Thrown Out on Christmas Eve, She Took Shelter in an Empty House — Unaware the Duke Was Coming Home
Chapter 3
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Then Hannah made Sam a bed by the range out of her own cloak and two dust sheets from the passage, and sat beside him with her hand on his back until his cough settled and his breathing slowed.She did not sleep. She sat at the long kitchen table with her father's candle in front of her, and she watched it burn toward the red ring.She knew exactly what she had done: breaking into a duke's house could see her sent to prison or across the sea. But it was only for one night. In the morning, she would leave her two shillings and sixpence for the window, walk the 11 miles to Kendal with Sam, and look for work there. It was the only plan she had.The candle burned on. Hannah set it on the deep sill of the kitchen window where its light would fall across the table, and she did not think about how that window faced the long drive, and the drive faced the road, and the road faced the whole dark valley.Nine years. No light at all. And now, one.Edmund Carew, the ninth Duke of Ashmere, had not intended to come home.He had a house in Grosvenor Square with 40 servants and not a single room he cared about, and he had meant to stay there until Twelfth Night, as he did every year. But three weeks ago, a letter had come from his land agent, Mr. Pike. Ashmere House, it said, was costing the estate £300 a year: coal to keep the damp out, wages for watchmen, candles. Mr. Pike respectfully suggested that His Grace consider selling.Edmund had read the letter twice. Then he had ordered his horse saddled and ridden north alone. If he was going to sell the house where his mother had died, he wanted to stand in it one more time first, with no one watching his face.The snow had caught him at Shap. He had pushed on anyway, and now it was past 11:00 on Christmas Eve, and he was colder than he had been in his life.He came around the last bend of the valley road and looked up, out of habit, to where the house stood dark against the sky.It was not dark.There was a light in the kitchen window.He reined in. For a moment, he simply sat in the saddle and stared at it: a single, steady point of gold, small as a star, in the long black front of the house.His first thought, absurd and painful, was that someone had lit it for him. His second thought was thieves.He left the horse in the old coach house and walked around to the back. In the snow, under the scullery window, he saw footprints: two sets, one larger, one very small. He looked at the small footprints for a long moment.