"Good morning, Lady Danbury," Elizabeth said with a shake of her head. “Would you like me to do that for you?'' Lady Danbury suffered from achy joints, and Elizabeth frequently wrote out her correspondence for her.

But Lady Danbury just shoved the paper into a drawer. "No, no, not at all. My fingers feel quite the thing this morning." She flexed her hands and jabbed them in the air at Elizabeth, like a witch casting some sort of spell. "See?"

"I'm glad you're feeling so well," Elizabeth replied hesitantly, wondering if she'd just been hexed:

“Yes, yes, a very fine day. Very fine indeed. Provided, of course, you don't go and start reading to me from the Bible again."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

"Actually, there is something you can do for me."

Elizabeth raised her blond brows in question.

"I need to see my new estate manager. He is working in an office adjoining the stables. Could you fetch him for me?''

Elizabeth managed to keep her jaw from falling open at the very last minute. Brilliant! She was going to get to see the new estate manager and she wasn't going to have to break Edict Number Two doing it.

Well, technically she supposed that she still was seeking him out, but it couldn't really count if she'd been ordered to do so by her employer.

"Elizabeth!" Lady Danbury said loudly.

Elizabeth blinked. "Yes?"

“Pay attention when I speak to you. It is quite unlike you to daydream."

Elizabeth couldn't help but grimace at the irony. She hadn't daydreamed in five years. She'd once dreamed of love, and marriage, and of going to the theater, and of traveling to France. But all of that had stopped when her father died and her new responsibilities made it obvious that her secret thoughts were mere pipe dreams, destined never to come true. "I'm terribly sorry, my lady," she said.