A Warriner to Protect Her

by Virginia Heath

  ‘It will be delightful to see a pretty face at the table rather than this ugly lot.’ Jacob grinned back at her. ‘Would you like some tea, Letty?’ She nodded happily to be included and was surprised when it was Jacob who poured, in the absence of a servant, while Joe wandered to the hearth and retrieved a covered plate and placed it in front of her. He whipped off the silver cloche and her face fell at the sight of yet more bacon and shrivelled-looking fried eggs.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ He stared back at her, concerned.

  ‘Would you ask your cook if I might have something different this morning? Only I have had bacon every day so far and I am not overly fond of it. Some sausages, perhaps, or some scrambled eggs?’

  There was a moment of strained silence at her request, then Jamie scowled and pierced Jack with his stare. ‘I am not cooking her anything different.’

  Jacob grinned at his brother. ‘That’s because you can’t cook anything different, Jamie. I, on the other hand, have a particular way with eggs.’ He went to stand, but Jack stayed him with his hand.

  ‘We eat what we are served in this house, Letty, and we are grateful for it.’

  The four men focused intently on their plates as if the discussion was now over. Letty considered letting sleeping dogs lie, then decided she could not. These four men obviously worked tremendously hard, so it was a travesty that their lazy staff should hold so much power. The youngest Warriners clearly found it easier to step into the breach rather than bring the help to heel. As she had suspected, this was an area in which she could make a contribution.

  ‘Please do not be embarrassed. I would hardly expect four men to know the best way to deal with unruly servants. Fortunately, it is an area in which I have a great deal of expertise.’ Letty had been running her Mayfair house since the age of seventeen as her uncle was not used to dealing with such a large household, or, indeed, even interested in learning. If anybody could get the best out of the Markham Manor servants, it was her. ‘Why don’t I oversee the indoor staff while I am here? It would be no trouble. If nothing else, I can improve the quality of our meals.’

  For effect she picked up the abandoned silver cloche and popped it back over her plate. ‘It is a sorry state of affairs when the servants are too lax to serve breakfast. We are grateful for what we get indeed! Where is the choice? Why, there is not even any jam on the table! How can one be expected to have a civilised breakfast without preserves? I fear that your good natures are being taken gross advantage of by all of your servants. I intend to speak to your cook personally and explain the proper way for a good kitchen to be run.’ For emphasis, Letty stood and picked up the offending plate. ‘Where might I find your belligerent chef?’ Because things were going to improve at Markham Manor starting right now. It would be her gift to this generous family. One which would cost her nothing but her own efforts. ‘And whilst I am about it, I should like to speak to your housekeeper as well. It is criminal the way the housework has been neglected. The maids need to be told to dust all of the nooks and crannies and their work needs to be thoroughly checked to see it is up to standard.’

  Letty would start with the kitchen and then move on to the rest of the staff. By tonight, this house would run like clockwork. She smiled reassuringly at the stunned-looking gentlemen in front of her, except their reactions to her sudden decisiveness made her nervous. Joe and Jacob exchanged a telling look before staring mournfully at their empty plates, while Jack’s jaw hardened. Jamie Warriner rose slowly to his feet and folded his arms angrily across his chest.

  ‘I am the belligerent cook. And the current lazy housekeeper.’

  Letty had not been expecting that. ‘Surely not?’ Her eyes scanned the other faces around the table for confirmation. Only Jack met her gaze, although she could not accurately discern what stormy emotion was currently swirling in those cobalt eyes. Annoyance? Shame? Pride? Perhaps all three? She stared at him beseechingly. ‘Are you having difficulties hiring servants?’

