by Anne Stuart
He’d had every intention of setting her up in her own cottage on the estate to make visits easier—in fact, he’d promised Mrs. Lefton that as part of their financial arrangement. So what the hell was she doing in his house, among his servants?
“You aren’t what I expected,” he said eventually.
“No?” she questioned brightly. “What did you expect?”
Jesus, she was saucy. Mistresses were supposed to be subtle and almost invisible when they had their clothes on. He ought to send her back.
“How old are you?” he demanded abruptly.
“Twenty.”
Better than he would have thought, though a good twelve years younger than he was. She should have said, “Twenty, my lord,” but then he hated the damned title anyway. It was just interesting how lacking in etiquette she was.
“I’m not sure you’ll do. You’re pretty enough, but I’m concerned about this cooking business. Can you even cook?”
A series of unreadable expressions flashed across her face, and if he didn’t know that it was almost impossible, he would have thought she was angry with him. Mistresses don’t get angry with their keepers, at least not in the early days. Later on in a settled relationship they would throw little fits that could only be calmed with an expensive piece of jewelry, but most had the sense not to light into their lovers before they’d even gone to their bed.
This one clearly had enough sense; he could tell she swallowed her instinctive retort to give him an icy smile. “I am a most excellent cook, my lord.” The words were bitten off, but it didn’t matter. He was used to women fawning over him. He had no illusions about his looks—he was by all accounts a very handsome man with a strong, fit body. Add to that his recent inheritance of both title and fortune, and women were ready to lie down for him at the snap of the fingers. In fact, Christabel had made several hints.
But he was no fool. Once you bedded a well-bred virgin you were trapped into marriage, and he had no interest in repeating that particular mistake. He’d yet to see a successful one—his parents had disliked each other, though in truth he could barely remember his real mother, only the sound of his parents’ fights. Mason Griffiths’s second marriage, to Adelia Casoby, hadn’t been any better, with only the arrival of his younger brother improving things for a bit. Until Adelia decided Alexander was some sort of threat to his younger brother’s well-being and had tried to do something about it. Dickens had been his father’s answer to that, companion and bodyguard, and he’d been with Alexander ever since, even accompanying him to Oxford.
Despite the fact that it would please his stepmother, Alexander had had every intention of dying without issue, leaving all this to his brother. They both would have loved it far more than he did, and Adelia would have adored being the mother of a young viscount. Of course, that was presuming Alexander died early, which Adelia had been doing her best to see to. But now his brother was dead, and everything had changed.
“Will I do?”
He was shocked out of his abstraction by the sweet, soft voice of the creature in front of him. He gave her his most haughty stare. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said, ‘Will I do?’ ” she repeated in a slightly aggrieved tone. “My lord,” she added as an afterthought.
“That remains to be seen.” He wasn’t going to make this easy for her, but the more she startled him, annoyed him, the more interested he became. Perhaps he’d been wrong in asking for an experienced courtesan to set in place as his mistress. This young thing could scarcely have much experience—she still carried a bewitching innocence about her that he realized had to be completely spurious. He could feel his blood stirring in his veins.
“I assure you, I’m a very good cook,” she said, a trace of uncertainty in her voice.
“That’s really the least of my worries. I had planned to set you up in a small house on my estate, but I don’t think that will do.”
There was a sudden, surprising flash of anger in those dulcet eyes. “If you think you’re going to turf out some old retainer and stuff me into her cottage then you’ll find . . .”
He stopped her with a lift of his hand and a cool smile. “Hardly. There are a number of small houses connected to this estate, which, frankly, is too damned big. There’s a small dower house to which my stepmother refuses to retire, but that’s neither here nor there. She’s not the dowager viscountess, much as it grieves her, and I don’t trust her out of my sight. I suppose for the time being you may stay in the cook’s quarters until we see if you can carry off this charade.”
She looked at him, dumbstruck. “Charade?” she echoed.
He shook his head. “Never mind. You’re here now. It remains to be seen whether you’ll be staying. Fortunately for you my stepmother does not keep country hours. She prefers to dine at nine o’clock precisely, and her companion sees to her substantial teas in the afternoon. But if I were you, I’d get moving. It’s already late afternoon.”
“I believe it was your idea to take me away from my work,” she pointed out.
He looked down at her, unexpectedly amused by her haughty demeanor. She was due for a set-down, but he wasn’t quite ready to administer it. “You are dismissed, Miss . . . what are you calling yourself?”
It seemed to take her a moment to remember. “M-madame Camille.”
“My lord,” he prompted. “You are dismissed, Madame Camille.”
She didn’t like that, he noticed. He hadn’t had such a firecracker in his bed for a long time—he’d gotten used to placid females who did what he told them to do and took their dismissal gracefully. This one wasn’t going to make anything easy, and he ought to get rid of her right now.
But he wasn’t going to do so. In the darkness of losing the one member of his family he liked, he needed the distraction, and this woman would damned well provide it.
“Go,” he said again, while she hesitated, probably wondering how far she could push him.
“Yes,” she said between admirably gritted teeth. “My lord.”
