Move Heaven and Earth by Christina Dodd Read Free Book Online

poured, she added, “I’m glad my father isn’t here, or we’d have to have an Italian confectioner working in our kitchen tomorrow.”
    The maid’s quiet amusement died and she examined Sylvan with a keen eye. “You’re quality, then.”
    “Oh, no.” Sylvan spread a snowy napkin in her lap. “I’m only rich. My father’s a merchant baron. By that I mean, he was a highly successful merchant, and he bought himself a barony.”
    “Have you quarreled with him, that you’ve hired yourself out as a nurse?”
    Her outspoken curiosity amazed Sylvan, and she examined the maid as thoroughly as the maid had examined her. She saw a tall woman of perhaps thirty-five, with strong, handsome features and a way of carrying herself that one seldom saw in a servant. Indeed, many a fine lady would have been pleased to have this woman’s bearing and dignity. “You must be Betty,” Sylvan said.
    “That I am, miss. Mr. Garth told you about me?”
    “Only that you boss them all, and that your hospitality is impeccable.”
    Wrapping her hands in her apron, Betty smiled. Dimples creased her cheeks, and beneath the lace cap she wore an abundance of auburn curls that bobbedwhen she nodded. “Mr. Garth is ever free with his compliments.”
    Sylvan sugared the tea and drank with wholehearted enjoyment. “Why do you call him Mr. Garth?”
    Now Betty blushed. “Forgive me, I should not, but we’re of an age and we grew up together.”
    The Malkin family, Sylvan concluded, could rightly be termed eccentric. Their housekeeper treated the duke with familiarity; the dowager and her sister-in-law disagreed like two children; they had a cotton mill on their land and their own ghost.
    But then, they were of an old, noble family of large fortune, and eccentricity was acceptable. Sylvan had no such cushion to fall back on, and she answered Betty’s earlier query. “My father didn’t want me to come as a nurse, but His Grace made me an irresistible offer. His Grace promised that no one would bemoan my lost reputation while I remained under his roof.”
    “You lost your reputation, miss?”
    “I don’t like to brag”—Sylvan leaned closer to Betty, and Betty leaned forward to hear—“but I’m one of the most infamous women in England.”
    Betty stared at her, round-eyed, then burst into laughter. “Perhaps so, miss, perhaps so.”
    Stupidly, Sylvan felt almost hurt by Betty’s incredulity. “You don’t believe me?”
    “Ah, miss.” Betty wiped her hands on her apron. “A lot of noblemen visit Clairmont Court during the course of a year, and I’ve learned the difference between a lost reputation and a corrupted soul.” Betty nudged the plate of biscuits closer to Sylvan’s elbow. “You’ve got a fineness about you I never sensed with those corrupted ones.”
    “Nevertheless, my reputation is gone. I’m no longerinvited to the parties of the ton, and any man who shows interest in me does so to sample the wares.”
    Betty piled thin slices of plum cake and a variety of biscuits onto a china plate and pressed it into Sylvan’s hand. “So ’tis your father who mourns your reputation, miss?”
    “Bitterly and often. He does everything bitterly and often.” Selecting a macaroon, Sylvan tasted it with approval. “Do you know the nature of Lord Rand’s wound?”
    She thought she’d slipped in the query casually, but while Betty never changed expression, Sylvan felt the barrier go up. “He can’t walk.”
    However eccentric the Malkins were, they obviously had the loyalty of their servants.
    “But he can use that wheelchair,” Betty added, pointing across the lawn.
    Sylvan looked, and she saw Rand, struggling to push himself up the path. “Thank God.” Her hand shook in a sudden palsy, and tea slopped onto the napkin in her lap.
    Betty patted her shoulder, then she called, “Jasper!”
    Jasper charged out the door so quickly, Sylvan knew he’d been waiting for their hail. She looked reproachfully at Betty, but