Christmas at Mulberry Hall. Кэрол Мортимер

one week’s time.

      He would visit his estate in Bedfordshire, Gray had decided, and see if there really was any basis for the rumours the Earl claimed to have heard, before travelling on to Gloucestershire in response to an invitation he had received from Hawk, Duke of Stourbridge, to spend Christmas there with the St Claire family.

      Gray had not realised when he’d made those arrangements quite how serious the problems at Steadley Manor were. Servants not being paid. The departure of almost all those servants, both inside the house and out of it. How his young ward had been living alone here all this time—apart from the company of a woman Gray already considered totally unsuitable as companion to a young and impressionable girl.

      All of them were things, Gray was now only too aware, that he would most certainly have known about—might have prevented from happening—if he had taken the slightest bit of interest in the running of his own estate since his brother died …

      Gray scowled. Damn it all, he’d had other responsibilities—his duties to the crown to fulfil—without having to worry about something that should have been ably taken care of by the two men he had paid so generously to do it in his stead.

      Which begged the question: if the money had not been paid into the hands of the household and the estate workers, then whose purse had it ended up in? Only his lawyer, Worthington, and the estate manager Sanders had handled the money before it was suitably dispersed to the men and women employed on the estate. As Gray had seen and spoken to Worthington only days ago—the older man had been delighted that Gray was at last taking some interest in his estate—it would appear that only Sanders, the man to whom Gray had written a week ago to inform him of his intention of arriving at the estate some time today, was no longer here to answer any of Gray’s questions …

      His mouth firmed. ‘You did not feel the same need to absent yourself because of the non-payment of your own wages?’

      ‘I, My Lord?’ The woman blinked up at him innocently, instantly drawing attention to the long length of the dark lashes that surrounded those huge blue eyes.

      Deliberately so?

      Gray could not be sure. Nor did he wish to be! From what he had recently learnt he would have more than enough problems to deal with during the next few days, without having to concern himself with the flirtations of a young woman he did not consider fit to take care of one of his horses, let alone the development of his young ward.

      He nodded tersely. ‘You, ma’am.’

      Amelia looked up at him with a frown. She had to admit that Lord Gideon Grayson, with that stylish dark hair and those enigmatic grey eyes set in a face as masculine and perfect as a sketch she had once seen of one of Michelangelo’s sculptures, was one of the most handsome men she had ever set eyes upon.

      Unfortunately, having now met him, Amelia realised he was also the most arrogantly forceful man she had ever encountered, too!

      She gave a slight shake of her head. ‘I do not understand, My Lord …?’

      He eyed her impatiently. ‘I am asking if you love your work here so much that you have been happy to do it all these months without payment?’

      ‘No, My Lord …’

      Really—was Gray to add stupidity to the list of this woman’s character defects? It would be a pity if that were the case; even a woman as beautiful as she would do better in the world if she possessed at least some intelligence. ‘No, you do not love your work here? Or, no, you have not been happy to do it without receiving payment?’

      She gave a tinklingly dismissive laugh, revealing tiny and perfectly straight white teeth between those plump red lips. ‘No, I do not work here at all, My Lord.’

      ‘You—?’ Gray gave an irritated frown. ‘Explain yourself, if you please!’

      ‘I am Amelia, My Lord—Amelia Ashford,’ she added lightly as Gray continued to stare down at her uncomprehendingly. ‘Your step-niece and ward.’

      Gray was too startled—shocked!—by the revelation to even attempt to hide it, and he openly goggled down at her.

      This beautiful and seductively lovely woman—a woman any man would relish taking to his bed—was the daughter of the genteel but impoverished widow his brother Perry had been married to for only months before her death, soon followed by Perry’s own death at Waterloo?