He waited until she was out of sight before he gave in to laughter.
She was pretty enough! Sophie fumed. Pretty! Why didn’t he go all the way and tell her she was nice as well. No one in her entire life had insulted Sophie with such a lackluster turn of phrase. Pretty. Faugh!
It was a good thing she’d spent most of her life in these halls, or she’d have no idea how to get back to the kitchen. She certainly wasn’t waiting around for that man to show her. He was the most disagreeable creature it had ever been her misfortune to meet, and if he turned out to be a villain and a murderer then she would be perfectly happy, no matter how good he looked without his clothes on. A trace of her bad mood lifted at that shocking thought, and she almost giggled. The disdainful viscount would be livid if he knew she’d been spying on him while he swam. The thought of his fury cheered her.
But what in the world had he been talking about? She’d gone along with whatever he said—Mrs. Lefton must be the woman who ran the employment agency—but what had Sophie’s looks to do with anything? She was pretty enough! She made a growling noise low in her throat.
She certainly didn’t want to be set up in the dower house. The very idea of such a thing was outrageous—who put a cook in the dower house? Of course the dower house had been empty during their years of occupancy, but Bryony had always made certain it was kept clean and in good repair, and occasionally guests would use it. It was far, far too grand for a cook. Besides, she needed to be in the house, be as close to the Dark Viscount as she could bring herself to be, if she wanted to find out the breadth of his crimes. Everyone said he’d thrown his first wife off the battlements of his house, though there hadn’t been enough evidence to go further than an enquiry. It had been the talk of London, even though Mr. Griffiths, as he’d been at the time, had never bothered much with society.
Fortunately there were no battlements at Renwick. Besides, why should he want to throw her off? Certainly he’d be displeased if he found
out she was lying to him and the employment agency hadn’t sent her, but that would hardly countenance murder, now would it? Unless he really had killed her father as well, and she found out something that would incriminate him.
Which was exactly what she planned to do. She was counting on being able to carry this off for at least a few days. Clearly the real Madame Camille had changed her mind about working so far out in the countryside, and even if the employment agency sent someone else, it would take a while. Besides, hadn’t he announced that his stepmother had outraged all the employment agencies in London? Perhaps that was why the famed Madame Camille hadn’t shown up.
Her sisters thought Sophie was too young and self-absorbed to be of any help in finding out what truly happened to their father, but she’d show them. Without getting tossed from the battlements.
When she reached the kitchen she found everyone as she’d left them, the bread dough still puffing over the bowl, the piecrusts half-rolled, the pheasants unplucked. It was unfortunate she was so short, Sophie thought, removing her shawl and placing it on the back of one chair. It took a little more effort to convince people to do what you wanted. She usually relied on a winning smile and mild flirtation to get anything she desired, but she could hardly flirt with the viscount’s other servants.
There was a pile of clean, starched aprons over by the ironing board, and a full basket beneath it, but the laundry maid had ceased her efforts and was sitting back with a cup of tea in her hand.
Sophie took an apron from the pile and threw it over her head, tying it with quick efficiency. And then she pulled out a chair and climbed on it so that she towered over all of them, and began the work of rallying her troops. “Gather round, everyone, and prepare yourselves, my companions of the cuisine. You are about to work harder than you ever have before, and if you fail to do so, I’ll convince his lordship that better workers are easily found.”
It was almost funny to see how fast they could move when they had incentive. Funny that a twenty-year-old who’d never been able to tell her sisters what to do suddenly had a staff of more than a dozen to obey her every whim. She was going to like being back here, most especially in the kitchen.
From what she’d observed in her dash down the corridors after the viscount, it appeared that someone had redecorated the lovely old walls of Renwick with garish, “modern” colors and chinoiserie furniture that was just a bit terrifying. But the kitchens were the same, thank God, the kitchens where she used to play under Cook’s watchful eye. These were the kitchens where she’d learned to cook, much to her sisters’ amusement. Such industry was very unlike the baby sister they tended to underestimate.
She looked out over her busy army of workers, searching for a familiar face. The Russells had usually brought their own servants down from London with them, including the chef and kitchen staff, keeping only a caretaker and his wife on the estate, as well as the gardeners. As far as she knew they were all gone now—the new mistress of the house, the Dark Viscount’s stepmother, had fired the few remaining servants, but Sophie needed to be careful she didn’t run into anyone she knew.
The other servants in the house were all strangers to her. She’d never spent much time in the gardens anyway; if any of those workers had remained, they wouldn’t know her.
She hopped down from her chair and approached the suddenly industrious woman who’d been in tears when Sophie had first arrived. She’d always had an excellent memory, for names, for recipes, for artists, and this one was easy. “Prunella,” she addressed her in a gentler voice. “Or should I call you something else?”
The woman looked up, flushed but pleased. “Prunella’s good enough for me, Madame Camille. We’re right glad to have you here. It’s been . . . difficult.”
“The master of the house seems a bit challenging,” she said softly, aware that Dickens was just out of earshot, overseeing the defeathering of the pheasants.
