Read Online Sheri Cobb South by Of Paupersand Peers - Free Book Online

an interesting shade of purple. Still, there was something uncommonly persuasive about a gentleman who urged one to abandon one’s chores and come with him, just as if it were his dearest wish to spend the rest of the afternoon basking in one’s presence. It was not true, of course; any such sentiments on his part were undoubtedly reserved for Amanda, who was already hurrying upstairs to fetch her bonnet. Still, whatever the reason, Margaret found herself laying aside her quill and following her sister up the stairs.
    It was Margaret’s intention that, in deference to the tutor’s injuries, they should limit their ramblings to the Darrington property, merely pointing out those parts of the duke’s lands that might be seen in the distance. However, upon James’s discovery that mild exercise, rather than exacerbating the soreness of his limbs, actually served to ease their stiffness, he suggested they venture rather farther afield, perhaps as far as the ruins of the ancient monastery. He was gratified to hear Philip and Amanda add their own entreaties, and even more so when Margaret consented to this plan. James could not have said what it was about the sprawling ducal estate that drew him so, especially when he could not recall ever having met or even heard of the duke of Montford, but he could not shake the feeling that the place held some significance for him.
    “Tell me, Miss Darrington,” he said as they crossed the brook, eschewing Amanda’s stepping-stones in favor of the footbridge farther upstream. “Did the old duke leave any children? Young boys, that is, who might have need of a tutor?”
    Margaret raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Are you by any chance searching for greener pastures,Mr. Fanshawe? I fear you won’t find them at Montford. The old duke left no children, male or female, which accounts for the long delay in locating the new duke.”
    James merely nodded, and dismissed a promising but unlikely theory. Once over the bridge, the foursome skirted the orchard, where Philip had to be restrained from shinnying up a tree and helping himself to contraband fruit. Finally they reached a stile spanning a gap in the hedgerow.
    James, assisting first Amanda and then Margaret over the stile, found it surprising that the duke would bisect his own holdings with hedges, and said so. “I should have thought the stream would form a more natural barrier.”
    “And so it does now,” Margaret conceded in a curiously stiff tone. “But the stream did not always mark the property line.”
    James found this statement perplexing. “The stream meandered, or perhaps its course was deliberately altered?”
    “No. The property between the hedges and the stream was not always part of the duke’s holdings.”
    “What she means,” explained Philip, leaping from the highest rung and landing lightly on his feet, “is that the orchards once belonged to our family. Papa—or was it Grandpapa?—sold those acres to the duke years ago. Meg says we Darringtons have always been land-rich and cash-poor, only by this time we’ve sold off so many acres that now we’re just plain poor.”
    “Philip,” was all Margaret said, but her voice held a note of warning.
    “I see,” murmured James, after the younger members of the party had run ahead in pursuit of a brightly colored butterfly.
    “If you have any fears regarding your salary, you need not,” Margaret hastened to assure him. “I made quite certain of our ability to pay before I engaged your services.”
    James took her hand and tucked it into the crook of his elbow, and they began the grassy descent toward the crumbled walls of the old monastery. “I have no such fears, believe me. I only meant that I see now why Amanda’s marriage is of such vital importance. And also,” he added with a hint of a smile, “why your siblings feel a certain sense of entitlement where his Grace’s apples are concerned.”
    “I thought perhaps, if Amanda were to marry the duke, he