Turning away from Marianne, she addressed the man watching them both. ‘She won’t last five minutes, by the looks of her. She don’t look like no housekeeper I’ve ever seen.’
‘I know enough to recognise a house with a kitchen that isn’t being run properly,’Marianne told her pointedly. On any other occasion it might almost have made her smile to see the look on the other woman’s face as she realised that Marianne wasn’t going to be manipulated, as she’d hoped, or used as a bullet she could fire at her employer.
‘Well, some folks don’t know when they’re being done a favour, and that’s plain to see,’ she told Marianne, bridling angrily. ‘But don’t expect no sympathy when you find out what’s what.’With a final angry glower she stormed past Marianne and out into the darkness.
‘I don’t know what brings you here,’ the Master of Bellfield said to Marianne coldly once the housekeeper had gone, ‘But we both know that it wasn’t an interview for the post of housekeeper via an employment agency in Manchester.’
‘I am looking for work,’ Marianne informed him swiftly.
‘Oh, you are, are you? And you thought to find some here? Well, you must be desperate, then. Didn’t you hear what Mrs Micklehead had to say about me?’
‘She is entitled to her opinion, but I prefer to form my own.’
Marianne could see from the look of astonishment on his face that he hadn’t expected her to speak up in such a way.
‘Is that wise in a servant?’
‘There is nothing, so far as I know, that says a servant cannot have a mind of her own.’
‘If you really think that you are a fool. There’s no work for you here.’
Marianne stood her ground.
‘Forgive me, sir, but it looks to me as though there is a great deal of work to be done.’
There was a small silence whilst they both contemplated the grim state of the kitchen, and then he demanded, ‘And you reckon you can do it, do you? Well, you’ve got more faith in yourself than I have. Because I don’t. Not from the looks of you.’
‘A fair man would give me the chance to prove myself and not dismiss me out of hand,’ Marianne told him bravely.
‘A fair man?’ He gave a harsh shout of laughter. ‘Didn’t you hear what Mrs Micklehead had to say? I am not a fair man. I never have been and I never will be. No. I am a monster—a cruel tyrant who is loathed and hated by those who are forced to work for me.’
‘As I’ve said, I prefer to make my own judgements, sir.’
‘Well, I must say you have a great deal to say for yourself for a person who arrives at my door looking like a half-starved cat. You are not from ’round here.’
‘No, sir.’
‘So what brings you here, then?’
‘I need work. I saw that this is a big house, and I thought that maybe…’
‘I’d be mad to take on another housekeeper to pick my pockets and attempt to either starve or poison me. And why should I when I can rack up at a hotel and oversee my mills from there?’
‘A man needs his own roof over his head,’ Marianne told him daringly, drawing courage from the fact that he had not thrown her out immediately. She was pretty certain that this man would want to stay in his own house, and would not easily tolerate living under the rule of anyone else.
‘And a woman needs a clever silken tongue if she is to persuade a man to provide a roof over hers, eh, little cat?’
Marianne looked down at the floor, sensing that his mood had changed and that he was turning against her.
‘It is work I am looking for, sir—honest, decent work. That is all,’ she told him quietly. She could feel him weighing her up and judging her, and then putting that judgement into the scales to be weighed against his past experience and his cynicism.
‘And you reckon you can set this place to order, do you, with this honest, decent work of yours?’
Why was she hesitating? she thought. Wasn’t this what she wanted—why she had come here? The kitchen might be untidy and chaotic, but at least it was warm and dry. Where was she to go if she was turned away now? Back to where she had come from? Hardly. Yet still she hesitated, warned by something she could see in the arrogant male face with its winter-sky-grey eyes. His gaze held a hint of latent cruelty, making her feel that if she stepped over the threshold of this house and into his domain she would be stepping into danger. She could turn back. She could walk on into the town and find work there. She could…
A gust of wind rattled the windows and the door slammed shut—closed, Marianne was sure, not by the force of the wind but by a human hand.
‘Yes.’ Why did she feel as though she had taken a very reckless step into some dark unknown?
She could still feel him looking at her, assessing her, and it was a relief when he finally spoke.
‘So, tell me something of the cause of such an urgent need for work that it has brought you out on such a night and to such a place. Got turned off by your mistress, did you?’
Although his voice had a rich northern burr, it was not as strong as that of the departing housekeeper. She could hear the hostility and the suspicion in it, though.
‘No!’
‘Then what?’
‘Beggars can’t be choosers, sir,’ she replied quietly, looking not at him but down at the floor. It had taken more than one whipping before she had known that it was not her right to look her betters in the eye.
‘Beggars? You class yourself as such, and yet you are aspiring to the post of a housekeeper?’
‘I know the duties of a housekeeper, sir, and have carried them out in the past. On this occasion, though, I was not in any expectation of such an elevated post.’
‘Elevated? So you think that working for me as my housekeeper would be a rare and juicy plum of a post, do you?’
‘I had not thought of it in such terms, sir. Indeed, I had not thought of taking that position at all—you are the one who has done that. All I was looking for was the chance of work and a roof over my head.’
‘But you have worked as a housekeeper, you say?’
‘Yes, sir.’ It was, after all, the truth.
‘Where was your last post?’
‘In Cheshire, sir. The home of an elderly lady.’
‘Cheshire! So what brings you to Lancashire?’
The baby, who had fallen asleep, suddenly woke up and started to cry.
‘What the devil?’ He snatched up a lantern from the table and held it aloft, anger pinching in his nostrils and drawing down the corners of his mouth into a scimitar curve as he stared at them both. ‘What kind of deceit is this that you try to pass yourself off as a servant when you have a child?’
‘No deceit, sir. I am a respectable widow, forced to earn a living for myself and my child as best I can.’
‘No one employs a woman with a child as a servant.’
It was true enough. Live-in domestic staff were supposed to remain single. Housekeepers might be given the courtesy title of ‘Mrs,’ but they were certainly not supposed to have a husband, and most definitely not a child.
‘I was in service before my marriage,’ she answered his charge, speaking the truth once again.
‘So you’re a widow, are you? What happened to your husband?’
‘He