Miss Delectable: Mischief in Mayfair Book One

by Burrowes, Grace

“I don’t trust nobody. I could do with a slice of that gingerbread if I’m to hare after Sycamore Dorning.”

  Rye unwrapped the loaf, used a folding knife to cut off a thick serving, and passed it to Otter. “Tell Dorning there’s a problem at the warehouse, and mind Mrs. Dorning doesn’t overhear you. I’ll wait here.”

  “Wait carefully, guv. Whoever did this knows you’ll be poking about looking for answers.”

  “Go,” Rye said, “and then find Nicolas, wake him up, and send him here as well.”

  Otter scampered off, gingerbread in hand, while Rye made a circuit of the entire warehouse, counting cases and mentally consulting a map of goods in his head. The thieves had taken the good wine, but unbeknownst to them, the very best of the champagne, the vintage Rye would have proudly served to the monarch himself, sat in a dim corner stacked in unremarkable crates.

  Rye opened a case in an abundance of caution and reassured himself the bottles were undisturbed. When he’d counted each case and opened several more, he restored the corner to order and went to the door to wait for Dorning.

  Try though he might to assemble only the facts, he could not stop thinking of a new boy who refused to sleep in the house and who frequently skipped lessons.

  * * *

  Sycamore Dorning kept his peace when he wanted instead to shout and curse.

  “You were drugged, Nicolas,” Goddard said to the aging Frenchman pacing before the warehouse door. “Somebody stood you to a pint or a dram down at the Coq et Poule and slipped something into your drink. Half an hour later, you’re dozing at your post.”

  Goddard was patient with the old fellow, offering sweet reason instead of profanity.

  “Easy enough to do,” Sycamore observed. “Most émigrés favor a few specific pubs, and you apparently prefer the Coq et Poule. If the Coq has recently switched to winter ale, then a little bitterness in your pint wouldn’t be noticeable.”

  Nicolas, who had the dimensions of a wizened jockey, shook his head. “Not a pint. I drink the brandy before I come to work, to keep away the cold.”

  “Brandy is even easier to doctor,” Sycamore said. “My sister-in-law is something of an expert on medicinal herbs. She could mix up a brew that would knock you flat before you could say vive l’empereur.”

  The little man still looked unconvinced, while Sycamore could not read any reaction at all from Goddard. The colonel’s calm was unnerving, though Jeannette had that same vast composure in the face of monumental provocation.

  “To unload four hundred cases of champagne,” Goddard said, “even with a half-dozen men on the job, would take time, Nicolas. You might doze off for a few minutes or even half an hour, but not for half the night.”

  “I do not doze off, Monsieur Goddard. You pay me to keep the wine safe, and I am awake at all times.”

  “What of the lock?” Sycamore asked, rather than allow Gallic pride to continue denying the obvious.

  “Picked,” Goddard replied, “though not very competently. The tumblers were damaged. Nicolas, you are excused, and because the job has become more dangerous, I will find somebody to watch through the night with you.”

  “I have a cousin,” Nicolas began. “Very trustworthy, very—”

  Goddard waved a hand in a gesture that managed to look French. “I’m sure he is, but if you work with somebody you don’t know well, you will be more wary than if I employ your trustworthy cousin. This was not a casual purloining of a few bottles, my friend. This theft was carefully planned and executed mischief.”

  Nicolas rubbed his chin, peered around the warehouse, and took a muttering, shuffling leave of his employer.

  “That was brilliant,” Sycamore said, “that bit about being more wary. Spared everybody’s pride. I do hope the next warehouseman you hire won’t be on nodding terms with Methuselah.”

  Goddard retrieved a cavalry sword from atop some crates and headed for the door. “I’m cold, furious, and hungry. Come along.”

  And yet, he’d been the soul of civility and patience with the old watchman. “Where are we going?”

  “To my house, where Jeanette will not see me in a temper and hear me using profanity.”

  Sycamore had seen the inside of Rye Goddard’s house exactly once, and then only a foyer, hallway, and back garden.

  “Jeanette hears me using profanity regularly. She even—I tell you this in familial confidence—occasionally uses a discreet damn herself.”

