They Gave the Doomed Duke the Wrong Bride novel · Chapter 10 of 32

Chapter 10: Basins

I stood behind the hawthorn with my hand over my mouth.

"Why?" Isobel said. "She's been nothing but good to us."

"That's why." He set her back gently. "If I'm found, everyone near me hangs with me. If she doesn't know, she can swear she doesn't know. And she's a Penhallow, Mother. I don't know yet what her father told her."

"Her father tried to have your brother poisoned."

A silence.

"Then she's safer not knowing," he said. "Please."

I went back to the cart before they turned around.

I lay down next to Ned and pulled the blanket over my head.

My husband.

He'd kissed my neck while I told him I was married.

To him.

I didn't know whether to laugh or set the wagon on fire.

By morning I'd decided.

I wasn't going to tell him I knew.

He'd lied to me. He could keep lying. He could keep it up while he scrubbed every basin between here and the March.

"Rook," I said at breakfast, sweetly. "The basins."

He looked up from the horses.

"The what?"

"The wash basins. The cook's pots. Ned's stockings. Servants wash, and you're my servant. The whole square heard me say so."

Isobel choked on her tea.

Rook looked at me for a long moment.

Then he went and got the basins.

He was terrible at it.

He scrubbed the cook's best iron pot so hard he took the black off the bottom.

She chased him round the cart with a spoon.

He washed Ned's stockings in the stream and let one float away.

He folded the blankets in a high wind.

"Where did you find him?" the cook asked me. "A stable?"

"Something like that."

"He's got hands like shovels."

"I'll tell him."

"Don't you dare. He'll sulk."

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