Watching her heroes in movies was proving to be much easier than trying to win one in real life.
Grabbing a broom from the kitchen cupboard, Leah returned and started sweeping up Henrietta’s mess. The repetitive motions gave her more than enough time to think about home.
Pawpaw had been so insistent that she find her guy and get married. What was his game? Rounding up a largish pile of ash, she bit her lip and recounted all the doctor visits he’d had in the past year. There weren’t many, certainly not enough to cause her to be concerned.
So why was he so adamant that she not be alone?
What did he know that Leah didn’t?
With the ashes returned to the bucket, and Leah sweaty, tired, and confused, she dumped them into the bin and headed back upstairs to finish the duke’s dressing GeekGirlsDontDateDukes.indd 86
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room. She’d have plenty of time to try to analyze
Pawpaw when she got back. And if things kept going as well as they had been, she might just give up and dive through the mirror tomorrow. God, that made her sound like a damn weenie. She stiffened her spine. She’d never met a challenge she intended to back down from, and this wouldn’t be the one to take her down.
“Ramsey?”
Damn it, she was really getting fucking tired of that Q-tip’s haughty way of saying her name. Leah stopped on the third stair and turned. “Yes, Mrs. Harper?”
“The dowager duchess is hosting a rout tomorrow evening. You will help serve.” The old bat didn’t look happy about it, but she delivered the order with aplomb anyway.
Leah nodded politely. “Yes, ma’am.”
A thread of interest wound through Leah as she continued mounting the stairs. Serve at a real duchess’s party? See the glittering lords and ladies of the ton?
When the realization slammed through her, she missed a step. Clutching at the banister to prevent a fall, she gasped.
The dowager. The duke’s mother. Holy crap, the woman must have danced with Methuselah. How was she still alive?
Leah righted herself and rounded the landing. Maybe she’d been wrong about the duke’s age. If his mother was alive, then he had to be fairly young, right? Maybe he had one of those aging diseases that made you look a lot older than you were.
She entered the dressing room and started sweeping.
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opportunity to impress the duke and learn more about him. This could work.
Maybe her fairy tale would have a happy ending after all.
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Ten
Breakfast was a long and tiring three hours later.
Cook set a bowl in front of Leah without a word.
Apparently breakfast was lukewarm oatmeal-like gruel.
Leah poked at the gelatinous mass with her spoon. It jiggled alarmingly, reminding Leah of that old B horror movie about the blob. The Oatmeal that Ate London! Run for your lives!
“Oh boy,” she said beneath her breath. Clearly she hadn’t gotten enough sleep.
“Ramsey, is the food not to your liking?” The housekeeper’s brows had climbed to her hairline. The other maids had filled in the empty seats around Leah, and Henrietta especially looked pleased at Mrs. Harper’s attitude. The little viper was really getting under Leah’s skin. She’d have to think about how to get back at her for the ash bucket. That had been a prank worthy of Leah’s best retaliation.
“No, no,” Leah laughed uncomfortably. “It looks delicious.” She took a big bite and nearly gagged at the too-thick texture. Blinking back tears, she swallowed the muddy-tasting gruel as quick as she could.
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“See that you finish it all.” Mrs. Harper watched her like a skinny, cotton-headed hawk.
Leah nodded weakly. It was a good thing she could stand to lose a few pounds. On this diet, she’d be lucky to keep anything down.
The scraping of a chair near the end of the table brought her watery gaze upward. Avery nodded politely as he sat and began eating with refined gusto. Hmph.
Must be an acquired taste.
A swig of lukewarm tea helped clear the gluey taste from her mouth, and the chatter at the table picked up shortly thereafter.
“Her Grace’s routs are always such fun,” Sarah was giggling to Teresa across the table. “All those posh lords and ladies.”
“And their dresses, blimey,” Teresa said, her pale face long with dreamy reverie. “I’d love to be puffed off like that.”
“You?” Henrietta snorted. “A bony figure like yours would ruin those fancy clothes.”
Teresa looked down into her lap dejectedly.
Leah resisted the urge to kick Henrietta’s shin under the table. Instead, she opted for a more polite approach.