Croft urged his horse forward, the animal snorting as it approached the edge of the trench. “You men, back to work now. And you, miss, I must insist you return to the terrace.” Norah stood slowly. She looked at Croft, her chin raised. “If you do not provide these men with water, Mr. Croft, I will return every hour with this pitcher, and I will make certain my aunt speaks to the Duke about his steward's inhumanity when he arrives.”
Croft's face flushed a dark, angry purple. “The Duke trusts me to manage his affairs.” "The Duke is not here," the dark-haired laborer said suddenly. His voice cut through theavy air, cold and sharp. He stepped forward, putting himself slightly between Norah and the steward's horse. So perhaps you should heed the lady, Croft.”
Croft sneered down at the laborer. “Watch your tongue, you filthy rat, or I'll have you whipped off the grounds.” The laborer didn't flinch. He just stared up at Croft with those piercing gray eyes, a look of such absolute terrifying authority that for a moment Croft actually pulled back on his reigns. Norah felt a sudden shift in the air.
The dynamic between the two men was completely wrong. The laborer wasn't afraid. He looked at the steward the way a man looks at a dog that has forgotten its place. Before the tension could snap, Norah turned. She left the pitcher and the tin cups on the edge of the grass. "Keep it," she told the men in the trench.
She turned and began the long walk back to the terrace, her back straight, her pink dress stained with brown earth. She could feel the heat returning, pressing against her skin, but she also felt the gray eyes of the laborer following her every step of the way.
Gabriel Montgomery, the seventh Duke of Alsbury, tasted the ice water on his tongue. It tasted like salvation. It tasted like the first honest thing he had experienced in three months. He stood in the trench, the harsh sun baking the mud onto his shoulders, and watched the woman in the faded pink dress walk away. He watched the rigid set of her spine, the defiant tilt of her head.
He watched as she approached the terrace, where a sharp-faced older woman immediately grabbed her by the arm, shaking her, pointing at the mud on her skirts. Gabriel's hand gripped the wooden handle of the pickaxe until his knuckles cracked. He had been the Duke of Alsbury for exactly ninety-two days. Upon his father's sudden death, Gabriel had inherited a vast fortune, five estates, and a sickening web of corruption. His father had been a negligent absentee landlord who cared only for the revenue his lands produced, never the people who worked them.
Gabriel had suspected the estate managers were skimming profits and abusing the tenants. When he received the glowing, falsely optimistic reports from Mr. Croft at Foxwood Hall, he didn't send a letter announcing his arrival. He didn't bring his carriage or his footman. He arrived on a mail coach in the dead of night, wearing the rough clothes of a dock worker, and applied for day labor at his own estate. What he found was worse than he imagined.
Croft was a tyrant. The wages were a pittance, the conditions brutal, and the estate funds were clearly lining Croft's pockets rather than improving the grounds. Gabriel had spent the last three days swinging a pickaxe, burning with a quiet, lethal rage, compiling a mental list of every man he was going to fire and every man he was going to send to prison. But he hadn't expected the terrace. He hadn't expected the influx of sycophantic aristocrats invited by Croft to lay the groundwork for a grand welcome.