Fool Me Twice

by Meredith Duran

  She was attempting to impose a schedule, discipline. Jones, when he was not hiding in his pantry, approved: she had the makings, he told her, of an excellent housekeeper. Natural talent, he pronounced, clearly pleased with his own instinct in hiring her.

  But she couldn’t care less about the household, save that the errantry of its staff offended her sensibilities and was foiling her plans. What she needed was predictability: to know where everyone would be, at what time.

  Until she managed that, she contented herself by surveying the terrain and designing a plan of search. She knew she must go through the study, top to bottom. The library also had cabinets requiring investigation. But the duke’s rooms? She had never dreamed he might keep files there. She had ventured upstairs to make her introductions to him (baffled as to why Jones hadn’t yet arranged it) and to take a look around.

  Instead, she’d uncovered a shocking scene, at the end of which he had thrown a bottle at her.

  Her palm itched with the urge to turn the key and lock him inside. But no, she didn’t dare. That was not the act of a housekeeper, but of a jailer.

  The housekeeper in a madhouse might do it, she thought.

  She took a long, ragged breath. He had not been aiming at her. That was some kind of comfort, surely.

  Or perhaps he had been aiming and had simply missed. It had been so dark that from the doorway, very little was visible. She’d made out shapes along the floor—books? Or piles of paper?—and the mass of the canopied bed. To the right, where a dim glow penetrated through the drawn curtains, she’d spotted him: the shape of him, at least, a silhouette sitting perfectly still, head bowed as though in prayer.

  But he was not praying. He was mad. His insanity had a feel to it, jagged and sharp, so the very air in his bedroom seemed filled with edges.

  When the bottle had shattered, she’d dropped the ones she’d been collecting. He was armed, then, with at least three more potential weapons to throw. She would not go back into his rooms until she found a suit of armor.

  She smiled a little. The one standing guard outside the library might fit her.

  “She just went in there.” The voice came from ahead.

  “No! She wouldn’t dare!”

  “I tell you, she did. I was listening for a bit, didn’t hear no screams.”

  “Just wait for the bruised eye, then. You know he ain’t—”

  Olivia stepped around the corner. The maids fell silent, but the glance they exchanged spoke volumes, lending their silence a mocking air. It made her wonder what they saw in her face—if she looked shaken.

  The thought irked her. She was not frightened. Only Bertram’s man frightened her, and she refused to expand the list. She pulled herself straight. “Polly,” she said to the brunette, “I told you to see to the morning room.”

  Polly wiped her hands down her apron. “I already did, Miss Johnson.”

  “Mrs. Johnson,” Olivia corrected. That was the proper address for a housekeeper.

  The other maid, Muriel, giggled. The footmen seemed to admire that giggle, for they were constantly trying to elicit it. Olivia had never witnessed so much flirtation as she had the past several days. She’d found this atmosphere mildly annoying, but now, all at once, it struck her as obscene.

  The duke was drinking himself to death in the darkness while his servants flirted and giggled. It’s been grand fun, Polly had told her. Like being paid to see a stage show. “What,” she said coldly, “do you find so amusing, Muriel?”

  Muriel dimpled as she shrugged. A petite, pretty blonde, she seemed to think her charms were universally applicable. Life would surprise her someday. “Nothing, ma’am. Only, somebody said you came to apply for the housemaid’s position—”

  That somebody could be none other than Polly, who returned Olivia’s sharp look with a shrug.

  “—and truth be told, you’re the youngest housekeeper I ever saw.”

  That, no doubt, was the truth—and the reason the staff mocked and japed at her. Jones, who spent most of his time hiding in the pantry, was not proving the confederate she’d hoped.

  But until she got the servants in hand, she dared not search the house. “How surprising to hear that,” she said. “The youngest housekeeper, are you certain? But I suppose I must take your word for it, your experience being so very broad. You having served in so many great houses, and traveled the world, vous avez même soupé à Versailles, n’est-ce pas?”

  Muriel’s smile slipped. “I . . . I don’t speak that language, ma’am.”

  “No? What a pity. Do you speak the language of rug brushing and curtain beating?”

