Page 75 of Caught By the Ruthless Duke
Theodore said nothing, but Cressida felt his stillness beside her and did not look at him.
At the mill, the miller pulled his hat off before Theodore had finished speaking. Mr. Harker was a broad, ruddy man who had been watching their approach for some time.
“Your Grace. Didn’t know you’d be coming today.”
“My wife has not yet made a formal introduction with me present,” Theodore said. “The Duchess of Ashmere.”
“Oh, we know Her Grace,” Mr. Harker said, with the ease of a man who had already been charmed and knew it. He bowed to Cressida. “Your Grace came to visit old Mr. Webb not three weeks past. Had the whole village talking.”
Theodore inclined his head with perfect composure.
Cressida kept her gaze ahead and said nothing, having learned by now when silence served better than speech.
“I hear the north wheel has been causing trouble,” Theodore said.
The miller’s expression shifted into the relief of a man who had been waiting to discuss a problem with someone capable of addressing it. Theodore listened, asked three questions, and suggested a remedy.
The deference folded by degrees into something more like conversation, and the business of the estate proceeded as though it required no ceremony at all.
Theodore had dismounted over the rough stretch past the smithy and steadied her mare’s bridle through the worst of the ruts. His other hand found her knee briefly as her mare stepped awkwardly, and he removed it with the same efficiency he brought to everything.
The smith’s boy called out to him by title and was acknowledged by name. A farmer’s wife asked after the eastern road, and he noted a sunken section in the small leather book he drew from his coat pocket—Cressida had not known about the book—and made a brief remark to suggest it would be attended to.
When they passed the schoolroom, the elderly woman sitting inside looked up, recognized Cressida, and raised a hand in greeting. Cressida raised hers in return. Theodore’s pace slowed, almost imperceptibly, to take it in.
It was near the end of the high street that she saw the widow. Perhaps thirty, her gown neat but showing its age at the hem, three children arranged about her with the tidiness of children taught young to present well. She was leaving the baker’s when she met Theodore’s eyes. Acknowledgment on her part, formal but grateful. A brief nod on his. She moved to leave.
Theodore called, “Mrs. Lowe,” and she stopped.
The conversation was brief and conducted quietly. Cressida heard enough: firewood before the hard weather came, a line of credit at the baker’s settled through the estate accounts.
Mrs. Lowe’s chin lifted with the care of a woman preserving her dignity and thanked him in a voice of great steadiness. He received it by changing the subject, a question about the eldest boy, who answered at length about a dog. Theodore listened.
When they returned to their horses, Cressida asked, “Does she have family nearby?”
“A sister in Thornhurst. Useless.”
He held her stirrup while she remounted, and when she looked down at him, his expression was shuttered.
She’d learned to read that expression, probably more thoroughly than he liked. This was the shuttered look that meant he had done something he considered unremarkable and wished it to be treated accordingly.
“It is very generous,” she offered.
“It is practical.” He was already moving to his horse.
She let him redirect, following behind.
The draper’s shop occupied a narrow frontage at the top of the market cross. Theodore had gone across to speak with the steward, who had materialized with papers requiring his signature, and Cressida had drifted inside.
The shop was dim and smelled of clean cloth. She was turning to leave when her hand landed on a bolt, and she stopped.
Sapphire blue silk. Not a dull blue that could answer to various names, but the precise, saturated shade she considered her color. Mentioned once during her first weeks at Ashmere,offhandedly, in the middle of an argument about something else entirely.
She ran two fingers across the surface.
Feeling a prickle at her back, she turned. Theodore was standing in the doorway, his gaze fixed on the silk, before flicking to her face and then back.
She replaced the bolt. “The wool in the window is of very good quality. I thought Mrs. Agnes might want to know.”
