His eyes bulged in his face.
Because while the noise had been quite lovely, loyal servants did not snitch food from the master or mistress’s kitchen.
“I beg your pardon,” he snapped, moving further into the kitchen, his voice bouncing off the low stone walls.
She let out a yelp and then spun, the bowl and the spoon falling from her hands as she pivoted.
He watched in sickening slow motion as the wooden bowl careened toward the floor and then landed with a loud thwack that reverberated through the space.
Worse still, the contents, which he now recognized as bread and egg, splattered up and across the kitchen, but most notably across her.
From skirt to hair, she was covered.
“Oh!” she cried, thrusting her hands out to either side. “Oh dear.”
He blinked several times. He shouldn’t have yelled. But somehow those weren’t the words that left his mouth. Instead, his brow knit together. “What are you doing snitching from the kitchen?”
“I’m sorry?” she said, her gaze snapping to his.
“You should be,” he replied, standing straighter. “It’s unbecoming.”
But just then Mrs. Derby entered. The woman had been his aunt’s cook since his childhood and he’d passed many happy hours in this kitchen with her, taking bits of this and that as she’d prepared the family’s meals. She was a kind and generous woman who had a soft spot for those that didn’t fit in with others well.
But she didn’t even look at him as she stared at the woman now covered in bread pudding.
“Oh, my lady,” Mrs. Derby gasped. “Your beautiful dress.”
My lady?
Beautiful dress?
This was no maid at all. And as he took in a few more details he noted the elaborate coif in her lovely blonde hair and the fine adornment of lace on her gown. He groaned to himself as he waited for the lady in question to respond.
* * *
Lady Evie Dunstableattempted to assess the man before her but clumps of egg-soaked bread had stuck in her lashes.
She attempted to wipe them out but only succeeded in smearing the yellow brown mush deeper into her eyes.
“I’m sure we can wash it,” she said, not wishing for the cook to be upset. Mrs. Derby had so kindly allowed her to come help in the kitchen before Evie needed to join the other guests greeting the duke.
She shouldn’t have come.
Evie ought to do as her mother wished and gone straight outside with all the other guests queuing up for the duke’s favor. As her mother liked to point out, she was pretty enough to catch even a duke’s fancy. She just needed to try harder…
That was story of her life.
Try harder. Be better. Talk more, laugh more, and, oh yes, eat less. Lovely willowy figures were all the rage but hers was a bit more…well, just more.
She sighed. Her mother would be furious when she saw the dress. The countess had designed the delicate pink gown herself, every bit of lace, every bow meant to show Evie to her best advantage, carefully chosen for the meeting with the Duke of Wingate. And now the gown was ruined.
Not that she’d had a chance with duke. Never mind that his aunt, Lady Greenburg, had invited them with a personal note to her mother saying that she was most eager to introduce Evie to her nephew.
His aunt had made that same introduction to many, many women from good families before without result.
The duke was an impenetrable fortress of hostility and no woman had been able to crack his hard shell.
And Evie wasn’t the sort of girl who cracked anyone. She was the soft nut who often got cracked. She knew that about herself, which was why she’d gone down to the kitchen before heading outside.