  Muriel cast a worried frown toward Polly, who had gaped at Olivia’s French, and had yet to close her jaw. “I don’t suppose I know that language, either,” Muriel said.

  Polly collected herself. “Dolt. It’s not a language. She’s saying, do you know how to brush a rug?”

  “Think carefully,” Olivia said. “It is the main requirement of your continued employment.”

  Judging by the startled alarm that flashed across their faces, the maids had not realized that she had the power to sack them. Indeed, Olivia did not feel so certain of it herself. She was, after all, “temporary”—and the household had lost too much staff already.

  Regardless, her threat had the desired effect. Both girls went hurrying to collect their maids’ boxes, which they had abandoned at the top of the stairs. Polly muttered something to Muriel. Only two words popped out: duke and drunkard.

  No wonder that the staff was wild. Marwick set them no good example. On the other hand, why did they humor his debauchery? Had they no self-respect? The task of a well-trained staff, particularly in a grand home such as this, was not merely to obey the master, but also to exert a civilizing influence. In some households, the staff even took pride in that role. And why not? Left unchecked, the excesses of the aristocracy would have outraged England into a revolution by now.

  But this staff cowered as though their duty and their dignity were mutually exclusive.

  “One more thing,” she called. Both girls turned to look at her. “You will take no more liquor to His Grace’s rooms.” Let him learn a lesson. For that matter, let him be deprived of new weaponry, in case she needed to enter his rooms again. “That is an order that applies to all the servants, footmen included.”

  They goggled at her. Muriel recovered first. “But if he rings, ma’am—”

  “You will come to me. I will handle it.” Somehow. She would deal with that problem when it arose.

  “The footmen don’t take orders from you,” Polly said.

  “No, they take orders from Mr. Jones, who is in agreement with me.” Or so he would be, after Olivia spoke with him. Marwick’s brutishness should carry repercussions. Besides, if he drank himself to death, his butler would be out of a job.

  * * *

  “Don’t move.” Olivia sat at the head of the table in the servants’ gallery, Jones to her right, Cook to her left, and Marwick’s valet, Vickers, at the foot. Together, the four of them sat watching the bells affixed to the wall, one of which had begun to ring again, for the third time that hour.

  “But we must answer him!” Vickers was round-faced, tonsured like a monk, and given to rubbing his bald spot when nervous. He was scrubbing it now vigorously.

  “He’s had his dinner,” Olivia said. “You were just upstairs. The only possible thing he could require from us is alcohol—or hot milk.” She grew thoughtful. Hot milk was said to be comforting. “Would you take him some? It might help.”

  Vickers clutched his pate. “You want me dead, do you?”

  “I agree with Mrs. Johnson,” Jones said. “Whisky will not aid him. But what of port? It is a gentleman’s right to enjoy his—”

  “Any intoxicant will do him ill. And he does not deserve our indulgence.” Really, Olivia thought. Must she persuade them all over again? “He threw a bottle at my head, sirs. That is not a gentleman’s right.” But her motive was not wholly sp
iteful. She clung to the virtue in it. “Besides, if it’s true what you say—if he was never violent before—why, then the liquor must account for it. You do him a service by denying it.”

  “Are you certain he was drunk?” Jones squinted into space. “I keep good track of the cellars, and I’ve not noticed—”

  “You can’t imagine how many bottles I found up there.”

  “And you can’t imagine what he’s been like,” Vickers said. “The liquor soothes him, I tell you!”

  “Soothes him!” Olivia sat back, gawking. “Do you call a bottle, hurled at the wall—”

  “At least he’s eating.” Cook looked bleary-eyed from exhaustion, her face as gray as her hair. Every time the bell rang, she shrank more deeply into herself, so that over the course of the last hour, she had gone from sporting two chins to three. “I can’t say the liquor accounts for it, but he’d barely touch his tray, this summer. He’s better now.”

