Free Not Quite Darcy by Terri Meeker Page B

for her. Rest assured, I shall attend to this and give her an appropriate warning regarding her future employment with us. You needn’t trouble yourself with this issue further.”
    Knowing better than to wait for more protestations from Mrs. McLaughlin, he pulled open the back door and stepped onto the porch. Even under the shelter of the roof, the wind drove the rain into him in punishing torrents, cold and furious.
    The air was pregnant with the scent of earth and water. Through the downpour, he saw a maze of linens hung near the flower beds to the east. They were sopping wet and so heavy on the lines that they reached the ground and smudges of mud wicked up the cloth. It looked as though creatures of earth were grasping at the sheets with brown fingers.
    Bessie was nowhere to be seen.
    Dear god, what had he gotten himself into?
    He opened his umbrella, which was hopelessly outmatched, and strode toward where the laundry hung. “Bessie?” he called. The wind snatched his words and carried them around the edge of the house. “Bessie Pepper?”
    A gust snatched at his umbrella and he tightened his grip, despite the fact that the thing was practically useless against the deluge. Icy rain pelted his face and drenched his clothes. Once he reached the clothesline, he lifted the edge of a sopping sheet and stepped under it, hoping to find Bessie on the other side. The clotheslines were more tightly packed than he’d envisioned, and he merely faced another line of linens.
    â€œBessie!” Despite the thick maze of cloth, she couldn’t be more than a few feet away. She had to be able to hear him. He lifted another sheet, the final one as it turned out, and was met with a view of the garden wall. Looking to the right, he saw her.
    Empty laundry basket held in her hands in a death grip, her knuckles white, she looked at him with a vacant expression. Her cap had fallen askew and her hair had come partially undone. Several strands were plastered against her face. Her heavy maid’s dress was sodden and clung to her thin frame. Her face was wet, though her red-rimmed eyes led him to believe that something other than rain dampened her cheeks.
    She looked so lost, so terribly sad. He stepped toward her before he’d properly considered what he was going to do about the problem of Bessie and the sheets.
    He wanted to reach out to her, but knew better. Such a thing would not be proper. Instead he extended his umbrella to her, handle first. “Take this, Bessie. And give me your basket.”
    She accepted the umbrella wordlessly, and he gently pulled the basket from her grasp.
    â€œGo to the porch and wait for me,” he said. His voice was so…well, commanding, he almost didn’t recognize it as his own.
    She blinked once, then turned and walked toward the house with a steady gait. She wasn’t dashing though the rain, but striding through it, impervious. What an absolutely puzzling creature.
    William tossed the basket on the ground then grabbed the heavy sheets with both hands. He stripped them from the line with a jerk, never minding the amount of water and mud flung onto his clothes. The linens were heavy and unwieldy and the wind didn’t ease his task, but after a few moments, he had a basket of filthy, water-soaked sheets and the lines were bare.
    Gripping the heavy basket tightly, he ran through the deluge toward the back porch where Bessie stood, watching him with a blank expression. He dropped the basket at his feet with a thud. She continued to stare, mute as a statue. Whatever had happened to that bright light of a girl the other night? Surely Mrs. McLaughlin and a little bit of rain weren’t enough to put out that kind of flame.
    He grinned at her, water pouring off his nose as if it were a spout. “Lovely weather we’ve been having lately, don’t you think?”
    Eliza’s serious expression began to break apart, like ice cracking under a spring