Grace by Deneane Clark

softly over to the window. She opened it and looked out pensively at what promised to blossom into a beautiful spring day.
    Unable to shake the troubling feelings with which she had awakened, Grace turned away from the window and furrowed her brow in thought. She began to dress for the morning ride she and Mercy had lately made a ritual. As she stepped into the breeches she normally wore instead of a cumbersome habit, the events of the previous evening came flooding back, explaining the niggling warning at the back of her mind. She sat down heavily on the end of her bed and slipped an arm into her shirt.
    Mercy would not join her today, she remembered, buttoning up the oversize cast-off garment of her father’s. Worse, if she did not manage to get an early start, she ran the distinct risk of running into Lord Caldwell at breakfast. He, she absolutely knew, would undoubtedly decide to accompanyher. Just the thought of the chaotic effect that particular man had on her senses made her hurriedly pull on her old scuffed boots and tie back her burnished hair with a length of wide ivory ribbon snatched from the top of her dressing table.
    She left her room and peeked in on Mercy, who slept peacefully, then tiptoed down the dark back stairs to the homey warmth of the kitchen. “Good morning, Mary, dear,” she said cheerfully, giving the plump older lady an affectionate squeeze.
    Mary had come to cook for the Ackerly family shortly after the birth of Patience. A crotchety, sour-faced old darling, she constantly scolded, pecked at, and unashamedly ordered about the girls, who all good-naturedly ignored her, quite secure in the knowledge that Mary loved them all with as fierce a devotion as she would have her own children, had she borne any. Straight to the kitchen they had always gone in times of need, happily enduring her muttered admonitions as she taped up skinned knees, dried tears from grubby cheeks, or soothed someone’s wounded pride with hot milk and pudding.
    Mary looked sternly at Grace’s attire. She shook her head and clicked her tongue disapprovingly, as she did every morning when Grace and Mercy appeared clad in their tattered but beloved male garments. “Lookin’ a perfect disgrace, you are again, Miss Grace—an’ with quality in the house, sleepin’ above stairs just like we was someone.” She gestured at the ceiling with the wooden spoon that never left her hand. “I been sayin’ for years that nothin’ good would come of you girls runnin’ around in boys’ clothes, and now look at Miss Mercy, all tucked up in her bed with a lump the size of a goose egg over her wee eye. Will she be joinin’ you this mornin’, or is her little head painin’ her too much?”
    Grace shook her head. “She was still sleeping when Ichecked in on her, the poor darling. She’ll likely sleep for hours yet.”
    Mary gave Grace a doubtful look. “Yer sisters will be hard put to keep her in the house and off the back of a horse, especially when she finds you’ve gone on without her.” She turned back to the simmering pot of soup on the stove, dipping the wide spoon into the steaming liquid and stirring vigorously in unspoken dismissal. She looked over her shoulder and scowled when Grace did not move. “There’s yer meat pie, missy, right there on the counter for you to take for yer breakfast. Now get on out of here and let me do my work.” She frowned into the large black kettle, darkly muttering something about little girls running wild in boys’ breeches.
    Grace grinned good-naturedly at the woman’s back, grabbed her wrapped meat pie, and left. She would take a long, leisurely ride through the countryside. With any luck, their noble visitors would have long since departed by the time she returned.
    Two hours later Grace lazed on her back in the dappled shade of a leafy pin oak, trying to think of another original excuse to use for avoiding Sir Harry the next time she was unfortunate enough to come into contact with