by Anne Stuart
“Deliveries,” he gasped.
“Oh, we should go out and supervise,” Sophie said, starting to move past the maid, when Prunella suddenly dragged her arm and moved her back into the small room, with Maude slamming the door and leaning back against it.
“We should recount the jars of honey,” Prunella announced firmly. “I believe I am way off. And did anyone see a bottle of wine? Open and half gone.”
Sophie looked at her in surprise, both for her words and her odd behavior. Was she a drinker? “I counted eighteen,” she said flatly. “And there was no wine.”
“That’s a serious situation,” Prunella announced. “Someone’s been here getting into the wine. The footmen know better, and I can’t imagine anyone else doing it. I wouldn’t want to face Mr. Dickens, telling him wine has gone missing.”
“Wouldn’t the wine be in the cellar, with Mr. Dickens keeping the keys?” Sophie asked. She could hear voices outside the room, the sound of things moving around. “You know, I really should be out there if they’re delivering food. I need to choose what looks the freshest before I come up with a menu.”
There was a panicked look in Maude’s eyes, and she glanced at Prunella uneasily. The senior maid took over with suspicious smoothness. “I’m sure you can trust Dickens. He usually oversees deliveries of everything, including food. Nothing to worry about. Unlike this missing wine . . .”
“But I intend to change things,” Sophie said stubbornly. If she was going to finally have a chance to throw herself into cooking anything she wanted and hang the budget, then she needed to pick and choose.
“God bless you, miss, and I’m sure that will be fine with Mr. Dickens. But we’d best make sure about the wine. Mr. Dickens takes inebriation very seriously indeed, miss.”
“I haven’t seen anyone inebriated.”
Prunella looked at Maude and Gracie with almost a flash of amusement. “Yes, miss, but you’re the newest one here. If wine goes missing for the first time, then you’d be the obvious suspect, and doubtless they’d double-check your credentials and . . .”
“Never mind,” Sophie said hastily. “I didn’t touch the wine, and I certainly wouldn’t have expected to find any among the cooking supplies. Not that I have anything against wine in certain dishes—in fact, I applaud it. But I didn’t touch it.”
“I’m sure Mr. Dickens realizes that,” Gracie piped up. “But maybe we’ll just make certain it hasn’t fallen somewhere.”
Sophie was about to tell her that Gracie could make certain while Sophie met with the vendors who came to the kitchen door, when something stopped her. Some look that was moving between the three of her staff, a warning expression, and she hesitated. Did she trust these three strangers who’d been kind to her? What were her own instincts telling her to do?
She dropped to her knees and peered under one row of shelving. “I don’t see anything under this one, but that doesn’t mean it’s not here.” She sat back on her bum and looked up at the three. “A little help?”
The three of them immediately sank to the floor, and the next half hour was spent crawling around on the spotlessly clean pantry floor, giggling and squashing spiders and indulging in the kind of harmless gossip that wiped away the last of Sophie’s misgivings. For some reason her kitchen staff didn’t want her out in the room when the deliveries were made. She would trust them.
She heard the soft, rhythmic rap on the door, so quiet that she might have missed it if Maude hadn’t immediately lifted her head like a bloodhound scenting a rabbit. She sat back, trying for a casual expression. “I think we might see what’s been delivered, miss.”
Sophie raised an eyebrow as she scrambled to her feet. “Oh, really? It’s safe?” she said with only mild sarcasm. “Then by all means.” She pushed open the door, and this time no one got in her way.
The long center table in the kitchen was covered with food. A huge basket of fresh peas that had probably come from the Martins’ farm, as well as the spinach and mushrooms, plus a haunch of beef whose proper aging could only be the work of Delbert the butcher. There were fresh spring potatoes, newly dug, from the Bonethwistles’ potato farm, and an order of wine that would have come from London but may or may not have moved through the hands of Jacky, the lad who owned the delivery cart.
