Love Undisguised by Grace Burrowes

Author:Grace Burrowes [Burrowes, Grace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781952443626
Publisher: Grace Burrowes Publishing

Con waited nearly a week for Antigone’s reply, and during that week he felt shot in the arse all over again.

Julianna worked without ceasing, an education in itself for a man who’d thought running a dukedom demanding. The household had a cook/housekeeper, but Con could not decide if that good woman had been let go, sent on an unpaid visit to relatives in York, or had chosen to take a summer holiday.

Julianna, meanwhile, didn’t merely give orders, review draft correspondence, and stay out waltzing until all hours. She swept, washed, cooked, totaled ledgers, stitched, cooked some more, beat the rugs, cooked yet more…

While Con tried to keep the children productively occupied and his hands to himself.

His wound itched, his conscience positively tormented him, and his cock… became an increasing bother as well.

“Make me a list, and I will go to market for you tomorrow,” Con said when the children had been put to bed with another story of Con’s misspent youth.

“You cannot,” Julianna replied, drawing her needle through the hem of Harold’s trousers.

“MacTavish goes in to York to fetch your mail and bring Mrs. Periwinkle home to us tomorrow, and Maurice will escort me about at market. I consider that preferable to having him take me to services.”

Between MacTavish’s silences, Julianna’s haunted gaze, and the children’s declarations that peat was better than coal, Con had concluded that nobody in the household liked Maurice Warren, but they dared not say so.

“Julianna, if you don’t want this fellow sniffing about your skirts, you tell him his attentions are flattering, but you cannot in good conscience encourage them. He expresses his regret that he’s misread the situation, begs your pardon, and asks that you let him know if you’d ever reconsider. This is how it’s done, and there’s an end to it.”

In the alternative, Connor could simply strut about in his ducal finery, wave the signet ring conspicuously, and let it be known Julianna was a valued relation of the Duke of Mowne. Even for a widow of independent means, Warren would be bound to reckon with her family before imposing his addresses on her.

“It’s not that simple,” Julianna said, drawing the thread snug against the fabric. “Mr. Warren has been a friend to me and to this farm.”

While Connor had been his mother’s dupe, kicking his heels two hundred miles to the south. To reveal his identity outside this household would invite Uncle Leo’s worst interference, though, and then where would Antigone, Hector, and Quint be? Where would the charities be that Connor supported from his own funds? The notes of hand he’d quietly bought for his friends until their own finances came right? The small pensions, and not so small, that Uncle Leo would never have approved?

“Mr. Warren has lent you a few mules he can easily spare,” Connor said. “Any neighbor should do the same for a widow trying to make a go of good land. I’ve wondered where your neighbors have been, in fact.”

Julianna’s needle paused. She sat back in her rocking chair, her eyes tired, but curious.

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