A Proper Mistress
Page 13
But now she had gone and found herself a gentleman who was as far above her touch as were the clouds in the sky. And she was only his for hire. And for pretend.
Still, she knew herself lucky.
She might not have him for long—nor for genuine—but she had him for now. And those first few tear-filled weeks in St. Marylebone's Workhouse had taught her the wisdom of living for the moment, and not for some lost past or uncertain future.
She would stop fretting and she'd enjoy what she could.
When it ended, she would have fifty pounds in her pocket and some lovely memories. Yes, she would.
She just hoped that proved enough.
With that settled in her mind, she made for the breakfast room, the faint aromas of hot food stirring her appetite.
She paused, however, as she opened the door and saw the squire at the table—and those dogs of his. They looked larger and hungrier today.
Lowering his paper, the squire glanced at her before he went straight back behind it. The dogs seemed to take their cue from their master for they also disappeared, darting under the table as if it were a cave for them.
Just remember he is not supposed to like you, she told herself, squaring her shoulders. And he's certainly disagreeable enough there's no need to have a care for him. But it was rather a bit much that even the dogs turned their backs to her.
Shutting the door behind her, she slipped into her Sallie accent. "Coo—I'm fair famished I am."
The squire glowered at her over the top of his paper, his eyes narrowed. And Molly almost smiled to see a copy of the expression that Theo got when he was crossed. Lord, these Winslow men! Like half-wild boys.
"Though you slept all day," the squire said, his voice a low grumble.
She started to deny this, but it occurred to her that some of Sallie's girls indeed worked the night through and took their rest while the sun shone. Not her hours, of course.
Still, she saw no need to stray from the truth, so she said, "I'd rise from the dead, I would, for one of Mrs. Brown's meals—she's a way with food that could make an angel wish for mortal form."
With a snort, he put up his paper before him.
He had not, Molly noted, either risen in her presence as should a gentleman for a lady, nor offered to pour her coffee. Well, that certainly told what he thought of her. And showed poor manners on his part, she decided, for a real gentleman would have treated her just the same as any lady.
Clattering plates and humming, she made her selections from the sideboard—being generous with her helpings, for didn't those thin wafers of ham just look to melt on the tongue. She sat down in a chair near the windows.
The rattle of plates had pulled the dogs from under the table, and they sat lined up on either side of her. One of them—the brown and white one—had a hopeful look in his eye as he licked his lips.
She glanced at them and at the squire's paper. Tearing off three bits of ham, she had it disappear as soft tongues lapped her fingers. She smiled at them. Well, at least she had some friends now.
"I expect Theo'll be wantin' to send somethin' to the papers about us getting married. Quite excitin' to think of my name being printed up for all t'see."
The paper lowered. Molly met the squire's harsh stare with a calm smile in place. How much would it take to make him lose his temper and throw her and Theo out? He seemed even more stubborn than his son.
She began to cut apart her smoked herring. "D'you think Theo's brother'll come to the wedding? I'd quite like that."
With a snap the paper rose again. "I've only one son."
Molly's fork clattered onto the china. The noise startled the dogs into ducking under the table and pulled the squire out from behind his paper barricade.
"Just like that—" Molly said, staring at him. "You're willing to throw a child away? Well, of all the—why I wouldn't waste a single relation if I had one! And that's not just from being an orphan."
With a snort, he thrust up his paper again.
Molly's eyes narrowed. Thickening her Sallie accent, she hoped for the worst. If he threw her out now she would happily dance out the door with Theo. And she would know she had done Theo the greatest good in helping him out from under the influence of such a disagreeable old man. "I plan to be a proper sister, I do, to Theo's brother. So Terrance'll be welcome here when I'm mistress."
With an abrupt movement, the squire flattened his paper onto the table next to his coffee cup and glared at her. "You're...you're impertinent!"
She forced a broad smile and patted her curls. "Why, ducks, ain't that just dear of you. I ain't ever been called that afore."