In other words, her masquerade would have been over almost as soon as it had begun, and she glanced at her suddenly industrious kitchen staff. She could happily bless them. She had no idea what was going on with them earlier, what they were trying to hide from her, but she didn’t care. The most logical explanation was that someone was skimming off the deliveries—they were receiving short rations or someone was taking food from the kitchen. Either way, she’d put a stop to it. No one had expected her arrival, and plans had already been in place. She would simply have to make it clear to the girls that she would tolerate no dishonesty when it came to the kitchen staff.
She suddenly realized her own hypocrisy, and she wanted to laugh. No one was allowed to be dishonest but the cook herself, lying to get the job, lying about her name, her age, her identity. She was no one to point a finger of blame. One did what one had to do. Her father had taught her that.
Which was why she wasn’t as convinced as her sisters that her father was an innocent man. He’d started his life as a laborer, a shipbuilder, and he’d built his business and amassed his fortune much too quickly to have followed all the rules. It had been his business in the beginning, and still bore his name—he could have justified stripping it of its assets.
But he never would have taken the money and run off, abandoning his daughters. And there was still no explanation as to why he was alone in the middle of Dartmoor, and where all that money had gone.
“I’ll add this to the inventory,” Prunella volunteered. “Unless there’s something you’d rather have me do.”
Sophie glanced at the heavy-laden table, determined not to look overwhelmed. “You never told me what kind of meal the family prefers for the midday.”
“None of us has been in service to them for that long,” Prunella said. “But the first cook brought a big book of recipes with her, and she left it behind when she quit.”
“And why did she quit?”
“Didn’t like the countryside,” Maude volunteered. “She had family back in Surrey.”
“Ah,” Sophie said, hoping to sound wise. “And where is this miraculous book of recipes?”
Indeed, miraculous was the word for it. When Prunella finally unearthed the massive tome, it was filled with the answers to, if not all her prayers, at least a goodly portion of them. It contained full instructions for the traditional French service à la russe, which amused her. If it were Russian, how could it be French? There were hors d’oeuvres and soups, fish and entrees, joints, game, and vegetables and even a long treatise on various sweets and removes. Nothing she couldn’t improve with a slight adjustment here, a major substitution there. She was about to set Gracie and Maude to washing and chopping the vegetables when a familiar voice came from the stable yard, one that sent cold chills down her spine.
“Yoo-hoo,” came Miss Crowell’s dulcet tones. “I’m here with the flowers.”
Sophie was momentarily turned to stone. She’d forgotten that Miss Crowell’s magnificent gardens provided cut flowers for Renwick—the cutting gardens had been dug up and transplanted for the viscount’s swimming pond and they hadn’t had time to accustom themselves to their new home. Miss Crowell had been supplementing, but not for a moment had Sophie considered that the old hag would deliver them herself.
It happened so fast Sophie barely had time to react. One moment she was standing in the middle of the kitchen, listening to Miss Crowell’s stalwart footsteps, and in the next Dickens himself had taken her and shoved her back into the pantry, slamming the door behind her.
“Ah, Miss Crowell.” Dickens greeted her with his usual dignity, not like someone who had manhandled the new cook into the larder. “You’re early today.”
&nb
sp; “I have a dear friend who’s going to come to live with me, and I have a lot of things to do to get ready.” Her voice carried perfectly through the thick door. “You may have heard of her—the nanny who worked for the former residents of this lovely house.”
“Mrs. Gruen,” Dickens supplied smoothly. “Yes, we know of her. She suffered an accident, didn’t she?”
“She did indeed. She broke her leg, but it’s an ill wind that blows no one good. As soon as she’s well enough, she’s going to come live with me while she recuperates, and I don’t intend to let her leave to scrimp and slave on her own. And that wretched Russell girl has decamped, thank heavens.”
“Has she indeed?” Dickens might be talking about an absolute stranger, but Sophie knew that he wasn’t. He knew exactly who the wretched Russell girl was, and where she was hiding at the moment. Suddenly their secrecy all made sense. They’d been protecting her. “I heard she was a quite pleasant young lady.”
