Читать книгу A Candlelit Regency Christmas - Louise Allen - Страница 15

Chapter Eight

‘Where the blazes is my coffee?’ Alex enquired of thin air. The dining room was bereft of footmen, his coffee jug had been empty for ten minutes, there was no sign of his toast and the fire needed making up. He should have known it was too good to last, the peace and quiet and order that had reigned for almost a week since the departure of Tess and the kitten.

He wasn’t helpless and it wasn’t above his dignity to grapple with the coal tongs, but even so... With a sigh he got up, mended the fire and then gave the bell pull a prolonged tug. Silence. The hall, when he looked out, was deserted, the front door still bolted.

It was not unheard of for housebreakers to raid London houses, tie up the staff and make off with the silver with the owners none the wiser for hours. Breakfast time was a strange time to attempt it, though. Feeling slightly melodramatic, Alex retrieved his cane from the hall stand and walked softly to the service door under the stairs.

He was halfway down, wincing as a tread creaked, when he heard a thump and a clatter and took the remaining stairs in three strides. In the kitchen, her back to him, was a strange woman in a green gown. He could see the large bow of the voluminous apron that was wrapped round her, her glossy dark hair was topped by a large white cap; she had a badly bent toasting fork in one hand and the remains of half a dozen slices of bread around her feet.

‘You useless male object, you!’ she announced in tones of loathing.

One glance around the kitchen was enough to show Alex that he was the only male in sight. ‘Madam? If you care to tell me who you are I will endeavour to be of rather more utility.’

She whirled round, trampling the bread in the process. ‘Oh, no,’ Tess said flatly. ‘You.’

‘Me,’ Alex agreed and propped the cane unobtrusively in a corner. So not burglars, but an invasion that was far less easy to deal with. He told himself that the feeling in his chest was the after-effects of stalking burglars. Or dread. ‘What are you doing here—other than pulverising bread and breaking the kitchen equipment—and where is Mrs Semple?’

Tess moved into the light. Oh, my God, her face. The bruise was now multicoloured and she had the fading remains of a black eye. ‘And you are supposed to be resting that ankle.’ Alex trampled on the urge to scoop her up and make her lie down. She wouldn’t thank him for mentioning the way she looked, and thinking about it would probably only make it hurt more. And once I have my hands on her I may not be able to let go.

‘Hannah is very much under the weather and in bed with a headache, so I am attempting to make your breakfast. Everything was going well, wasn’t it?’ She tossed the toasting fork on to the table and frowned at him. ‘The ham and eggs? The sausage? The hot rolls? They were all perfect, I thought. Only there is no more coffee and Noel knocked the bread off the table the moment I had sliced it and I bent the toasting fork when I made a dive for it.’

‘Where are MacDonald and Phipps? Or Byfleet, come to that?’ One end of the table was laid for four breakfasts with plates at various stages from egg smeared to laden but scarcely touched.

‘MacDonald has run out for coffee and bread. I sent Phipps to the lodging house with some medicine that Hannah asked for. Byfleet has gone to Jermyn Street, I think. Buying shirts.’ That was delivered in a rapid mutter from a crouched position on the floor where Tess was retrieving broken slices of bread.

‘Dare I ask why he needs to buy shirts at this time in the morning?’ The nape of her neck was exposed, soft and pale and vulnerable, begging for his lips. Alex took the toasting fork, braced the wrought iron handle against the tabletop and leaned on it. It was more or less straight when he squinted down the length. His brain was more or less in control of his animal instincts, too.

Tess stood up with her hands full of bread, flinched when she found herself facing the prongs and looked round for somewhere to deposit her load.

‘On the fire,’ Alex suggested.

‘Throw food on the fire? I can’t do that. Sister Peter says it goes straight to the devil if you do that.’

‘And you believe her?’

‘Of course not.’ Tess found the slop bucket and tossed in the broken slices. ‘But it’s like not walking under ladders and tossing salt over your shoulder—one just gets into the habit.’

‘And I suppose nuns get into more habits than anyone,’ Alex observed, as he hitched one hip on to the table. He found a crust and buttered it lavishly. He should be both irritated and worried to find Tess back in the house; instead he felt oddly cheerful. Uncomfortably aroused, but happy.

Tess’s harassed expression transformed into a grin. ‘That is a terrible pun!’ She picked up the toasting fork and studied it. ‘My goodness, you are strong.’

‘It is all the exercise I get tossing nuns about. Shirts?’ Alex prompted, resisting the instinctive grin in return. It would be dangerous to let things get too cosy.