  Goddard stopped outside the warehouse to pull the door closed. “Do you drive her to it?”

  “Oh, sometimes. She has her hands full with me and seems to enjoy the challenge. Are we to parade through town with your sword on display?”

  “No.” Goddard shoved the sword at him. “Conceal it under your cloak.”

  Sycamore did as directed, because twitting Goddard in his present mood was ill-advised. “That champagne had to be worth a pretty penny.”

  “It was, and had I not lost customers steadily over the past few months, and had I not had your order sent over from Calais directly, I’d be without goods to sell until I could replace what was stolen.”

  Goddard set a brisk pace, for all his gait was slightly uneven.

  “But as it happens, the loss of inventory, while inconvenient, will not cripple you?”

  “I doubt crippling me outright was the point. That very sword was taken from my office, Dorning. Stolen from my home and left at the scene of the crime. It’s engraved with my family motto, and I know my own weaponry when I see it.”

  The sword was surprisingly heavy, but then, it was a lethal weapon, not a fashion accessory. “Diabolical,” Sycamore said, understating the case by miles. “To take something so personal and use it to emphasize a second, larger theft.”

  “What has been stolen is my patience. I’d suspect Fournier, but he has an entirely different and more credible scheme in train.”

  “We’re not taking the alleys?” Sycamore asked. “On every other occasion when I have been honored to perambulate in your company, we’ve kept to the alleys.”

  “That was for the sake of my boys, to make their job easier. The streets are crowded and escort duty more difficult. Then too…”

  “Yes?”

  “The alleys are quieter, and I do prefer quiet. I don’t hear as well as I ought, and quiet eases that burden.”

  Goddard didn’t hear as well as he ought, he nearly limped, and he wore an eye patch. That a man already beleaguered by wounds and woes was also the victim of thieves bothered Sycamore. What bothered him more was the challenge of how to relay events to Jeanette honestly without upsetting her.

  “Then you might not hear a thief thumping around in your study when you slept on the next floor up?”

  “I might not, but I know how the thief gained access to my home.”

  They turned down another street. Goddard slipped the crossing sweeper a coin and muttered a few words in French. The boy grinned and nodded, and the coin disappeared into his pocket.

  “How did the thief gain access?”

  “Mrs. Murphy leaves the door unlatched throughout the day for deliveries and also for her admirer. I suspect she has taken to leaving the door unlatched at night for Victor, our new boy. He doesn’t care to bathe and sleeps in the stable. If the night is bitter—and the nights are getting colder—an unlatched door means he can sneak into the kitchen in the small hours and, come morning, pretend he’s simply showing up early for breakfast.”

  “You run a charitable establishment while pretending to sell champagne. Does Jeanette know the extent of your eleemosynary activities?”

  “The boys all earn their keep, besides,”—Goddard turned up his own front walkway—“but for Jeanette’s sacrifice, I could easily have been on the streets myself or, worse, locked up with my father in debtors’ prison. She spared us that. These boys have no sister willing to endure a purgatory of a marriage so they can amount to something.”

  Jeanette’s first marriage had indeed been a purgatory. “You and Je
anette are overdue for an embarrassingly frank discussion of the past, and then I do hope you both set it aside once and for all. She is now married to a man who adores her without limit, and dwelling on what has gone before serves no purpose.”

  Goddard opened the door and waved Sycamore into the house. “The sword, if you please.”

  Sycamore handed it over. “You don’t set much store by the weapon itself, do you?”

  Goddard hung it on a coatrack as if it were one of a half-dozen umbrellas or an everyday walking stick.

  “I keep that thing as a warning to myself, as a reminder that I have taken lives and bear the weight of that violence on my conscience. I was lucky. I lived to see another day, but fighting like that—to the death, for some fat king or aging emperor—took a toll I refuse to pay again.”

  “So you will seethe and fume and hire more watchmen, but you won’t fight whoever has done this to you? Isn’t it possible that the same people who whisper against you in the clubs are now escalating their attacks and inflicting material damage to go with the harm to your reputation?”