Even through the thick wood Miss Crowell’s contemptuous snort was audible. “That’s as may be,” she said loftily, “but she has no place around here anymore. I sent her off yesterday. Mrs. Gruen doesn’t need to be worried about a former charge, and I imagine the viscount will be glad to have the use of the cottage back.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Dickens said in a repressive tone. “Renwick is a very profitable estate, and there is no need for more tenant farmers. Indeed, his lordship has very advanced ideas about land ownership and cultivation, and if memory serves me, that cottage is too small to be of much use for a family. I believe his lordship was more than happy to have Mrs. Gruen continue to reside there, and I doubt he would have minded if Miss Russell had remained while Mrs. Gruen was in hospital.”
Sophie could almost feel Miss Crowell’s frustration. “Well, that’s as may be,” she said finally, “but she’s gone, and good riddance. And you’re wrong about the viscount—he would have made certain Sophie Russell was out on her . . . was out the moment he heard. He’d never struck me as a particularly charitable gentleman, particularly when it came to the family who stole his birthright.”
“Stole his birthright?” Dickens sounded almost affronted. “I fear you’ve been reading too many novels, Miss Crowell. He’s always known this house would return to him sooner or later, and he wouldn’t have blamed a young girl for the bad behavior of his own relatives and hers.”
Miss Crowell made a little phhfft sound. “You just be sure to let me know if she attempts to make contact with the viscount. She wasn’t certain of her destination and I wouldn’t put it past the minx to try to wheedle her way into his good graces.”
“I don’t believe his lordship has any good graces,” Dickens announced in a lugubrious tone, and Sophie wanted to laugh. As far as she could see, the milk of human kindness had been drained and replaced with the sour curdle of mockery and sarcasm in Viscount Griffiths’s veins.
The voices faded away, and she heard the heavy outer door close with a thud. She counted to one hundred, first in French and then in Latin, just to make herself wait long enough, and then she slowly pushed open the inner door once more.
No one raised his head when she stepped back into the kitchen. Gracie was cutting the flowers, Maude and Prunella were busy with the vegetables, and Mr. Dickens was arranging the stems in a vase.
“Does everyone know?” she asked quietly.
Mr. Dickens looked up from his task. “Only the servants, miss. You can’t keep anything a secret from the servants, and the goings-on in the village are as well known to us as they are to those who live there.”
“Are you going to tell anyone?”
Dickens looked affronted. “Begging your pardon, miss, but haven’t we gone out of our way to keep you from being seen by the townspeople? You’ll be able to live here in safety and anonymity for as long as you wish. There’s no reason why his lordship or his stepmother should have to find out anything.”
For some reason Sophie, who was fiercely against tears, felt suddenly weepy. It had been so long since she’d felt that anyone had been on her side, apart from her sisters and Nanny, that she would have sagged back against the door if she weren’t determined not to show weakness. She was safe here. The other servants were watching out for her. She had nothing to worry about.
“Madame Camille,” came Alexander Griffiths’s drawling voice from the stairwell. “Are you finally willing to grant me a moment of your time?”
Oh, shite.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HIS NEW MISTRESS-CUM-COOK WAS looking both very beautiful and completely panicked for the moment, and Alexander wasn’t sure whether to be amused or annoyed. A moment later she turned to face him, her beautiful face bland and expressionless, like a woman, no, a girl, wearing a mask. How many of the women he’d bedded had worn masks like this one? Probably all of them—this one was simply too inexperienced to have perfected the art.
He’d asked for experience, and it was hard to believe Lydia Lefton would have dared send him someone so far from his expectations. “In the library,” he said. “Now.”
He saw the brief flash of annoyance in those dark blue eyes, and oddly enough some of his own irritation faded. The more she failed to live up to his expectations, the more entertaining he found her, and he was beginning to realize he’d been bored for a long time. She was a perfect distraction from thinking about Rufus, thinking about the harridan upstairs, and with the thoughtful application of just the right incentive she would prove even more entertaining. He was very good at finding incentives.