The squire's face flushed a splotchy red, and Molly watched, a little worried now. "Here now—you aren't going to have an apoplexy on me, are you?"
Scraping his chair back against the wooden floor, the squire pushed himself from the table and stood scowling at her, black bushy eyebrows tight. She lifted her chin, unwilling to allow him to bully her.
Imagine him casting off his own son—and for what?
What, indeed, she wondered? Oh, gracious, she hoped Theo's brother had not done something so dastardly as to deserve this treatment. She thought of how Theo had spoken of his brother—there had been nothing but admiration in his tone, and she could not imagine he would think so well of a brother who had committed some horrible crime.
So she glared back at the squire.
For a moment, his mouth worked, almost as if he was chewing the words he wanted to spit at her. Turning away, he strode out, his boots clomping and his dogs clattering after him, their nails skittering on the wood. The heavy oak door shut behind him with an ominous click.
Letting out a breath, Molly slumped in her chair, her appetite gone and her insides shaking. Well, Theo wouldn't be able to say she had not done her best today to make herself unwanted.
However, she did not have the chance that day to tell Theo of her exchange with his father. They met only just before dinner, and before she could say anything, the squire came in, black eyebrows as low as storm clouds, his mouth set in a line, his blue eyes snapping with irritation.
Theo kissed her hand and did his best to act the lover—and very distracting it was, too. Only not so distracting that she could ignore the squire's sullen mood, which settled around them like a heavy, chilling mist. Even the dogs seemed to sense it, for they kept themselves tucked into the corners of the room.
She found it a relief to escape, her dinner hardly touched, and she thought if that continued, she would be taking in Jane's dresses as well as having had to take them up.
The next two days did continue with Theo making himself scarce, and Molly could only wish she might, too. She tried to make a game of it with the squire. She would roll the dice and move her piece, and the squire would take his turn, pitting his will against hers. And they would play until one of them ran all their pieces off the board—only she was not certain which of them that would be.
He was not only a stubborn man, he was as bitter as cold tea. It amazed her that he could have the utter adoration of even so much as one of his dogs.
In the evenings, she at least had Theo's company. And he stole kisses from her when he encountered her on the stairs or alone in a room. That, however, did not help. It left feeling like dough wound up in a twist.
On the third day of this, she actually considered fleeing the house herself, for she longed for even a momentary rest from this perpetual anxiety. She had the excuse, after all, of having promised Lady Thorpe to visit. Only at the thought of slipping out, guilt stung her. She was here to earn her money.
However, she was also finding it impossible to eat in company, and she was half-starved.
She fled to the only haven she had ever known in her life—the kitchen.
Arming herself with Lady Thorpe's recipe for almond cake—for at least that gave her an excuse to venture into Mrs. Brown's domain— Molly found her way to the back of the house. She hoped she would find Mrs. Brown alone. If Simps
on was there, or any of the other oh-so-superior staff, she would not stay. She just could not take any more disapproving or curious stares, not and try to take so much as a bite of anything.
However, stepping into the kitchen, she found it a bright, high-ceilinged room, blessedly empty of anything other than pots, a cheerful fire and something that smelled of meat cooking, bubbling in an iron pot that hung over the heart fire to her left.
The stone walls had been plastered and painted white. Copper pots hung neatly from hooks on the ceiling, carrots lay stacked on a well-scrubbed table in the middle of the room and it all looked tidy and inviting.
With her nose twitching, Molly stepped into the room and took up an iron hook from the fender to swing the pot out from the fire. Putting her face into the steam, she breathed in the aroma from the bubbling mixture. Soup, she gathered, already starting to wonder what spices had been added and wishing she had a spoon to taste it.
She had just begun to glance around the room for a ladle or some such thing, when a firm step on the stone flooring made her straighten, her cheeks warm for being where she had no right to be.