  That was clearly another wrong thing to say, judging by the snigger which emitted from the vicinity of Jacob and cut through the brittle silence like a knife. Letty turned to him in question and even he began to look guilty. The wretch had encouraged her to talk to Jack about the staff when she had enquired about a personal maid and now she had a sneaking suspicion he had led her on a merry dance for his own amusement. He had set her up for a fall and she had indeed fallen for it like a silly, spoiled fool. Whilst she enjoyed a good joke as much as the next person and had always had an enormous appetite for mischief, Letty had the distinct feeling she had just horrifically insulted Jack Warriner. Inexcusably insulted him, if what she was coming to suspect was the case, and that was too awful a prospect to have to contemplate after all he had already done for her.

  Jacob’s guilty smile slipped off his face under her scrutiny and he coloured up in embarrassment. ‘It’s not so much we have difficulty hiring servants, Letty, it’s more we have difficulty paying for them...oomph!’ He sagged when Joe’s elbow collided sharply with his ribs and knocked the air out of him.

  Realisation began to dawn. Her outburst had not only been crass; it had been cruel. Unforgivably cruel. ‘There are no servants at Markham Manor, are there?’

  Jack stood, clearly furious, and his voice was more clipped and frigid than she had ever heard it.

  ‘I am sure back in London you have an army of obedient servants to cater for your every whim, Princess Violet. Here, we have to work for our supper. Seeing as you are now up and about, and we are apparently stuck with you, it’s time you stopped leeching off our hospitality and earned your keep. Fortunately, you have helpfully pointed out how criminally the housework has been neglected. It is difficult to find the time or energy to dust every nook and cranny when you have to work in the fields from sun up to sun down. Therefore, those neglected nooks and crannies are now yours, Miss Dunston. I look forward to checking your work later. I would hate for the standards to not be properly maintained.’

  The walls of the kitchen shook with the force he put into slamming the door on his way out.

  Chapter Nine

  Twenty-four days and fourteen hours...

  Complete humiliation had never brought out the best in him, but for some reason, complete humiliation in front of Violet Dunston was worse than any Jack had ever experienced before. And he had a wealth of embarrassing experience to draw upon. When she had declared her intention to take his cook and housekeeper to task for their ineptitude, he had wanted to curl up into a ball and die from the shame. It was one thing to know your home was turning into a crumbling hovel before your very eyes, but it was a very different kettle of fish to have it pointed out by the most beautiful woman you had ever seen. A very different, totally unappetising kettle of fish indeed when he had spent the night lusting after her. Again. Clearly he was a glutton for punishment.

  Doubtless her good opinion of him was now in question, especially at his surly reaction, and that bothered him a great deal too. For once, he wanted to be judged on his deeds rather than his family’s past, and as Letty’s views had not been tainted by the locals he had been hopeful she would regard them as decent, civilised people. However, his pride would never allow Jack to show her how much her thoughtless words had hurt him, so he had barked at her in retaliation instead, because attack had always been his default form of defence.

  Even now, after a full day of hard work in the constant pouring rain, he was still smarting. He knew she had meant well and suspected Jacob had a hand in her belief that they had staff, but neither of those things were any consolation. The lofty lord of the manor should be able to afford servants. That was the way of things. He could hardly blame her for her blatant disbelief at his failure to provide something so fundamental when he owned a house with fifteen bedchambers, even if only four of the damn things were safe to sleep in. How was Letty to know the last of their servants had left a ye
ar before his father had drunk himself to death? Understandably, they were unforgiving of the Earl of Markham’s habit of prioritising his brandy ration over their wages. The fact the man had put his brandy above everything else, the welfare and futures of his four motherless sons included, was even more unfortunate. If he had not felt an overwhelming responsibility towards his younger siblings, Jack would have cheerfully joined the fleeing servants and never looked back. Except, after their mother had chosen death rather than seeing them all grow up, Jack could not be cruel enough to desert them, too.

  When the selfish old bastard had finally turned up his toes when Jack was just twenty, there had been nothing left for the boys except weed-choked fields, huge debts lodged with every merchant from here to Nottingham and the reputation of being the lowest of the low and little better than vermin. It was widely held that the family would cheat you in business, despoil your women and sell their own grandmother on a whim for their own benefit. Those that remembered his father in London, where he had been all of those things and had then scandalously compromised an heiress into marriage to round it off, probably thought much the same still, too. Nobody trusted a Warriner.