  Goddard wrested Sycamore’s cloak from him and set his hat on the sideboard. “It’s entirely possible. Somebody wants me out of England, but what I cannot fathom is why. Come along. We’ll eat in the kitchen like farmers, and you will give me the benefit of your thinking regarding my various suspects. Fournier is among them, as is that fellow Deschamps, but I cannot rule out a disgruntled Englishman who resents the fact that I’ve been knighted.”

  Sycamore followed, more curious than hungry, but also a little dismayed. Jeanette needed to know her brother was safe, and better still if Sir Orion allowed a smidgen of contentment into his life. If the list of suspects included every soldier who’d ever borne a grudge against a commanding officer, then Goddard’s potential detractors were legion.

  “Tell me more about Deschamps.”

  “He’s a former French officer, devilishly handsome, and a known spy.” Goddard took off down the steps leading into the bowels of the house. “If he’s still frequenting your club, then your job is to find out what the hell he’s doing in London.”

  Sycamore followed, though he’d been hoping to see the house’s public rooms. “I have a job?”

  Goddard paused at the bottom of the steps. “I realize even that limited brief exceeds your meager capabilities, but somebody has declared war on me, and needs must. If I approach Deschamps directly, he’ll simply prevaricate.”

  “So approach him indirectly.”

  “I tried that. How is Jeanette?”

  Worried about you. “Thriving in my loving care and happily taking an interest in activities at the club. We’re buying a property out at Richmond and hope to use it for our market garden.”

  “My boys could help with that undertaking. They are honest and hardworking, and for all I know, I’ll soon have to flee to France one step ahead of the watch.”

  They are not your boys. “You’d flee to France?”

  Goddard looked around the kitchen, which was tidy, warm, and dimly lit. “I don’t know. I don’t want to, but… I don’t know. How hard can it be to find bread and cheese?”

  “Well, there’s the breadbox, and the cheese might be in the window box this time of year. Swing the kettle over the fire, and we’ll manage.”

  Goddard produced a half loaf of bread wrapped in linen. “If I must retreat to France, will you do something for me?”

  “I will hire those hooligans of yours, if that’s what you’re asking.” The cheese was not too sharp, not too mild. Sycamore set it on the wooden counter along with a tub of butter, cheese toast being among the delicacies he’d learned to prepare during his limited banishment to university.

  “My hooligans will be a credit to any organization that employs them, and their spoken French is better than yours. Are we having tea, ale, or cider?”

  “Cider.”

  Goddard smiled, a surprising, wistful expression suggesting that, in the right light, he might have a certain roguish appeal.

  “Look after Annie Pearson. She puts up with more than you know from that fop Jules Delacourt, and he’s not half as talented as you think he is.”

  “More to the point,” Sycamore said, “he’s not half as talented as he thinks he is, but he brings a certain cachet that the club needs.” Sycamore busied himself slicing cheese, though he’d figured out exactly how he’d start in his recounting of the day’s events to Jeanette.

  Orion Goddard referred to the estimable Miss Pearson as Annie now, and when faced with the prospect of a retreat to France, all Goddard asked was that Sycamore look after her.

  Not look after the business, the boys, the real estate, or even Jeanette, but look after Annie Pearson. Well, well, well.

  “Don’t cut the bread too thickly,” Sycamore said, “and Miss Pearson looks after herself.”

  Goddard tested the blade of the bread knife against his thumb. “I know. Damn it all to hell and back, that much I do know.”

  * * *

  Ann gained new respect for soldiers at war, for the Coventry’s kitchen became a battle zone.

  The spices were tampered with, such that the jar labeled tarragon contained nutmeg, and the one that should have held nutmeg instead held ginger. Ann only discovered the problem when she’d dusted nutmeg onto a spinach quiche that had to be consigned to the staff hall.

  The footmen gobbled up the entire quiche, oblivious to the blunder.

  Emptying each jar, washing it thoroughly, and refilling it with the proper contents took most of an afternoon, but Ann used the exercise to teach Hannah about the uses of different flavorings.

