Douglas: Lord of Heartache by Grace Burrowes Read Free Book Online

both her child and her land so fiercely.
    He took himself back down to the stables and arranged to leave Regis in his shady paddock and ride his borrowed mount over to Willowdale. He would swap horses tomorrow, and Regis, at least, would get some rest.
    This assumed, of course, Miss Hollister was willing to have him and his gentlemanly manners tagging along again the following day. Because such an assumption might well be faulty, Douglas retraced his steps to the house, using the kitchen door and finding both the cook and a scullery maid on hand.
    “Your pardon, but where might I find Miss Hollister?”
    The cook was elbow deep in bread dough but gave an awkward imitation of a curtsy, as did the scullery maid at the sink. “She be in the nursery, milord. Third floor, back o’ the house,” the cook replied.
    “My thanks.” He went in search of his quarry, though the maid and cook exchanged a smirk as he turned to go, of which he was quite aware. All the women in this house were in want of proper guidance—or something.
    The location of the nursery was easy to ascertain, because Douglas could hear a child’s voice from halfway down the corridor, singing an old folk song, something about not having wings to fly.
    Rose sprang across a combination playroom and schoolroom. “Hello! Mama says you are our cousin. How do you do, Cousin?”
    She hugged him around his thighs, stepped back to make a child’s curtsy, then held up her arms as if to be lifted into an embrace. When Douglas blinked down at her presumption, she gave her arms a little shake, suggesting he hadn’t noticed their upraised position.
    Needs must. He hefted the child up onto his hip. “Hello, Miss Rose. How are you today?”
    “I am all punished. Do you want to see?”
    Douglas’s little backside would have been thoroughly striped for a misadventure such as Rose’s, but then his father had sought any excuse to discipline his sons, and his mother had never interfered. Surely Miss Hollister was of a more enlightened bent?
    “I suppose you will not rest until you show me,” he said, setting the child down.
    “Rose, who are you…?” Rose scampered past her mother’s skirts as Miss Hollister emerged from an adjoining room, probably the child’s bedroom. “Lord Amery.” Her greeting was a verbal cannonball fired across Douglas’s quarterdeck.
    “Miss Hollister.” He gave her a bow worthy of the churchyard on Easter morning. “We parted before making plans for either the immediate or the near term. I am loathe to present myself on your doorstep only to find my company is an imposition.”
    And he did not want to part from her in anger, though anger was probably much of what sustained her.
    Rose came bouncing into the room, several sheets of paper clutched in her hands. “Do you still want to see my punishment?”
    “Most assuredly,” Douglas said, letting himself be led to a low table surrounded by small chairs. As they passed Miss Hollister, he caught a bracing whiff of lavender and indignation. Rose popped onto one of the chairs, but Douglas, fearing to look ridiculous while he broke one attempting the same, sat cross-legged on the floor beside the child.
    “This,” said Rose, “is my first one.”
    Her work was surprisingly expressive as she described in images one nasty possible outcome of her tree-climbing after another. She had caught with appalling accuracy the fear on her mother’s face, the horror on the stableboys’, and a grim determination on Douglas’s own visage. The final picture was of Miss Hollister sitting next to a gravestone, over which a huge bouquet of pink and purple flowers had been placed.
    “’Cause I could be dead.”
    “But you are not,” Douglas countered softly.
    “I’m not!” Rose bolted for the next room. “I’ll be back!”
    “She draws amazingly well,” Douglas said to her mother as he got to his feet. Miss Hollister leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed, her expression hard to