‘All your clean ones were in the ironing basket in the scullery this morning, apparently. Then Noel found them.’

‘Ah.’

‘More urgh, actually, although Mr Byfleet expressed himself rather freely on the subject.’ She eyed him warily. ‘I can make you some tea and bring it up if you like.’

‘No, I would not like. I will sit down here and wait to find out why my infallibly efficient housekeeper has run out of coffee, why when she has never, in all the years I’ve known her, succumbed to a headache, she has taken to her bed with one and why, when she has, she sent you to make my breakfast.’

‘Hannah has been spending a lot of time with me, I’m afraid, buying clothes and settling me in. I expect she’s been distracted and forgot to check the store cupboard. And she was very quiet yesterday evening. I thought she was simply deep in thought, but perhaps it was the headache.’

‘Have you had your breakfast?’ Alex found the honey and spread it on another crust.

‘I had mine first.’ Tess began to gather up the dirty crockery and took it through to the scullery. He noticed her limp had completely vanished. ‘Hannah says a scullery maid will come in later.’

‘So I believe. Tess, come back here and sit down.’ He waited until she returned and sat, neat and composed in her new dress and clean white apron. She folded her hands in her lap and regarded him, head on one side, like an inquisitive bird or a child waiting for an eccentric adult to do something entertaining. Very meek, very attentive. Why did he have the suspicion that she was laughing at him? ‘You shouldn’t be here.’ All he had to do was put his foot down; it should be a simple enough matter.

‘I am a perfectly good plain cook.’ Now she was managing to look wounded, blast her. ‘You would never have known I was here if it wasn’t for the problem with the coffee and the toast. Your staff are highly respectable.’ Alex opened his mouth, but she sailed on. ‘And who is to know?’

‘I know.’ And I am finding it decidedly unsettling. ‘You are not a servant.’

‘I am acting as your housekeeper. That is at least as respectable as being a governess in many households.’

‘Not for an unmarried lady, it isn’t.’ Alex dusted crumbs off his fingers and stood up. ‘I’ll call a hackney to take you back to the lodging house.’

The door to the area opened and Phipps came in, gawped when he saw Alex and whipped off his hat. ‘Good morning, my lord.’

‘Good morning. And how is Mrs Semple’s headache?’

‘Not good, my lord. I didn’t see her, only Mrs Green, the lodging house keeper. She says it’s the influenza and two more of her lady lodgers have it.’

‘I must go and nurse Hannah.’ Tess was on her feet, pulling off cap and apron.

‘No, miss. Mrs Green said that she and her girl will look after the ladies and that Mrs Semple said you weren’t to go back and risk catching it. She’s had your bags packed and I’ve brought them here with me.’

‘Absolutely not. You cannot stay here,’ Alex began as the door opened and a thin woman came in.

‘Morning, all. I’ll get the copper on the boil and— Oh!’ She stopped dead at the sight of Alex and Tess. ‘Where’s Mrs Semple? I’m Nelly ’Odgkins, come to do the weekly wash.’

‘She’s sick,’ Tess said before Alex could intervene. ‘Can you carry on as usual, please, Mrs Hodgkins?’

‘Right you are, mum.’

‘Miss Ellery—’

‘I’ve got the coffee and three loaves, Miss Ellery... My lord?’ MacDonald grounded the shopping baskets and stared at Alex as a scrap of a girl slid into the room through the door behind him.

‘Mornin’, Mr MacDonald, Mr Phipps. Ooh...’ She stopped and stared, wide-eyed.

‘You must be Annie. Off you go to the scullery and start on the breakfast dishes,’ Tess said firmly.

Alex strode round to shut the door in the hope of stemming the flood of incomers and, hopefully, the evil draught of cold December air.

His shove met with resistance against a brawny shoulder and a head covered with a battered low-crowned hat appeared round the door. ‘Morning, all. I’ve got some fine mutton cuts here, Mrs Semple. Er?’

‘Good morning.’ Tess waved the butcher inside, then turned to Alex. ‘You need a housekeeper, my lord,’ she said, low voiced, then clapped her hands for attention. ‘Annie, come out here for a moment, please. Mrs Semple is down with the influenza, I’m afraid, and I am Mi—Mrs Ellery, the housekeeper in her absence. Phipps, please get a kettle boiling for his lordship’s coffee. MacDonald, pass me the loaf, then you can start making the toast. I’ll be with you directly, Mr—?’

‘Burford, mum. Don’t you worry yourself, I’ll be fine over here till you’re all sorted.’ He took himself over to a bench in the corner, grounded his basket with a grunt and sat down, hands on knees, with every appearance of settling down to watch a play, much to Alex’s irritation.