A tall, slender woman dressed in brown stopped in the doorway and stared at her, gray eyes wide in an angular face. Her high-waisted white apron, neatly starched, and her lace trimmed cap at once told her status as cook, and Molly found herself blinking in surprise. This woman looked only a year or more than her own age, and Molly banished the image she had been building of Mrs. Brown as ample, aged, and kind.
The woman's mouth puckered at once. Hands folded prim before her, she said, her tone pricking like the edge of a knife, "You should have rung if you wished something from the kitchen."
Molly struggled for an excuse, but could only find the truth. "If I did, that'd only bring Simpson scowling at me, and I am sorry for poking my nose into your soup, but it smelled too good to resist. Lamb?"
A reluctant answer came. "Beef bones reducing for carrot soup."
"Oh, but there's lamb in it, I'd swear it."
Mrs. Brown's eyebrows rose. "Well, I use a bit of mutton—only for flavor."
"And turnips, onions..." Molly's eyes narrowed as she considered the aromas. "And something else, I'd swear."
"Marjoram," Mrs. Brown said, her tone cautious and her glance now suspicious.
"Ah—I'd not thought of that. A very nice touch. But I'm intruding, and I only meant to bring you this." She stuck out a hand with the recipe. "It's for Lady Thorpe's almond cakes."
With her mouth still puckered, Mrs. Brown reached out and tentatively took the recipe. She unfolded the paper, glanced once at Molly, and began to scan the sheet, her eyes sharpening with interest. "Orange-flower water! I knew it."
Molly smiled. "Ah, I thought you might appreciate it."
Mrs. Brown glanced up, her expression sever again. "Why is that?"
"You'd never serve such a duck as you did the other night if you couldn't. Duck's so easy to come out greasy or tough. And it needs just the right sauce—the currant was lovely."
Mrs. Brown's mouth softened. "You seem to know your way around a kitchen."
"Well, why not be interested in food—we all have to eat. And I wish I could, only between the squire and Simpson, it's hard to manage a swallow of anything. Which is why I've been sending your dishes back—please don't think it reflects on your talent."
The faintest of militant glimmer shone in Mrs. Brown's gray eyes. "Simpson glowered at me for four months after I took on the job from Mrs. Rummer."
"Was she the cook before?"
"Aye. Plain and simple was her motto—took me three months after she retired to even slip in so much as a curry."
"Oh, you do curries—I've not had a proper one since I was a girl in India. Other than what I cook myself. But I'd rather eat someone else's. If I cook it, I taste too much to want to sit down after for a meal."
"India was it?" Hesitant interest stirred in Mrs. Brown's eyes and Molly's heart lifted. The woman still looked uncomfortable, but perhaps they might just manage a truce.
And Mrs. Brown asked, with only a little doubt in her tone, "I don't suppose you've a recipe for a mulaga-tawny soup?"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Molly brightened at once, and she began to talk about the foods of India and the dishes she had learned to cook as a girl for her uncle—Madras lamb, sag or spinach, dal or lentils. Her uncle had disliked the spiced native foods, but Molly soon learned that combinations that could be used to sooth as well as to stimulate. The household cook—an elderly woman with silver hair and dark skin and a red dot on her forehead—had been willing to teach Molly, and she learned ways to use spices to tempt any appetite. Molly felt an obligation to be as ready to pass on such knowledge, only she had found few interested in learning.
She began to talk now of what she knew.
It wasn't long until Mrs. Brown offered up a taste of her broth—serving up a bowl of it, actually, and asking for suggestions. And nothing would do for her but to take down the tea canister, unlock it, and set a pot brewing.
With them comfortable around the kitchen table in high-backed wooden chairs—and with Molly stuffed on Mrs. Brown's biscuits, and Mrs. Brown's leather-bound household book now six pages thicker with Molly's knowledge of cumin, turmeric, and coriander for curry, saffron for rice, and which peppers to use with which meats—it seemed to Molly as if they had known each other for years.
"The Hindu," she said, taking another biscuit, "believe food can balance temperament to keep a body in harmony. Hot food stimulate hot tempers."