  They had even less respect for the Earl of Markham, a title his father had bandied about to justify his selfish vileness to such an extent it was now infamous, so Jack had never bothered using the tarnished title he had inherited with the crushing debt and crumbling house, in the hope the unpalatable legacy would blur with the sands of time. Seven arduous years on, they were still tarred with the same old brush and Jack sincerely doubted anyone would work for him even assuming he could, somehow, miraculously pay their wages. Those old wounds ran too deep, no matter how hard he tried to improve the family’s reputation.

  Of course, it did not help that all four of them were the spitting image of their feckless father. Everyone assumed the similarities went much further than skin deep and that it was only a matter of time before history repeated itself. The villagers were so wary of the Warriners that no shopkeeper would even allow them to open an account. Everything had to be paid for in cash there and then. No leeway, no benefit of the doubt, no better than any common vagabond who happened to be travelling through Nottinghamshire. Servants? That would be a funny joke if it wasn’t entirely on him.

  With a grunt he hauled down a fresh bale of hay and heaved it on to his shoulders to carry to the few cows in the other barn. Not that it wouldn’t be nice to have the extra hands. Especially as the health of the farm slowly recovered and required more and more of his time. Two years ago, his working day was ten hours long. Now it was nearer fourteen and that was pretty much non-stop, even in winter and with his brothers pulling as much weight as he did on a daily basis.

  The cows, horses and chickens needed feeding twice a day in this weather. The sheep on the grazing land fed themselves, but thanks to the heavy clay soil, needed constant supervision. The stupid animals were forever getting stuck in the mud, or stranded in the flooded areas nearest the river, and the least said about the constant risk of foxes the better. But the lamb he raised was good quality and he received a reasonable return for it now that he was building up a good relationship with a butcher in Lincoln. He was paid a little lower than market price for it, in view of the risk involved in doing business with a Warriner, but it was a start. It was a shame nobody would do any business with him closer to home. The long treks to the cathedral town and back wiped out a whole day he could ill afford to lose—but beggars could not be choosers. At least somebody bought his produce. Even the wool made some money, although not nearly as much as he needed or as much as it should.

  Despite all of the work and the paltry financial rewards, Jack was secretly proud of his achievements. In seven years he had turned the majority of this estate from barren wasteland into farmland and with no outside help at all. He had single-handedly rebuilt two of the dilapidated tenant cottages, cleared the tangled brambles from the plots around them and rented them out. Granted, for a pittance and the few pounds’ return a year was not much of an income, but it was considerably more income than this land had raised in his lifetime, not to mention the joy that came from gradually clawing his way out of his father’s debt. If only the price of corn would improve, then he might be able to turn an actual profit. In another few years, if the roof of the house held up and he could find the time to fix up the remaining tenant cottages, and after he had paid for Joe to finally go to medical school and then perhaps send Jacob to university, he might be able to employ one or two people to help ease his burdens. It all seemed very far away and he dared not hope.

  And now he had a blasted tea heiress criticising him. Perhaps he should have taken her up on her offer to pay him to hide her, except being paid to do a good turn for another did not sit well with him. It was something his father would have done unthinkingly—which, categorically, also made it the wrong thing for Jack to do as a matter of principal. Whilst there was no doubt he could use the woman’s money, his pride would never allow him to accept her charity—because that was what it would be. Charity. If he had a decent home, rather than a ramshackle manor, and if he’d had proper servants as earls were expected to have, she never would have offered such a preposterous thing after her horrific ordeal. But the bewitching Letty Dunston saw things exactly how they were and had offered him money because she meant well. In the same, humiliating way she had meant well when she had commented on the disappointing food and the dire state of his dusty nooks and crannies.

