?”

Cassie sat on the bench beside her aunt and took Honoria’s hands in hers. “You must not blame yourself for what happened in London.”

“I was your chaperone. I was supposed to protect you from men like Torrington.”

“You could not have saved me from my folly. I was nineteen and smitten. There were warning signs, and I rushed right past them.”

“You wouldn’t be afraid to go to London again in my company?”

“I am no longer that green girl.” She was also no longer a prize. Then she had been a duke’s daughter with youth and looks and a fat dowry. “In any case, this time we will be sensible London visitors. We’ll go to concerts and the theater and museums and bookstores, not balls and routs and pleasure gardens. We’ll take long walks. Shall we go when your book is finished?”

“Who will put us up? We won’t want to stay with your uncle Verwood.”

“No. What about your Thornhill cousins in Brunswick Square? Might they take us in for a week or a fortnight?”

“A fortnight!” Honoria stood. “Perhaps I do need to keep some of these frocks.”

“And wear them, too, Aunt!”

Chapter Seven

The Crown’s private dining room now served as Raven’s temporary office. There, his lifelong friend Jay Kydd pushed back from a hearty luncheon and raised a mug of the landlord’s home-brewed. “You’ve done well, Rav.”

Raven raised a glass in return. Now that the ladies had removed to the dower house, he had invited Jay down from London to help with the business of getting Raven’s horses settled in Verwood’s stables.

As boys in the duke’s gang, they had been a matched pair, similar in size and dark coloring until at seventeen Raven shot up to his present height, while Jay remained short and wiry. Then the duke’s discoveries about their parentage had further separated them. Raven had gone to his wealthy ironmonger grandfather while Jay had gone to an uncle who was a partner in a horse auction house in the East End. Jay had jumped at the chance to learn his family’s trade. He had to be around horses, and he liked the company of jockeys and touts, trainers and breeders.

Jay drained his pint and set down the mug. “What I don’t understand is why you want to bury yourself in the country and leave London’s ladies pining. I’ll grant you Verwood is a pretty piece of land.”

“You saw the stables?”

“Aye, and met your lady landlord. Her Grace is a haughty piece of work. Good thing you saved Dick Crockett’s bacon.”