‘I’ll see you in the study after breakfast, Mrs Ellery,’ Alex said. Any trace of pleasure at being alone with Tess had vanished. Who, he thought bitterly, was going to appear next? The parish constable? He scooped up the kitten, who had bounced out in pursuit of the butcher’s trailing bootlaces, and retreated upstairs with as much dignity as he could muster.

‘Routed from my own kitchen, Noel. Now what am I going to do with her?’

Noel yowled and bit Alex’s thumb.

* * *

A fresh pot of coffee, hot toast and the last pot of what Phipps assured her was Mrs Semple’s best strawberry conserve would surely soothe a troubled male breast at breakfast time, Tess thought. Halfway up the back stairs she remembered her apron and went down again to take it off and straighten her cap, which showed a tendency to slide on her tightly coiled hair.

‘You look the part, Miss...er...Mrs Ellery,’ MacDonald said with an encouraging smile that only confirmed that what she looked was in need of encouragement.

At Alex’s door she knocked. I must stop calling him that, even in my head.

‘Come.’ It was hardly welcoming. Perhaps the jam had been a mistake, too obvious a peace offering.

Tess walked in, wishing this was rather less like being summoned to Mother Superior’s study and that she could manage a confident smile. But that still made her cheek ache. ‘My lord.’ She bobbed a curtsy, folded her hands and waited.

‘For goodness’ sake, Tess, sit down and stop play-acting.’ He was using the point of a paperknife to flip over a pile of gilt-edged cards on his desk.

‘I am not. I am endeavouring to behave like a proper housekeeper in front of your staff and any visitors.’

‘You cannot be my housekeeper. You cannot stay here.’ Alex jammed the paperknife into a jar of pens. ‘You are most certainly not going to come into contact with any visitors.’

‘I am perfectly competent and they taught us housekeeping and plain cookery at the convent. This is a small house. I can manage very well.’

‘That is not what I mean.’ His gaze, those hazel eyes shadowed, was on her mouth, his own lips were set in a hard line.

They had felt firm, yet soft on hers. Strong, yet questioning. They had asked questions she... Tess closed her eyes and Alex made a sound, a sudden sharp inhalation of breath. She blinked and he was still staring at her.

‘It’s about that kiss, isn’t it? You think I was throwing myself at you.’ The words were out before she could censor them. She had been so certain he knew it had been a mistake, so certain that he had disregarded it with an ease she could only dream of managing herself.

‘No. Yes. Partly.’ Alex had his elbows on the arms of his chair. Now he clasped his hands together as though in prayer and rested his mouth against his knuckles, apparently finding something interesting on the surface of the desk. When he dropped his hands and looked up she could see neither amusement nor desire in his expression. ‘You should not be in a bachelor household, it is as simple as that. I am not in the habit of pouncing on my female staff and, although I can find explanations for what happened the other night, they are not excuses, not acceptable ones.’

He frowned. ‘I can’t imagine what Hannah was thinking of, sending you here. She was as set on moving you out as I was.’

‘She is ill and perhaps she’d had long enough to think about it and know I was perfectly safe here.’ Tess stopped herself pleating the fine wool of her skirt between her fingers. ‘I think she was more worried about you than about me, at first.’

‘About me?’ That at least wiped the brooding expression off his face. Alex sat up and stared at her.

‘I suspect she thought I was attempting to seduce and entrap you,’ Tess said primly. It was ludicrous, of course.

Alex threw his head back and laughed, a crack of sheer amusement. ‘You?’

‘I know. Ridiculous, isn’t it?’ Of course it is. So why did his laughter twist inside her with a stab of what was perilously close to shame? She managed a little cackle of her own, just to show how funny it was.

‘She was obviously sickening for the influenza even then,’ Alex said, with a shake of his head for the preposterousness of it.

Yes, preposterous was the word. Teresa Ellery, as ignorant as Noel was about the big wide world, battered and bruised, dressed as a convent orphan, might arouse Lord Weybourn’s chivalrous instincts, but not his amorous ones. That kiss, the one she’d built all those castles in the air about in her dreams and daydreams, was nothing more than the instinctive reaction of any man to a woman in his arms foolishly pressing her lips to his.

‘Anyway, I cannot go back to the lodgings. As well as the risk of catching the influenza myself, the landlady is quite busy enough as it is with sick nursing,’ Tess said. ‘If I am not seen above stairs when you have visitors, who is to know?’

