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Whitby looked up from his paper. Smiled at Brook—scowled at him. “You. You have some explaining to do, Lord Abingdon.”

Perhaps he would have worried, had Brook’s laugh not been so carefree. He looked from the woman beside him to her father. Was it laughter in Whitby’s eyes too, or irritation? “What have I done, my lord?”

Whitby folded his paper and raised his hand, a finger up. “You taught my daughter to ride astride.” He raised another finger. “To shoot a pistol.” A third. “To drive an automobile.” Four. “To swim.” And his thumb. “To fence.”

Brook’s next laugh interrupted him, and Justin felt his mouth tug upward into a grin too.

Whitby narrowed his eyes. “What have you to say for yourself?”

Looking at her, how she sat with such confidence, how she laughed with such abandon, how she faced the world with such brilliance, there was only one thing he
could
say. “You’re welcome.”

Deirdre hated this time of morning. When all was still dark outside the many-paned windows of Whitby Park, when she should have had a peaceful hour to take her breakfast and go about her tasks.

It had once been her favorite time of day. Now she dreaded it, knowing she had to rush if she hoped to have Lady Berkeley’s room prepared before the baroness surged out of bed. Her ladyship was up before the sun most mornings. She seldom asked for anything, but that only made it worse. She
knew
Deirdre resented her presence, and by knowing made her ashamed of it with every apologetic smile.

Sure and it was enough to spoil the whole day.

She trod silently down the hall, pausing outside the baroness’s new room. Granted, it had now been hers longer than the Green Room had been, but it still felt strange to Deirdre. This was a chamber she had once cleaned with a pervasive sense of pity for his lordship. One that Beatrix wouldn’t even step foot in without crossing herself.
The babe’s room
, they had used to call it.

Lady Berkeley’s now.

Deirdre said a silent prayer that the lady would still be abed and turned the knob. No lamplight greeted her. No soft humming came from the window seat. The baroness’s wrapper was
still draped on the chair—a guarantee that she was yet beneath her covers, for the girl couldn’t tolerate chill air.

Deirdre loosed a breath of relief and headed for the dressing room. His lordship had been sending over jewels and hats, scarves and gloves. Anything belonging to the late Lady Whitby that had not gone absolutely out of fashion.

Still, the girl only wore that pearl necklace she had arrived in. She would slip on a bracelet or ring of the late lady’s now and then, but the heavily-jeweled items remained on their velvet trays.

Deirdre flipped on the electric light once she’d closed herself in. The baroness had instructed her to have her riding habit ready this morning. A hunt was planned. Deirdre couldn’t help the purse of her lips as she pulled it down. Had the woman no shame, to wear pants with all those guests around?

At least the lady would have to dress for breakfast first. She had indicated no preference for that, so Deirdre selected an ivory morning dress with rose inlays, just because she fancied it.

After gathering the necessary underthings, she turned the light back off and blinked against the darkness of the bedchamber as she stepped into it. She went stiff when she heard shifting on the bed.

By now, she knew the sounds. The muttering in French, the thrashing of limbs. The
non, non, non
. Another nightmare. For a moment, she strained forward. Little Molly’d had the worst nightmares after Da died. Deirdre had always pulled her close, smoothed her hair, whispered until her sister woke up and stopped her trembling. She could still see the fear in the wee one’s big brown eyes. The same fear she had glimpsed in the baroness’s one morning when she sat bolt upright after such thrashing.

But what could her ladyship have to haunt her? What had she lost to throw her into such turmoil? Nothing. All she had done was gain, gain, gain.

Deirdre spun for the fireplace. The wood had already been set, and the scullery maid would be in soon to light it, but not soon enough. She would have to do it herself, or else when the lady snapped awake in a few minutes, she would be a-shiver. Have to pull her blankets close. Chafe her hands together. Silent condemnation of Deirdre’s inability to see to her needs.

Francis said Lords Abingdon and Thate had all but told her ladyship to find another lady’s maid. No doubt she was waiting for an excuse to do so, and heaven help her if Deirdre would provide her with one. She already had the journal hanging over her head, though her ladyship seemed to think the Frenchwoman had misplaced it, praise be to the Lord. Still, she would ask Lord Pratt about it if she could find him alone. He had surely had time enough to translate it by now.

The first flames chased away the sulfur’s bite when a scratching came at the door. Satisfied that the tinder would catch, she rose and opened it.

Beatrix stood wide-eyed in the hall. “I don’t know what I’m to do, DeeDee!”

“Shh.” Glancing over her shoulder to make sure the lady still slept, Deirdre stepped into the hall and eased the door closed. “What is it?”

Beatrix wrung her hands. “I was taking out the pots in the ladies’ wing and went into Lady Catherine’s room, but she wasn’t alone. There was a
man
in her bed! Lord Whitby would—”

“Shh.” Deirdre held up a hand this time to illustrate her point and leaned over. “Hush, Bea. It’s a house party, what do you
think
happens?”

The younger girl’s mouth fell open. “Well, not
that
. His lordship would be aghast—I know he would. And Lady Ramsey—”

“Lady Ramsey knows the ways of the world, and so long as it isn’t
her
daughters disgracing themselves, she is happy to turn a blind eye.”

Beatrix didn’t look relieved. “But his lordship . . . You remember when he dismissed Bridey last year for getting caught with a village boy in the stables. He’s no tolerance for such things under his roof, he said. And if not from us, then surely not from a lady.”

“Beatrix, listen.” She gripped her friend’s arm and steered her back toward the exit from the family hall. “We’re not going to tell his lordship. We’re going to mind our own and bite our tongues and not say a word. Do you understand?”

“But—”

“It isn’t our business. And if you told Lord Whitby and he confronted her, she would only say you were lying and try to get you sacked. It isn’t worth it. She’ll be gone when the week is.”

