The Deception by Joan Wolf Page B

not disgraceful. She cast one more look over the pots on the stove and came to the table to take her customary chair. I waited for her to make the little sighing noise she always gave when her weight was lifted from her feet. She made the noise and I smothered a smile.
    “Mr. Crawford is coming tomorrow,” Mr. Noakes said next.
    “That will be nice.” Mr. Crawford was the Earl of Greystone’s man of business. He kept the accounts for all of Adrian’s estates. He had been to Lambourn twice before, to check on the estate. I had found him to be a very pleasant man.
    “I will serve dinner in the dining room,” Mrs. Noakes said.
    I knew what she was hinting. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Noakes, I won’t tell him that I usually eat in the kitchen. I promise.”
    She compressed her lips and nodded. This business of my taking my dinner in the kitchen with her and Mr. Noakes worried her dreadfully. On the one hand, she could see that I would find it very lonesome eating by myself in the dining room, but on the other hand she hated the thought of the Countess of Greystone eating in the kitchen. I thought she was making a great fuss about nothing, but then I would be the first to confess that I knew nothing about being a countess.
    I never told her about the card games that Willie and George and I played in the office at the stable. She would have been aghast.
    “I will wear my blue dress for Mr. Crawford and do my best to act like a lady,” I said to Mrs. Noakes.
    “You are a lady,” the housekeeper said fiercely.
    I gave her my best smile. “You’re prejudiced because you like me.” I stood up. “Thank you for the soup and the cheese.”
    I made my way to the library and collected my letter, which Mr. Noakes had left lying next to the clock on the mantelpiece. I read it standing in front of the fire, and when I had finished I refolded it slowly, trying not to feel hurt and disappointed.
    Poor Louisa, I thought. Her wretched nieces and nephews had all come down with mumps and her letter had been filled with the woes of taking care of them.
    The one piece of news I had been hoping for had not been forthcoming. I have heard nothing from a man called Paddy O’Grady, Louisa had written. I wrote to the housekeeper at Charlwood, as you requested, and no one of that name has made inquiries about you there either, Kate.
    I bit my lip and stared into the flames. I had spent a good part of the winter thinking about the manner of my father’s death, and I badly wanted to talk to Paddy.
    I was going to have to think of some way of tracking him down.
    * * * *
    I went to the stable earlier than usual the following morning, then I put on my blue dress and waited for Mr. Crawford to arrive.
    I suppose I should mention here that my wardrobe was another source of disagreement between me and the Noakeses. After my marriage, Cousin Louisa had sent all my clothes to Lambourn, but I had sent back all of the clothing that my uncle had paid for. I would rather have worn rags.
    To listen to Mr. and Mrs. Noakes, you would have thought I was wearing rags. This was simply not true. My clothes were in perfectly decent condition. They might not be fashionable, but they were very far from being rags. The blue dress was particularly nice—Papa had bought it for my eighteenth birthday and it had cost him half the price of a nice young mare he had just sold. “It almost matches your eyes, Kate,” he had said with his most irresistible smile. “I couldn’t find a perfect match—no dye is that vivid a blue.”
    I remembered his words as I was getting dressed, and they made me smile. It was becoming less painful for me to think of my father. I suppose that old saw about time healing all wounds has some truth to it after all.
    When I had worn the dress for Mr. Crawford’s first visit I had been so thin that it had hung on me. It fit very well today—a tribute, I thought, to Mrs. Noakes’s good cooking.
    I was sitting primly in one of the embroidered