"Then I'd best thrown out my peppers for this household," Mrs. Brown said, her tone dry.
Molly grinned. "Pitta is what the Hindu would say—all fire and no air or water. I'd wager Theo's brother's the same, for all the trouble he seems to have caused. And here's Theo—"
She broke off. She had almost confided about Theo's plan to get himself disinherited.
Mrs. Brown seemed not to notice. She only poured fresh tea from the pot and settled back in her chair. "Well, I don't like to gossip, but I will say the squire brought this on his own head. I grew up hereabouts—started off a between-maid under Mrs. Rummer—and after Mrs. Winslow died, the squire let those lads of his run wild."
"So you knew Theo's mother?"
"I did that—lovely lady. Elegant as a willow, and just as frail. Her husband's temper used to lay her flat with the megrims so that she was forever going off to some watering place for a cure. Only one time she didn't come back. Or least the squire came home with her only mortal remains to bury. Buried his heart too, that's what Mrs. Rummer used to swear."
"How awful," Molly said, thinking of the death of her parents and her uncle, and how little sympathy she had felt for the squire. It would be harder to judge him harshly now.
"What was awful was how he locked himself in his shooting room and wouldn't see no one for weeks after. Word went around that he might shoot himself, but he finally came out and he took to drink something fierce. Mrs. Rummer swore he'd end buried in a bottle or breakin' his neck on one of those horses of his, but he hasn't so far. However, I say—and so did Mrs. Rummer—that if he'd taken a proper interest in his sons, his eldest wouldn't have ended in such trouble and the youngest wouldn't be looking to follow his brother's path."
Molly frowned. "Terrance didn't go so far as to murder anyone did he?"
"No—but it might have been less fuss if he had." Pausing, Mrs. Brown glanced toward the doorway and leaned forward. "He ran off with Mr. Meers's daughter—he's the vicar, as you may know. 'Course, not that she's what I'd call a pious miss—not a bit of it. But Mr. Terrance ought not to have left her in Brighton! Particularly not when he's her third-cousin."
"Gracious—well, I see why that might upset his father. But to disinherit him!"
"It might not have come to that, only Mr. Meers tracked his girl down and found her being kept in some inn by a military fellow—well on her way to being nothing more than a...." she broke off, her mouth puckering.
"He did—true Christian charity. You have to admit that. But that's when the real trouble started. He was for telling everyone he'd go to the law and sue for damages, he would, and I heard the squire had to pay a dear sum to put a stop to it. Then Mr. Terrance wouldn't so much as answer a single note from the squire to return home and account for himself, decent-like. That's what really did for Mr. Terrance, if you ask me. For the squire to be touched in his pocket and not have so much as the satisfaction of ringing a proper fury down on his son's head—well...."
She shook her head and stirred her tea. "The squire was in a proper fit when he sent for Mr. Braysworth—he's the solicitor, but you wouldn't know that. Not a bit of the land's entailed, so the squire could cut out his eldest from everything—and he did, too. You could hear him shouting orders to Mr. Braysworth clear through the house, you could. But I expect Mr. Theo told you all that already."
"Well, actually—he hasn't. He gets into a proper fit himself at the mention of it. And I have to say, it still seems extreme to throw away a son like this, so I can't blame Theo really for being so angry about that part of it. Oh, it's such a tangle!"
Speculation lit Mrs. Brown's eyes. "You actually care for Mr. Theo, don't you?"
Molly couldn't stop the warmth that tingled on her cheeks. She fixed her stare on her half-empty teacup, worried her lower lip with her teeth and finally glanced up again. The sharpness had faded from Mrs. Brown's gray eyes, replaced by curiosity. Still, the woman could gossip with the best of them, and while it would be a treat to share her troubles, Molly hesitated at confiding too much when she wondered if it would too rapidly spread through the house.
She only smiled and said, "Is there a woman in the neighborhood who can resist him?"