At last, capitulation filled Beatrix’s eyes. Her friend nodded.

Deirdre did too, and released her. “Now back to your duties and I to mine.”

“Sorry to interrupt, Dee.”

“No matter.” She produced a smile and made a shooing motion that had always sent her siblings on their way. “Off with you now.”

Once Beatrix had scurried along, Deirdre turned back to the baroness’s door and slid inside.

“Is everything all right? I thought I heard voices.” Her ladyship’s voice was thick with accent, as usual when she first awoke. Sometimes her first words weren’t even English, and she didn’t seem to realize it until Deirdre blinked at her.

Now she smiled as warmly as she could manage. “Only Beatrix with a question, my lady. Let me get your wrapper, and then I’ll fetch a cup of that coffee you like.”

It didn’t produce the enthusiasm she had expected. Her ladyship pulled the blankets higher. Her thank-you was low and soft and mournful. She reached up and wiped at her cheek.

Deirdre pulled the belted dressing gown from the chair and set it on the bed. The lady had closed her eyes again, but the fire’s light caught on the moisture in her lashes.

Hesitating, Deirdre almost reached out. But there was no use in that. So she slipped from the room again and hurried to the kitchen.

Monsieur Bisset was in full steam, like a locomotive charging through the room, barking orders at the under cooks and assistants. Deirdre avoided whomever she could, sneaking a cup of the dark coffee and making her escape. Soon, the dumbwaiter would be coming up and down with platters of food bound for the breakfast room. The gentlemen would stir within the next hour, the ladies an hour after that.

There would be dressing for breakfast, dressing for the hunt, dressing for tea, dressing for games out of doors, dressing for dinner. She, along with the other lady’s maids and valets, would be brushing this garment, pressing that, cleaning shoes and more shoes and the next pair too when they came in muddy. The guests would laugh and gossip and flirt and relax.

The staff would hustle and bustle and pray for the week to come to a quick end.

Thank heavens his lordship didn’t make a habit of this sort of thing. She moved cautiously through the halls, careful not to spill a drop of the scalding liquid. When she finally gained the baroness’s room again, she found her in the window seat, her wrapper on and a blanket around her. The girl stared out the window into the thick fog.

“Here we are, my lady.” Perhaps the bright note felt false, but with any luck it wouldn’t sound it. She held out the cup.

Lady Berkeley took it with a smile every bit as feigned. “Thank you. Would you be so good as to hand me my Bible?”

“Of course.” It sat on the bedside table, as always. The gold-embossed letters read
L
A
B
IBLE
: A
NCIENT
ET
N
OUVEAU
T
ESTAMENT
.
She picked it up, handed it over. And said, for a reason she could scarcely fathom, “It looks old.”

The lady ran her fingers over the creased leather. “Justin gave it to me when I was ten—when Maman died. I understood so little of it then, but I made myself read, because he said it was important. So I read and grew and understood and believed and now . . . now these pages hold memories along with truth.” Yet rather than open it, she set it on her knees and held the hot cup in both hands. Rested her head against the wall behind her. “Was it hard when you came here, O’Malley? From Ireland?”

Her hands itched for a task. Her feet strained for the door. But she held her place. “It was a blessing—I daresay one I wouldn’t have received had I not had my uncle’s recommendation. I send my earnings home to my family, and I know it eases them to have it. It’s been hard for Mum since my da died, with the farm mortgaged as it was.”

She hadn’t meant to say so much, had only wanted to sound grateful. She cleared her throat. “Do you miss Monaco?”

Lady Berkeley sighed and sipped at her coffee. “My grandfather. And the weather.” A smile winked out, disappeared. “But I knew I couldn’t stay there forever. I was not a Grimaldi, not by blood. And there was so much unrest—the people revolted in the spring, demanding a constitution. Even as Grand-père placated them, I kept wondering if I was more like them than him—if I belonged on the streets, protesting with the crowds, or if living behind the palace walls was my place. I wanted to know who I was. So I asked Justin to help me find out, and . . .”

“And here you are. Home.” How nice it must be, to go on a search for answers and find all this.

Life didn’t turn out so fine for most of them.

“O’Malley.” The baroness shifted, set the Bible on the seat beside her, and met Deirdre’s gaze. “Please don’t pretend. Your position is safe, I assure you. You needn’t put on this front.”

Deirdre’s back went stiff. “Sure and I don’t know what you mean, my lady.”

“I know you don’t like me—and you don’t have to. I’m not . . . I’m not what you all want your baroness to be. That is mine to accept.” She set the cup on its saucer, the saucer on the Bible. “But duplicity I will not.”

Deirdre knew not what to say to that, what she was meant to do. Any response she could make may well explode in her face. So she stood there, held the baroness’s gaze until it felt disrespectful, and then lowered hers to the floor. “Do you wish to dress yet?”

The lady stood, folded the blanket and put it back on the foot of the bed, and moved behind the screen. Deirdre handed her the shift and bloomers, the corset. Then came the dress. Her ladyship slipped it on and then stepped out, back to Deirdre, hair held up out of the way.

She made quick work of the row of the buttons, and of putting up her ladyship’s hair a minute later while she sipped her coffee. Then the baroness crossed back to her window, her Bible, and dismissed Deirdre with a few quiet words.

The feeling of freedom she usually felt at the “
That is all
” didn’t come as she stepped into the hall. She felt only the certainty that she should have woken the lady from her nightmare.

Maybe the morning would have gone differently if she had.

She paused at the break in the paneling that would open to the service staircase. And what would Mum say if she saw her now? Or Da, who had always called her his sunshine? She didn’t feel so sunny anymore, hadn’t since his death. But he would be pained to know it. He would be disappointed in seeing the resentment always a-boil inside her.