The little maid had set out coarse pottery soup bowls and an odd assortment of servants’ hall cutlery on the big scrubbed table, and presently the cook ladled out a thick vegetable soup for them all. Stacy’s party set to work with a will, being hungry as well as tired. Even Stacy swallowed the greasy stuff, although it nearly choked her. Matt had left the kitchen for a short time, to return with blankets and pillows which he put to warm before the fire before making up an impromptu bed for Louisa.
Jeb had accompanied him, saying with a grin as he helped to collect bedlinen, ‘Come on, Matt, put the poor bitch out of her misery and tell her who you are. She’s in an agony about having to argue with a butler.’
‘Not…likely,’ Matt had sworn. ‘She’s just the kind of useless fine lady I thought that I’d left behind for good. Full of her own importance and fit for nothing but embroidery and spiteful gossip!’
He had said this with such venom that, not for the first time since he had heard of the scandal in which his master had been involved, Jeb had been curious about the details of it.
‘You’ll have to tell her some time—and soon,’ he had argued.
‘But not yet. Let the shrew sweat.’
Jeb had shrugged, and later he was a little surprised to discover that it was the fine lady herself who fed Louisa, whom the kitchen’s warmth had restored to consciousness, sitting by her on her impromptu bed and spooning the soup gently into her unwilling mouth. ‘Come on, my love. You won’t help yourself by starving,’ she coaxed, to be rewarded by a watery smile.
After that Stacy insisted on looking after Polly’s wrist, rubbing goose-grease salve on it which the cook had grudgingly fetched from her store-cupboard. Matt watched her with a puzzled expression on his face—he had not expected so much practical compassion from such a proud piece—only for him to lose it when Stacy said curtly to him, ‘I would like to speak to your master now. At once, if you please!’
What on earth was the matter with the man? This perfectly ordinary request produced such an answering spark in his golden eyes, and such a savage twist to his lips, that it almost had Stacy stepping back in fear. She was trying to imagine what kind of master would tolerate such a…wild animal…as a butler. A dilatory one, obviously, who in his idleness let his servants do just as they pleased, for after a second’s hesitation this most unlikely butler came out with, ‘Oh, I daren’t disturb him just now, madam. More than my job’s worth, I should say.’
For some reason, after he had offered her this piece of insolence, the uncouth and strangely dressed Jeb—and what was his position in this zoo, if not to say menagerie, which apparently comprised the Hall’s staff?—saw fit to fall into a fit of the sniggers. He had previously been engaged in flattering Polly, who was simpering and grinning at him in the most unseemly fashion. Were her own servants becoming infected by this disorderly crew?
Not Hal, who said bluntly to the butler, who had turned away to begin placing the used pots on the massive board by the large stone sink preparatory to beginning to wash them, ‘Have a care how you speak to my mistress, man. What your master requires of you is one thing. What she deserves in respect from you is quite another.’
The butler turned to stare at Hal, who was belligerently squaring up to him. Big though he was, he was by no means a match in size for the butler who, now Stacy came to think of it, resembled a prize-fighter rather than an indoors servant.
‘Oh,’ he came out with, a faint smile on his face, ‘but she doesn’t pay my wages, does she?’
Which produced another snigger from Jeb, who, to stir this delightful pot even more, added, ‘I doubt whether she could afford them.’
Hal turned on Jeb, enraged by his attentions to Polly, on whom he was sweet himself. ‘Oh, and who the devil are you to tell me anything? And as for my mistress’s ability to pay this yokel…’
‘Hal!’ Stacy used her very best voice on him, not loud but stern and compelling, the voice with which she had dragooned the employees of Blanchard’s Bank into realising that here was no girlish and innocent chit to be ignored, but Louis Blanchard’s true heir in person. ‘Be quiet. I will not have any brawling here on my account.’
‘What a wise conclusion,’ the yokel—and what a splendid description of him that was—drawled amiably, beginning to wash pots with what even Stacy could see was exemplary speed and precision. ‘Hal shouldn’t begin on an enterprise which he can’t win.’
This had the desired effect on Hal, of starting him off all over again. He had begun by defending his mistress from discourtesy, but he was now defending his own prowess. He advanced on the smiling butler with his fists raised. ‘I’ll have you know I work out at Jackson’s gym. I’ve never seen you there, and that’s a fact. Put up your dukes—or shut up.’
The only things the butler raised were his wet and soapy hands, which didn’t stop Hal. ‘Any excuse to dodge a fight,’ he sneered, and threw a punch in the butler’s direction.
For a moment Stacy was frozen by the unlikely revelation that Hal was not only her loyal servant, but also saw himself as her champion. At all costs she must not allow him to fight with the butler. Desperately she threw herself between the two men to expostulate with them, to do anything which might stop the coming brawl.
All she stopped was Hal’s fist. By good fortune she was struck only a glancing blow, but it was enough for her to see stars before she sat down, ignominiously and humiliatingly, on the kitchen floor. Through her swirling senses she heard Hal’s cry of distress. ‘Oh, mistress, God forgive me.’
She also heard the butler cursing under his breath, ‘Oh, hell and damnation, what next?’ as he put his soapy hands under her armpits and hauled her to her feet again.
Oh, God, what next, indeed? Would this dreadful evening never end? All that Stacy wanted was to be in her own comfortable bed, Polly in attendance, kind Louisa well and on her feet again, somewhere near by in loving attendance.
But what she got was something else entirely. The kitchen door opposite her opened abruptly to reveal to her dazed eyes a tall woman with a thin, hard face, decently dressed in black. The housekeeper presumably.
The woman took one comprehensive look at them all. At Stacy, white-faced and trembling. At Hal, now on his knees, agonised, begging forgiveness of her for his unintended blow. At Jeb, leaning against the wall, convulsed and chortling, ‘Oh, Matt, boy, this is your finest turn ever. Better than a play.’ At the assembled servants, both the Hall’s and Stacy’s, all either shocked or amused according to their preference, and lastly at the butler, a canvas apron round his waist, his soapy hands just releasing the now furious Stacy.
‘And what,’ the woman roared, happy to have a chance at getting back at the uncouth monster who had disrupted her easy life, and knowing that now she was under notice to leave she had nothing to lose by saucing him, ‘is the meaning of this, m’lord? And why are you wearing Cook’s apron and doing the washing-up?’
Chapter Three
Everything, but everything, went into a weird kind of paralysis, as though time itself had stopped. For a long moment no one moved and no one spoke.
M’lord? Thought Stacy and all her party. M’lord? She must mean the butler. She can’t mean the butler, can she? Can she?
But she did.
Stacy turned to face him. M’lord. Of course, she should have known. Everything about him radiated authority—which