Windsong Manor by Julie Wright

Author:Julie Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shadow Mountain Publishing
Published: 2023-10-05T16:18:55+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Ridley sat at the dinner table with the rest of the servants. Lady Coventry had made him feel like he was a child’s spinning toy. He wondered at the life choices that had led him to spending the whole of his days with horses instead of people. If he had chosen differently, would he have found himself happily situated with a woman he respected in the way he respected and admired Lady Coventry?

No. Had he married, it would not have been to a woman he admired. Such options had not been placed before him. And now that he was his own man, he found he couldn’t form attachments that would lead to marriage. He had changed his stars, rewritten his future, and he could never hope to make a woman understand his choices, let alone live with them.

He listened to the others at the table laugh and joke and commiserate over the workday and smiled at how happy they all seemed in their positions.

Feeling regretful about his life was absurd. No one could dispute that he had truly made the best decisions for himself.

Nathaniel, the young lord’s valet, spoke up, bringing Ridley’s attention back to the table and his companions. “You’ll like this one, Ridley. Lord Coventry dismissed his maths tutor today.”

Ridley tensed, unsure of how the young lord’s newest tantrum would be a cause of diversion for himself.

“Any guess as to why?” Nathaniel asked.

“If you’d just get on with it, ’e wouldn’t have to be makin’ guesses, now would ’e?” Alison, the kitchen maid, said.

“Right enough,” Nathaniel said. “He had the man sacked because the man told Miss Amelia she wasn’t none too bright and that she’d never learn her numbers. Miss Amelia said that you, Ridley, had told her that she was very bright, and the tutor scoffed at the idea. He told her that a man who tended to beasts all day would not be able to measure the intelligence of a human. That was when Lord Coventry stepped in. He abused the man quite thoroughly, though he’s barely out of his leading strings, and he did it all while speaking high praise of you and of his sister.”

“He defended Miss Amelia?” A swell of pride in the young man swept through Ridley.

“He did. Which was impressive enough, but that he included you? The devil take me, but I thought he might duel the man over your honor!”

Everyone laughed at the notion of a twelve-year-old baron counting the paces to defend a stable hand’s honor, and a few jokes were made about Ridley being worthy of such attention.

“I doubted the young lord could possibly do anything that could be considered ‘kind,’” Nathaniel said.

“It’s likely his mother’s doing,” Cook said. “Lady Coventry is one of the most genteel ladies I have ever worked for. And more generous than I could have imagined. She gave me time off to go and visit me ailing mum—and I hadn’t even asked for it. Mrs. Cole merely mentioned that me mum

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