Page 22 of The Countess Caper

“No chamber pots!” Summer screeched, recognizing the glint in Tessa’s eyes.

Tessa relented. Summer was a duke’s sister, after all. She wasn’t used to chores at all, but had taken to them with a surprisingly small number of complaints. It wasn’t as if Tessa was accustomed to chores either before she’d come here. They’d had household servants, a grand house with gold brocade cushions and velvet drapes, and food that magically appeared at the gleaming table in the dining room.

She had eaten bread and cheese and tiny, hard apples for two weeks in a row when she’d first arrived, until her belly rebelled.

At least they had Maggie to deal with the chamber pots now, but she went back home to the village at night and missed most of their truly outrageous behavior. It was a risk to have someone help them at all, but sometimes necessary. It was one of the many reasons the women took on false names. The ones in truly desperate hiding, like Bryony, stayed out of sight whenever help came from Fox Hollow. They followed a strict schedule. They had the bell, Rue. A trick chandelier. Feminine rage.

“Fine.” Tessa pretended to grumble mostly because it made Iris laugh. “If I break at least three of the pins, you can wash the bedsheets.”

“And if you don’t,” Summer said, “you scrub the pots after dinner. And you heat all the water for bathing and cart away the old water.”

A groan reverberated down the hall, from every woman. Bathwater was the absolute worst. “Done!” Tessa exclaimed. “You don’t scare me, Lady Summer.” Further wagers were made, and Tessa sent a gimlet eye at each one who bet against her. “Ingrates.”

“Less talk! More action!”

“I don’t think you should drink wine anymore,” Tessa told her friend drily.

“I agree. I much prefer champagne.”

“You could try my pickle juice,” Holly put in helpfully. “It’s much nicer than it sounds.”

Summer shuddered.

The others began to chant, like spectators at a pugilism match. Even Bryony joined in, clapping her hands. Tessa lifted the ball and eyed the bottles. There were six of them in total, with other items having been added: a porcelain figurine of a cat climbing a tree, his face oddly flat, clearly made by someone who had never actually seen a cat before, nor heard one described. She was fairly certain it had five legs. He was rather sweet, actually.

“Not Godfrey,” Summer said. She leaned down far enough to risk the security of her limbs and flash a generous amount of cleavage, rescued Godfrey the ceramic cat from his terrible fate, and dropped an emu made of shells in its place. “Whoever decorated this house had extremely questionable taste.”

The rest of the items consisted of chipped porcelain figurines, cups without handles, souvenirs from trips to the seashore—all gathered from various rooms, and all in dismal shape. The emu was particularly alarming. For something with no discernible eyeballs, it seemed to stare right into Tessa’s soul. She aimed for it with a kind of violent glee that was probably unhealthy.

She swung her arm back, ignoring the shouts and the whistles trying to distract her, and made a dramatic show of releasing the ball. It rolled along the wobbly floorboards, sent off course by a protruding nail, returning when it bounced off a broken splinter standing straight up, waiting to snag a hem. It knocked three bottles together, sent one careening into a cup, and toppled a bottle filled with dried flowers dating from the reign of Queen Anne. Not bad.

Especially when the satisfying crack and shatter of glass punctuated the cheers.

“To think you used to dance the cotillion in stuffy old ballrooms for entertainment,” Summer said.

The emu’s decapitated head rolled toward Tessa. “This is better.” She had loved dancing until dawn turned everything pink: the white houses of Mayfair, the marble columns, the cobblestones and carriages. She loved this more.

Iris hugged Tessa hard, eyes misty. “Thank you, Tessa.”

“I’ll miss you,” Tessa said into her shoulder. “But I won’t see you off in the morning.” She couldn’t. People left; she knew that. She didn’t have to watch it happen. It just made it worse.

“I know,” Iris said.

“Goodbye, Iris.”

“It’s Lady Winifred now,” she corrected Tessa softly. She was finally able to return home now that she had turned twenty-one and the questionable edict in her father’s will no longer applied. She could marry whom she liked, when she liked. As an heiress. “Again.”

Tessa nodded. Her friend was already gone. “Winifred.”

Chapter Eight

When Tessa woke up the next morning, the sun was trying to kill her.

Or perhaps it already had, and she just hadn’t realized it yet. It stabbed through the cracked window and right into her left eyeball. She made a strangled sound and tried to sit up. The bedsheets wound around her like chains. She cursed and yanked and huffed. Her head pounded. Her stomach tilted.

She ought to have spent the night thinking over Roarke’s proposal, not drinking too much and smashing porcelain animals, however cathartic it was. She definitely should not have started pulling down the wallpaper in the yellow parlor, but there was moss actually growing over it, and she had decided it could not wait a moment longer. She’d managed a section by the door and then went in search of strawberries.

And now, reality.