  Better! Olivia thought again of the darkness, of his sudden savage assault today. Cook called that better? She gripped her hands very tightly in her lap. “But surely you see that this is for his own good. Even if he is on the mend”—ha!—“liquor will not benefit—”

  Jones’s chair scraped as he stood. “You are new to this household, ma’am.” He lifted his voice to be heard over the clamoring of the bell. “I cannot fault your intentions. But you overstep yourself to imagine that you have any understanding—”

  Olivia lifted her hands in surrender. “Fine! Take it to him.” What did it matter to her anyway? For all she knew, the duke kept his dossiers somewhere logical, like the study. She would never need to go into his rooms.

  But the problem of the disobedient staff remained. “But how,” she continued, “shall I win the respect of the staff? Pray tell, Mr. Jones. For the servant follows his master’s example, does he not? And you see what this household resembles, when its master is playing the lunatic.”

  The bell fell still. In the silence, she found herself the object of three appalled stares.

  And then Cook gave a breathy sob and looked down at the tabletop, and Jones fell back into his chair like a sack of flour, and Vickers set his head into his hands.

  Olivia felt a brief wave of triumph. Finally, they saw her point.

  With the next breath, she felt sorry for them. Their employment here was no game, no masquerade; it was their livelihood.

  But should the duke perish, his heir might bring a new staff to replace them. She was doing them a favor.

  Cook was muffling sobs with her handkerchief. “I’ve known him since he was a boy. I never thought to see him brought so low. He was everything kind, you can’t imagine . . .”

  No, she certainly couldn’t. With a sigh, she said, “Perhaps what we need is a doctor.”

  Vickers scoffed. “His own brother is the finest doctor in England. Much good he did!”

  “Lord Michael tried his best,” Jones said with dignity.

  Olivia believed it. She had come to know Lord Michael during his courtship of Elizabeth Chudderley. He had not struck her as a man to do anything by halves.

  She had depended on Marwick’s estrangement from his brother to safeguard her masquerade here. But now, for the briefest moment, she wondered if he shouldn’t be summoned. “Do you think he might . . .”

  Alas, she was too self-minded to finish her sentence, for if he came, Lord Michael would recognize her in an instant. But Cook caught on, and shook her head. “He’s been driven away, Mrs. Johnson. He’ll not set foot in this house again.”

  Olivia eyed her. “You say you’ve known the duke since boyhood.” And Cook’s tearstained face was very poignant, the picture of a grieving grandmother, almost. It would require a heart of stone to look upon her and remain indifferent. “Perhaps if you were to speak to him . . .”

  “Oh, no. It’s not my place. And I’ll not go up there, I won’t.” Cook crossed her beefy arms and sat back, less grandmotherly now than mulish. “It’s here I stay, in the kitchens. I take good care of them; I know my place.”

  “Convenient for you,” Vickers muttered.

  Olivia bit back an agreement. Cook’s pride in her kitchens evidently did not extend to cleanliness: Olivia had discovered a pile of dirt sitting on the counter just this morning. “Let’s trick him down here, then. When he realizes Vickers is not at hand, he’ll certainly go looking . . .” She trailed off, for all three looked startled. “What is it?”

  Jones said guardedly, “He will not leave his room.”

  She frowned. “Even if we all seem to have abandoned our posts?”

  “He has not left in . . . some time.”

  She paused. “You mean to say he won’t leave his bedroom? Ever?”

  “I suppose he might venture into the sitting room occasionally.” Jones cast a hopeful look at Vickers, who shrugged.

  “Vickers ain’t in the rooms often enough to know,” Cook said. “I have to chase him off my girl thrice a day!”

  “Hey now,” said Vickers. “I can’t help it if she hangs about!”

  “He won’t leave his room?” Olivia wished to be very clear on this point. She had never heard of such a bizarre condition. “But why?”

  “Nobody can say,” said Jones.

  “He doesn’t receive anybody, either.” Vickers sounded gloomy. “Doesn’t write letters. Takes no calls. It’s dashed dull around here, of late.”

  Olivia groped for words. “Then how on earth does he conduct his business?” For this was not merely a private gentleman. This was a peer of the realm, one of the greatest landowners in England. His concerns necessarily encompassed the welfare and livelihood of a vast number of people.

  “He don’t manage,” Cook said. She gave a pull of her mouth, considering. “Perhaps you’re right.” She glanced toward Jones. “Liquor can’t be helping him.”