  Jack had never asked for hand-outs and he never would. He toiled and suffered and paid his own debts and stood proudly in front of those who judged him. If it killed him, which he suspected it all probably would in the end, he would turn this family’s fortunes around—and perhaps their reputations, too—and the tart opinions of well-meaning heiresses would not change that. He doubted she’d done a day’s work in all of her charmed life, so what right did she have to judge him anyway?

  And why should he care one way or another what the girl thought of him? He hardly knew her despite his odd feelings for her and, at best, their acquaintance was only temporary. As soon as it was safe for her leave, she would merrily skip back to her perfect life and become the darling of society again. He sincerely doubted she would ever give him a passing thought he was so far beneath her.

  Perhaps it had escaped her notice, but he was the one doing her a huge favour. If his humble home was not good enough for the princess to live in, then she could go elsewhere as he had originally wanted, to people who were more her sort or who would happily take her money to keep her safe. But as soon as he thought it he discarded it. He knew that he didn’t trust anyone else except himself and his brothers to keep her safe, so she would remain in his house until the blasted fourth of January, when he could finally stop thinking about the minx every minute of the blasted day and feeling so ashamed of who he was in her presence.

  * * *

  Letty was exhausted. Up until this moment, it had been a word she had blithely thrown about when she had been shopping for hours in Bond Street or had danced every dance at a ball. Now she fully understood what being truly exhausted meant, she promised herself she would never say it in vain again. She also had new respect for her maids, although there were at least ten of them in her Mayfair house working downstairs alone and she was only one. Nevertheless, Letty experienced an enormous sense of accomplishment when she cast her eyes critically around the great hall. The vaulted room looked positively homely thanks to her labours and she was looking forward to showing it off.

  Unfortunately, there was nobody to show it off to. She had spent almost the entire day completely on her own after insulting the master of the house so spectacularly at his breakfast table. Afterwards, Joe had dismissed Jack’s order that she pull her weight as merely his temper talking and had insisted she continue to rest in her bedchamber. Jacob had apologised profusely for his mischief and told her to do the same.

  ‘Jack h
as a temper,’ he’d said with a shrug. ‘But it disappears quickly.’

  Then the two youngest Warriners had donned heavy coats and plunged out the back door into the elements to begin their own work, leaving her alone with Jamie. The most taciturn Warriner did not offer her platitudes or reassurances. Instead, he wandered to a cupboard, pulled out buckets, mops and brooms, then silently put on his own coat and disappeared after the others. But she had seen the fierce loyalty towards his brother and the latent hostility in his eyes.

  She supposed they all thought she was not up to the task and that she would admit defeat before she had even started because she was a silly, spoiled heiress who was completely out of touch with the harsh realities of life. And perhaps she had been a few weeks ago. Not one of the brothers thought her capable of anything resembling work and, despite her own significant reservations, her pride refused to allow her to live up to their low expectations and surrender. There was more to her than everybody realised. She had determination and drive. She was capable of more than lighting up a ballroom or shopping for ribbons. She always excelled in everything she put her mind to. Letty had escaped kidnap and survived a night in a frozen forest. If she could manage that, she could certainly clean this house.

  And she had cleaned. Slowly at first, but once she got the hang of it there had been no stopping her. Years of supervising her own servants had taught her that polishing and dusting required vigour and it took her a while to learn the proper application of polish or how to avoid unsightly smears. Using all of her pent-up rage at her traitorous uncle and Bainbridge she had scrubbed and swept and buffed until her arms screamed and her back ached. Now, not a speck of dust dared linger in any of the corners. The old Persian rug had been beaten to within an inch of its life, largely because she had pictured the Earl of Bainbridge’s wrinkled face in the centre of it and had found thwacking it therapeutic. The windows glistened and the chandelier shimmered in the soft candlelight. It had made her smile to see the transformation and went a little way toward easing the guilt she felt at her horrendous faux pas.