He strode through the hallway, not bothering to moderate his long-legged stride, knowing it would require an effort for her to keep up with him. With luck she’d arrive at his library flushed and breathless and just the tiniest bit overheated, and he could begin to unbutton that ridiculously high-necked dress.
He moved into the ancient study that smelled of books and leather and generations of wood smoke, the one room he refused to let Adelia work her hideous taste on, and was about to close the door when a small, slim hand reached out and caught it. Looking down at his new mistress in surprise, he saw that she was neither out of breath nor flushed. Since the women of his acquaintance earned their living in bed, they were usually fairly indolent with their clothes on, but Madame Camille, or whatever she was calling herself, seemed ridiculously fit.
He stepped back, into the room, but she made no effort to follow, standing there with her back stiff. “Did you change your mind, my lord?” she asked, just slightly caustic. “I can always return to the kitchen—I have a great deal to do there and . . .”
“Sit down,” he said mildly enough.
“I’d rather stand.”
For a moment he was speechless, not quite as amused. “I don’t give a fuck what you’d rather do,” he said, and if he hadn’t been watching her so closely he wouldn’t have noticed the slight wince at his crude word. What kind of whore was she, to be uncomfortable with the word best suited to her chosen profession?
She came into the room, taking her own sweet time about it, as if to make sure he realized that he didn’t cow her. It was a waste of time on her part—he knew just how much he did and didn’t intimidate her. She glanced around the room, then went directly to the most comfortable chair in the place, the ancient green leather chair he usually sat in to read. The girl had taste as well as temerity.
He moved around to the far side of the desk and sat. Having a piece of furniture between them kept their positions clear—master and servant, no matter how good a chair she’d chosen. “Do you wish to remain in my employ, Miss . . . ? What the hell should I call you?”
This time she flinched, and he knew that no matter how standoffish she was being, she wanted to be here. “I am known as Madame Camille.”
“You don’t strike me as a Frenchwoman.”
“My mother was French. Madame will suffice.”
He’d been trying to intimidate her, but at that he laughed. “I don’t think so. What’s your name? Your real name
?”
He’d taken her off guard, and he could see her mentally scrambling. He snapped at her. “Now!”
“S-Sophie.”
“You don’t look like a Sophie,” he said. He’d be damned if that was her real name—it was too innocent. “But it will do. I must say, my dear Sophie, that I question your interest in the role you’ve been sent to fill.”
“You’re wrong.” And then she added, “my lord,” as if she realized how abrupt she sounded. “I am most determined to provide satisfaction.”
He leaned back, letting his mouth curve in a mocking smile. “Now why have I been doubting that?”
“I don’t know, my lord. I never undertake something without throwing myself into it completely, and I promise you that you will have absolutely no complaints about my . . . my cooking.” She stammered over the words. So they were going to speak in code, were they?
“Oh, I expect you’re an excellent . . . ah . . . cook. Mrs. Lefton would never have sent me a candidate who was unqualified. But there seems to be a certain lack of enthusiasm for some of the duties the job entails.”
“Oh, no, my lord.” She was putting energy into it, her eyes wide and guileless, and yet he was still having his doubts. Oh, he wanted her, quite badly. But she wasn’t the comfortable, undemanding creature he’d requested. “You will find that your faith in Mrs. Lefton’s judgment is not misplaced,” she continued. “I will stop at nothing in my efforts to please you. I am very creative, and I promise to astonish your senses with delights you haven’t even dreamed of.”
She was so earnest, and his problem had always been his imagination. He could already guess just how she could astonish his senses, and it was a good thing he was sitting behind the desk as he felt himself begin to stir. That was odd. He was no randy boy to sport a hard-on from nothing more than a mild sexual innuendo, but here he was, wanting nothing more than to leap across the surface of his desk and drag her down onto the floor. He raised an eyebrow. “Indeed?”