  Jones thumbed his patch of overlong whiskers. “Perhaps,” he allowed.

  As though in reply, the bell rang again. Was it Olivia’s imagination, or was it somehow ringing harder now?

  “Somebody needs to answer it.” This, naturally, came from Cook, who would not go upstairs. “Even if to tell him we won’t fetch him his drink.”

  Suddenly everyone was looking at Olivia. “Oh, no,” she said. “As Mr. Jones has pointed out, I am too new to take a hand in these matters.”

  “But it’s your plan,” Vickers said. “You’re the reason we haven’t answered him.”

  She scowled. They cared for the duke; she did not. Indeed, that thought felt like an anchor, holding her steady against their imploring looks, which, like a strong current, threatened to bear her straight into stormy waters. “He and I have not even been introduced. Surely, Mr. Vickers, it is you who—”

  Jones stood. “Come, then. Let us go together, so I may introduce you properly.”

  Vickers mimed a tip of an invisible hat. “It was a pleasure to know you both.”

  * * *

  As Jones opened the door to the duke’s sitting room, the hinges squeaked. Olivia stood close enough behind him to sense how he flinched. His nerves proved contagious; she found herself holding her breath as she crept across the carpet in his wake.

  She never should have interfered. What did she care if the staff failed to defend their own dignity? If they were at peace with their master’s savagery, so be it; let them indulge him. And as for having to go into his rooms again—she could have encouraged the footmen to take him more bottles than any man could drink. An unconscious, stupefied drunkard would have posed her no harm.

  Oh, this was a terrible flaw in her, this need to interfere and manage and fix things.

  Jones knocked softly on the bedroom door. “Your Grace?” His voice shook. Olivia wanted to pat the poor man’s arm to lend him courage, but she wasn’t sure she had enough to spare. She had vowed, after all, not to return until she’d acquired a suit of armor to protect herself. So much for that.

  Jones must have heard a reply, for he opened the door. “May we enter?”


  A soft hiss filled the air. Along the walls, gas lamps sputtered to life. The rising light illuminated a man standing at the far corner of the room, very tall. It gilded the strong column of his throat, the sharp angle of his jaw—

  Olivia felt as though she’d been kicked in the head. He was disheveled (but with a valet like Vickers, she would not have expected otherwise). His beard wanted trimming, and his shaggy hair begged for scissors. He looked, as well, underfed—his shirt hung loosely about his shoulders, and his trousers depended too visibly on the clasps of his suspenders. Together with his gauntness, the effect should have been ugly.

  It was the opposite. His leanness only accented the perfect bones of his face: broad, sharp cheekbones; a straight, high-bridged nose; a hard, square jaw that framed full, long lips. She stared, feeling stupefied. Marwick had been a subject of public scrutiny ever since he had stepped into political office. But for all the things that had been spoken of him, nobody had ever called him handsome. Why not? How not? Broad-shouldered, whittled lean, he put her in mind of some warrior ascetic from the icy, Viking north. Only his mouth ruined the image: his full lips belonged on a hedonist.

  He stepped toward them—rangy, tall, very, very blond. His single step caused Jones to bobble back against her. “I have been ringing,” the duke said coldly, “for an hour.”

  His voice was dark and rich, like the cream on a pint of stout. She understood nothing, suddenly. He did not sound like a madman, and he did not hold himself like someone afraid to leave his rooms. He loomed, rather. He . . . presided.

  And the chamber over which he presided, she saw, was filled with papers. Piles of them lay strewn across the carpet. There were also piles of books stacked about, but those papers . . . oh, so many of them!

  “Forgive us, Your Grace.” Jones stammered the words. “There was an emergency in the kitchens.”

  She had a sinking feeling. She would search the study, of course. The library, too. But all these papers . . . here . . . in the room he never left. God must have a very dry sense of humor.

  When she raised her gaze, she found Marwick’s attention fastened on her. His eyes were a brilliant, piercing blue. Their intensity made something flutter inside her. She recognized the intelligence in them. Her gut told her to take it as a warning.