  The next day, somebody soured the heavy cream, which became apparent as soon as Ann added a dollop to her white sauce and watched an hour’s worth of work curdle.

  “I don’t understand,” Hannah said softly as she set a fresh bottle of cream on the counter. “Why would a chef do mischief in his own kitchen?”

  “We don’t know that Jules is doing this,” Ann replied, though Jules had his own spice cabinet separate from that of the rest of the kitchen, and Jules did not typically use much cream in the main dishes.

  “He’s doing it,” Hannah said. “I forgot my journal last night, so I came back down here after the club had closed, and he was wandering around, drinking from a bottle and looking mean.”

  “He’s homesick,” Ann said, sniffing the new bottle of cream and finding only a fresh dairy scent. “Taste this.” She poured a small portion into a glass.

  “It’s fine,” Hannah said, after taking a sip and swiping her tongue over her top lip. “Will we make the pear compote for the buffet tonight?”

  “That is a good suggestion. If you were to make our recipe better, what would you add?”

  Hannah’s brows knit. “Chopped walnuts?”

  Ann wanted to hug the girl. “Walnuts are a fine idea, though I suspect almonds would do as well. Look in the pantry to see which we have more of.”

  Hannah had learned not to scamper, but young Henry Boardman had just arrived—twenty minutes late—and was dashing past the mullioned window that looked out on the garden. One moment, Henry was pelting for the staff hall, the next he’d gone sprawling and brought a tray of wineglasses down with him.

  “Sodding, almighty, bloody…” Henry sprang to his feet and marched up to Jules, who was lounging against the deal table. “Why the hell did you do that?”

  One of Henry’s hands was bloody, and shards of glass adorned his sleeve.

  “You tripped,” Jules said, smiling faintly. “You hurry because you are late again, and you do not watch where you go.”

  “I am not late. I fetched fresh flowers for the bar like Mrs. Dorning told me to, which meant I started my shift early. I watch where I go, and you tripped me.”

  Jules glanced up at the kitchen’s high ceiling. “So dramatic, you English, and so proud. One stumbles occasionally, and this is no shame. I will dock your wages only half the cost of the wineglasses, because—”

>   “You should pay for the damned glasses yourself,” Henry retorted. “For interfering with me when I’m attending to my duties and then blaming me, just as you would have blamed Hannah for spilling the peas.”

  Jules met Ann’s gaze. “The girl was clumsy, as young girls often are. Right, Pearson?”

  The club would open in an hour, and thus the kitchen was at its busiest. Pierre, the new sous-chef, was by the enormous open hearth, a carving knife in his hand as hams and beef roasts turned slowly on the spit.

  Jules had timed this latest stunt for the moment with the biggest audience and the greatest disruption to the kitchen’s smooth functioning. The three scullery maids were at the wet sink, gawking over their shoulders, while various assistants at their stations were pretending to chop or stir or slice. Hannah stood in the doorway to the pantry, looking ready to make a bad situation awful.

  “Pearson,” Jules said, prowling around the broken glasses, “do you now ignore your superior when he addresses you directly?”

  Glass crunched under Jules’s boots, expensive glass that Henry could not afford to replace. “Hannah was not clumsy,” Ann said, “and neither was Henry.”

  “We have a difference of opinion.” Jules smiled pleasantly. “Step into my office, Pearson, and we will resolve our differences.”

  “Nan, please fetch the broom and dustpan,” Ann said. “When the floor has been thoroughly swept, take a damp mop to it. Only damp. We don’t want anybody slipping and falling by accident.”

  “Yes, Miss Pearson.”

  “Henry, your hand is cut, and your coat needs to be brushed off. Hannah, see to his hand, and wrap the cut in a honey poultice for at least twenty minutes.”

  Hannah curtseyed, while Henry glared daggers. The footmen did not in theory work for the kitchen, so Henry wasn’t at risk for losing his post, but he was clearly at risk for losing his temper.

  Ann followed Jules up the steps and along the corridor to a cozy office that faced the stable. A fire burned in the grate. The shelves behind Jules’s desk were stocked with cookery books in French, Italian, German, and English, as well as unbound treatises on cooking.