The Way to a Man's Heart by Wilma Counts

Author:Wilma Counts [Counts, Wilma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: eKensington
Published: 2014-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

In the days following, Nicole had cause to regret the changes her own actions had brought, for now Thornwood spent many an afternoon playing billiards or cards with his friends. Occasionally, Captain Marsten’s sister made a fourth for card games.

When one of the parlor maids made a casual observation about Miss Marsten’s interest in Lord Thornwood, Nicole experienced a profound pang of sheer jealousy. But what had she expected? She reminded herself she was, after all, the cook. Had she not already enjoyed extraordinary freedoms for one of her position in a household?

She had come to Thornwood on a lark. The wager was but another instance of harmless rivalry between her and Edward. It simply had not occurred to her she might form an attachment for her employer or the new household. Oh, she had not doubted she would get on well enough. All her life she had made friends easily. But all her life she had been straightforward, open, and honest.

Her position in Thornwood Manor was based on deceit.

In another two weeks the lark would be over, the game finished. Now when she thought of Mrs. Hankins, Lady Thornwood, the kitchen staff, and all the others with whom she worked so easily, guilt threatened to engulf her. How would they feel knowing they had been instruments in an elaborate hoax?

It was not intended as a hoax, Nicole argued with herself.

No, but the hoax was there all the same, an unforeseen, unwelcome—and inevitable—auxiliary to her joking competition with Edward.

More than all the others, she dreaded revealing herself to Adam Prescott, Earl of Thornwood. She admitted to herself that her feelings went beyond friendship, but the friendship, with its shared interests and easy laughter, had grown and blossomed. Would it now wilt under her own deceit?

Nor was this deception the only one to weigh on her conscience. The elder Jamisons and her father, the beloved Monsieur Thibaud, all believed her to be visiting a fictive friend from her school days, a certain N.—for Nancy—Buford, a relative of the Earl of Thornwood. Her weekly letters to maintain this illusion were harder and harder to write. Her father’s letters disturbed her greatly, but she thought she had allayed his worries.

Thus it came as a profound shock when Jenkins sought her out one afternoon with the news that she had a visitor. “Mrs. Buford, there is a French gentleman waiting to speak with you.”

“A ... a Frenchman?” Nicole felt a stab of panic. “Did he give his name?” But she knew who it was.

“Calls himself Monsieur Thibaud. Seemed a cut above the ordinary by his dress and manners. I put him in the anteroom off the foyer, though normally you should receive your guest in the servants’ hall, you know.”

“Thank you.” Nicole recognized this as a great concession from Jenkins, who was a stickler for propriety. Divesting herself of her apron, she hurried to the small room set aside as a reception room for unexpected guests.

“Monsieur?” Through the partially opened door, she saw him

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