The Suffragette Scandal (Brothers Sinister #4)(85)

“Yes, Your Fierceness,” he said. He stood. “Louisa, is Miss Marshall’s bath ready?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” the maid, who’d been standing in the corner, said. “Mary signaled to me not a minute past.”

“Very well, then,” the duke—Robert—said. “If you could conduct Miss Marshall there?”

She wasn’t Miss Marshall any longer. She didn’t know who she was.

The maid bowed her head and then turned to Free. “If you would care to come with me, Your Fierceness?” There was a glint of a smile in the woman’s eyes, just that tiny hint of a sense of humor. And somehow, it was that—that tiny indication that the Duke of Clermont’s servants felt free to express humor in their employer’s presence, rather than turning into empty shells of themselves—that decided her.

Free pushed herself to her feet and wobbled across the room.

“Come along, miss,” Louisa said to her indulgently. “Come along.”

A WARM BATH AND DRY CLOTHING did a great deal to restore Free’s good humor. When she came down the stairs, back into the parlor, the Duke of Clermont—Robert, she reminded herself with a strange feeling—was sitting in front of the fire, slicing bread. It was such an odd thing to see: a man of his stature wielding a knife. He cut a thick, clumsy slice of bread as she watched from the doorway, the crumbs spilling haphazardly onto the carpet.

She paused, not sure what to say.

“Come,” he said, motioning to her. “Sit down.”

She drifted toward him.

“I don’t know anything about cheering up sisters,” he said, sliding the bread onto the waiting tines of the toasting fork. “I don’t know anything about cheering up anyone except children between the ages of six and fourteen. But maybe this will work on you.”

She glanced over at him curiously. “What are you doing?”

“We,” he corrected her. “We’re making dinner. We’ll toast bread and cheese over the fireplace and have some tea.” He gestured with the toasting fork, and the bread dipped perilously close to the flames. He shrugged guiltily. “Oh, dear. I’ll take this one.”

“No, it’s better singed,” Free heard herself say. “I always like that extra smoky flavor.”

His smile grew. “Come on, then.” He patted the cushion on the other side of the fireplace. “Have some toast.”

She’d known she was hungry, but her stomach growled in anticipation at the aroma of toasting bread. After he’d singed one side—only a bit black—he added cheese to the top and leaned in again. The cheese on top began to bubble and drip off the edges. He seemed to have infinite patience for waiting, turning the toast this way and that to try and get an even melt.

He handed her the slice of bread when he was satisfied.

“Don’t wait for me,” he told her and speared another piece of bread.

She wished she could be polite enough to demur, but she was too ravenous to think. Instead, she broke off a piece and put it in her mouth. The cheese was the perfect temperature—hot enough to be glorious, barely managing to escape burning the top of her mouth. The bread crunched between her teeth, soft in the middle, toasted to a crisp on the edges. She almost let out a moan.

“I know,” Robert said beside her. “I’ve had toast for breakfast made ingloriously on the racks of the kitchen oven. That’s just browned bread. It’s not really toast if it hasn’t been cooked over an open flame.”

“Mmm.”

A cup of tea was put into her hand. She took a sip—liquid that was sweet and milky and bitter all at once filled her mouth.

“How often does the Duke of Clermont make himself dinner?” she asked.

“Not very often,” he replied. “Maybe once every month or so, the family gets out the toasting forks and I do my best to wrangle up toast and cheese.”

“Mmm.” She wished she could say more, but her mouth was full again.

He poured himself a cup of tea one-handed, juggling the fork skillfully. “The trick,” he said, “to getting good toast is to try not to be too perfect. You won’t want to brown it too evenly, or to avoid singeing it. You don’t want to cut the bread too perfectly, either. It’s better if it has lots of jagged edges to blacken nicely.”

“That’s the problem I always have, too,” Free said. “I have to try so hard not to be perfect.”

He grinned at her.

His cheese was beginning to bubble, and he was eyeing the piece with a hungry look. And that was when they heard a noise in the hall.

They turned. A door was opening; voices murmured in the distance. For a moment, Free had the wildest idea that Edward—no, she couldn’t think of him that way—Viscount Claridge was here. He’d hunted her down. He was going to apologize, tell her how badly he’d treated her, and she was going to…

She had no idea what she was going to do. Her tea sloshed onto her skirt, and she realized her hand had begun to tremble.

But the figure who came into the room was a woman—the Duchess of Clermont, no less. She didn’t blink at the sight of her husband sitting before the fire. She didn’t ask what Free was doing here. She simply came into the room and took off her gloves.

“Oh, good,” she said. “A toast and cheese night. I need one of those.”