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be pretty damn happy to see the end of her stint
    as maid, and she hadn’t even done any real work yet.
    Pushing open the door to the scullery, Leah ground to
    a horrified halt. “Oh, hell no.”
    It looked like an episode of Hoarders: Regency Edition .
    Sticky dishes were piled everywhere, layered with crusts
    and molding bits of food. Large pots were stacked to one
    side of a huge basin, which was filled with grayish water.
    Flies buzzed gleefully around the whole mucky scene.
    Leah slammed her eyes shut. “This has got to be a
    joke.” Even without the vision in front of her, the smell
    of old food was proof enough that reality had a really
    cruel sense of humor.
    What do you want, Leah? You want true love? You want to find a man that Pawpaw can feel good about you marrying?
    Then here. Prove it. Do the best damn job you can. It’s the only way you’ll get the chance to win the game.
    With a dejected sigh, Leah rolled up her sleeves and
    grabbed an apron. If she was lucky, she’d get this done in
    two hours, which would mean a good six hours of sleep.
    She could operate on that. She hoped.
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    Seven
    She wasn’t lucky. Not only was she not lucky, she
    was almost completely sure that Mrs. Knightsbridge
    had put some kind of curse on her before shoving her
    through that mirror.
    She didn’t shove you. You practically dived face- first into that bureau’s glass front. “Don’t worry, Pawpaw. I’ll go off and have an adventure and find super- husband and everything will be perfect!” Typical Leah. Idiot.
    The dishwater splashed into Leah’s face as she
    slammed the plate down into it. A drop hit her tongue,
    and she nearly gagged. Wiping her face against her arm,
    she sighed and resumed scrubbing.
    It was after midnight according to the bonging she
    heard from somewhere in the house, and she still had
    three pots to scour. Her hands were pale and wrinkled
    like raisins. Her nails were jagged, her mobcap was slip-
    ping, and to make things worse, a large brown spider
    was working in a dusty corner directly in front of Leah.
    She had to stand as far away from the basin as possible to
    avoid any chance of contact. Arachnophobia wasn’t one
    of those things she could just suck it up and deal with.
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    56
    Gina Lamm
    Geek Girls Don’t Date Dukes
    “I’ve got my eye on you, you eight- legged bastard,”
    Leah said aloud to the spider as she worked at a
    crusted- on bit of something. “If you move, you and I
    are going to have problems. I’m talking major issues.
    You should probably go ahead and pick out your
    casket, because EEeeeeeeek !”
    The spider moved. The pot clattered to the floor,
    splattering dishwater all over Leah, the clean dishes,
    and the spider, who skittered down the wall toward the
    floor as fast as his many legs could carry him. Letting out
    another bloodcurdling shriek, Leah ran for the kitchen
    and collided with a solid, muscled, male body in the
    scullery doorway.
    “Help,” she gasped into Avery’s face, completely
    uncaring that her voice was thin and panicked. “There’s
    a huge spider, and it was too close to me, and it ran and
    I don’t know where it went.”
    He looked like she’d just grabbed an unexpected
    handful of Mr. Happy, but she couldn’t do anything
    about that. The irrational fear completely blocked logic
    from her mind as she climbed Avery’s body like a well-
    muscled ladder. Looking over her shoulder to make sure
    the spider hadn’t followed, she twined her arms around
    his neck and her legs around his waist and held on for
    dear life.
    i
    He’d known the lass for less than a day, and she’d just
    wound herself around him like the crust on a meat pie.
    She wasn’t an overly fleshy girl, but she was surpris-
    ingly heavy when she clung to him like a petrified and
    hissing cat. Though his first instinct was to shove her
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