“Eh, he’s not so bad. It’s his stepmama who’s the real problem. Has tantrums, she does. His lordship’s fair enough most of the time, unless he’s been pushed too far.” She gave Sophie a searching look. “I don’t think he’s going to be too mad at you, madame.”
It felt absurd to be called “madame” at her age, but that was the role she’d stepped into and she had to accept it. “We’ll see. I imagine a good dinner will go a great deal toward making both the viscount and his mother more sanguine. What did you have planned?”
Prunella’s face fell. “Game pie,” she said. “With a cream of turnip soup, buttered cod for the fish course, and bread pudding for dessert. Problem is, Mrs. Griffiths don’t care for turnips, and she thinks cod is déclassé, or so she says, and I was going to give them turnips for the vegetable course but they’ll have already had them, and . . .”
Sophie put a calming hand on the woman’s burly arm. “Not to worry, Prunella. We’ll figure something out. What about the joint?”
Prunella looked as if she were about to start crying again. “That’s the problem, miss.”
Miss sounded a lot more comfortable than madame, so Sophie didn’t bother to correct her. “What is?”
“I have no idea how to cook a roast. I was never in charge of cooking for the gentry, you know, just helping out the chef and taking care of the staff’s meals.”
“Well,” Sophie said with far more confidence than she was actually feeling, “you’re going to learn. By the time I’m finished with you, you’ll be able to feed the queen herself.”
The big woman looked down at Sophie doubtfully. “I’ll trust you, miss. We’ve got a side of beef and half a lamb in the cold room, plus Toby can get us anything we want from the butcher’s.”
“The lamb,” Sophie said instantly, having at least a passing familiarity with it. “We’ll need a clear soup as well, and I have a new sauce for the fish that will disguise its humble origins, something with just a hint of lemon. We have lemons, I hope?”
“Yes, miss. But Mrs. Griffiths still won’t like it, knowing it’s cod.”
“Then we’ll tell her it’s Dover sole, and she’ll be delighted,” Sophie said briskly, ignoring Prunella’s shocked sound. “The lamb we’ll roast simply—I’d love to stud it with garlic but I doubt the lady of the house would thank me for it. The weather’s been fine enough that I expect we already have spinach in the garden—send someone to see to that.”
“Oh, we do, miss. But it’s very small.”
“Then have him or her pick twice the amount. The smallest are the sweetest. What else? Oh, yes, the turnip soup. We’ll add curry and call it something creative. Let’s add a mushroom soufflé for good measure. Then on to dessert. I’m very good at desserts.”
Prunella was looking at her in mingled awe and apprehension. “Mrs. Griffiths is very partial to chocolate,” she volunteered. “His lordship, not so much. He’s the reason we have lemon on hand. He likes a fruit dish.”
“It’s too late to manage both,” Sophie said briskly. “I’ll make a chocolate torte so decadent Mrs. Griffiths will think she’s died and gone to heaven, and that should keep her from bothering us, and too bad for the Dark . . . for his lordship.” She wanted to kick herself. She had to stop thinking of him as the Dark Viscount, or sooner or later she was going to slip.
“Yes, miss. Where would you like me to start?”
Oh, lord. Never had she had her own kitchen. There had always been someone else to oversee things, to answer questions, and now it was all up to her.
She straightened her back, rising to her full five feet and half an inch, almost. “We’ll roast the lamb on a spit—do we have a boy to turn it?”
Prunella looked doubtful. “I misremember who . . .”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll put a chair by the hearth and whoever is tired can sit and turn it. I imagine some of the maids have been up since dawn and . . .” She looked around her. “Is there a housekeeper? I shouldn’t wish to trample on her authority.”
“No, miss. Mr. Dickens is in charge of everything
. He’s been with his lordship since the beginning of time and he’s a good butler. He sees to things, and he’s fair.”
“Has it always been this way?”
“Yes, miss. Apparently housekeepers and upper servants tended to develop an affection for Mrs. Griffiths’s son, the late Mr. Griffiths, and the old lady don’t like that.”
“His brother? Is that why the house is in mourning?”
“Indeed, yes, miss. So I think your choice of a chocolate torte is a more fitting one. There’s something more funereal about chocolate, isn’t there?”
Not the way I make it, Sophie thought. Though given the Dark Viscount’s vaguely threatening demeanor, she could always add some rat poison. No, that wouldn’t do—it was his stepmother who liked chocolate. He wouldn’t touch her glorious creation.
Which suited her perfectly. She didn’t particularly want to waste her best efforts on an unworthy audience, but there was the pretty young lady who’d been clinging to him, Mrs. Griffiths, and . . . “How many for dinner?” she asked suddenly.
“Six,” Prunella said promptly. “The viscount and his stepmama, Miss Forrester and her brother, and I believe the vicar and his wife are coming as well. Which won’t put his lordship in any good mood.”
“He doesn’t like the vicar?”
“He doesn’t believe in God and he’s going to hell,” Prunella said in a whisper so loud that Dickens looked up from his spot at the end of the long table.
“Are you gossiping again, Prunella?” he said severely. “You know there’s to be no gossip in this household.”