He scrubbed one hand across his face, an oddly clumsy gesture for such an elegant man. ‘I suppose I can hardly send you off to an hotel. There’s a bedchamber above mine you could use,’ he said with evident reluctance. ‘None of the male staff sleep on that floor and it has a door that locks. We must get a maid for you, one to sleep in the dressing room.’ He reached out and pulled the bell, then fell silent until MacDonald came in. ‘Take Mrs Ellery to our usual domestic agency and assist her in finding a suitable lady’s maid.’

‘A lady’s maid?’

‘You are a lady, aren’t you?’ One brow lifted.

‘Well, yes.’ No, I’m not. ‘But a housemaid would do.’

‘We have two housemaids. They come in three times a week to do the cleaning. We do not require any more.’

‘Yes, my lord.’ To wrangle in front of the staff was impossible. Tess stood up, dropped a neat curtsy and waited for the footman to open the door for her. ‘We will go immediately, if you have finished your current tasks, MacDonald.’

* * *

‘It’s a very good agency,’ MacDonald confided as they stood outside the door with its neat brass plate. ‘His lordship gets all his staff here.’

Twinford and Musgrave Domestic Agency. Est. 1790. It certainly sounded established and efficient, Tess told herself. They would guide her, which was a good thing, because she had only the vaguest idea of the details of a lady’s maid’s duties.

MacDonald opened the door for her. ‘Mrs Ellery from Lord Weybourn’s establishment, requiring a lady’s maid,’ he informed the man at the desk, who rose after a rapid assessment of Tess’s gown, pelisse and muff. She was grateful for Hannah’s insistence on good-quality clothes or presumably she would have been directed to join the queue of applicants lined up on the far side of the hall herself.

‘Certainly, madam. Would you care to step through to the office? My assistant will discuss your requirements and review the available—’

He was interrupted by a baby’s wailing cry. The door opposite opened and a young woman backed out, clutching the child to her breast. ‘But, Mr Twinford, I can turn my hand to anything. I’ll wash, I can sew, scrub—’

She was of medium height, neatly and respectably dressed, although not warmly enough for the weather, Tess thought, casting an anxious look at the baby who was swathed in what seemed to be a cut-down pelisse.

‘You’ve turned your hand to more than domestic duties, my girl.’ The voice from the office sounded outraged. ‘How can you have the gall to expect an agency with our reputation to recommend a fallen woman to a respectable household?’

‘But, Mr Twinford, I never...’ The woman was pale, thin and, to Tess’s eyes, quite desperate.

‘Out!’ The door slammed in her face and she stumbled back.

‘I do beg your pardon, Mrs Ellery. Shocking!’ The clerk moved round the side of the desk. ‘Now, look here, you—’

‘Stop it. You are frightening the baby.’ Tess stepped between them. ‘What is your name?’

‘Dorcas White, ma’am.’ Her voice was quiet, genteel, exhausted. Close up, Tess could see how neatly her clothes had been mended, how carefully the baby’s improvised coverings had been constructed.

‘Are you a lady’s maid, Dorcas?’

‘I was, ma’am. Once.’

‘Come with me.’ She turned to the spluttering clerk, who was trying to get past her to take Dorcas’s arm. ‘Will you please stop pushing? We are leaving.’ She guided the unresisting woman out to the street and into the waiting carriage. ‘There, now at least we have some peace and we are out of the wind. You say you are a lady’s maid and you are looking for a position?’

‘I was, but I can’t be one now, not with Daisy here. I’ll do anything, work at anything, but I’ll not give her up to the parish.’

‘Certainly not.’ All that was visible of the baby was a button nose and one waving fist. ‘Where is her father?’

Dorcas went even whiter. ‘He...he threw me out when I started to show.’

‘What, you mean he was your employer?’ A nod. ‘Did he force you?’ Another nod. ‘And his wife said nothing?’

‘He told her I’d... He said I had...’

She would get the full story later when the poor woman was less distressed. ‘Well, we won’t worry about that now. I need a lady’s maid. You can come and work for me. Or for Lord Weybourn, rather.’

‘You are Lady Weybourn?’ Dorcas was staring at her as though she could not believe what she was hearing.

‘Me?’ Tess steadied her voice. ‘No, I am his new housekeeper, but it is an all-male household and I need a maid for appearances, you understand.’ She looked at the thin, careworn face, the chapped hands gently cradling the baby, the look of desperate courage in the dark eyes. ‘It would be more like a companion’s post, really. Would you like the position?’

‘Oh, yes, ma’am. Oh, yes, please.’ And Dorcas burst into tears.