“But, my lady, duck was always one of the master’s favorites.” Mrs. Willett had been used to ruling the London house largely unchecked for over thirty years. The butler might go back and forth from the country house in Kent to London with the family, but the housekeeper stayed in charge in London over the long months—and even years, lately—when the family was not there, running a skeleton staff to keep the house in shape. Her guiding rule in any situation was to do exactly as she had always done.
Julia glanced over at Phoebe, who was biting her lip and looking worried, and Julia knew that Phoebe was, as Mrs. Willett had intended, feeling like an unloving, ungrieving widow for not wanting to eat one of her dead husband’s favorite dishes.
“Nonsense, Mrs. Willett,” Julia stuck in crisply. “You and I both know that duck was our father’s favorite dish, and that is why you served it all Selby’s life. Besides, it doesn’t really matter whether Selby liked it or not. The point is that Lady Armiger does not like it. She does not want it on the menu, and I see no reason why it should be there, when your employer does not wish it. Do you?”
A look of hurt that would have crumpled Phoebe’s opposition settled on the older woman’s face. She pushed her spectacles back up her nose and said in a resigned voice, “Very well, Miss Julia—if you want it that way. I do work for your family, have done so for over thirty years.”
“Yes, I know, and an excellent housekeeper you are,” Julia agreed to soothe the woman’s wounded feelings.
“My, yes,” Phoebe agreed eagerly, a tiny frown of concern creasing her forehead. “I did not mean to imply that there was anything wrong with the way you perform your duties.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Julia jumped in before Phoebe could get carried away with her assurances and wind up telling the woman to leave the duck on the list. “I am sure Mrs. Willett understands that you merely want a change in the menu. It is the sort of problem at which she is quite adept, isn’t it, Mrs. Willett?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Willett agreed, smiling. Julia knew that in a few more minutes the menu change would have become her own idea, and woe to any of the kitchen staff who objected to it.
At that moment, there was the rumble of carriage wheels coming to a stop in front of the house. Julia and Phoebe glanced at each other in surprise. A visitor to their house was a rare occurrence—they had had no callers since they came to London three weeks ago, except for young Thomas every now and then when he could sneak away from his tutor. Julia stood up and crossed over to the windows. A sporty curricle had stopped on the pavement, and as she watched, a lad in livery hopped down from the back and hurried forward to take the horse’s head. A man, dressed elegantly and severely in black and white, was climbing down from the open vehicle. Julia’s mouth opened in horror.
“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, her hand flying to her throat. She stepped back quickly.
Phoebe was on her feet in an instant, hurrying toward her in concern. “What’s wrong? Who is it?”
“Lord Stonehaven,” Julia croaked. “He’s found out.”
“What?” Phoebe whirled and looked out the window, then turned back to Julia. “Oh, no! What shall we do?”
The sound of the front door knocker resounded through the house. Julia started toward the sitting room door, the only thought on her mind to tell the footman not to answer the door. But that efficient servant was already swinging open the front door, and Julia ducked back inside the room.
“Miss Julia, what is it?” the housekeeper asked, concerned by the look of fear on Julia’s face.
“A visitor. Tell him we aren’t home, Mrs. Willett,” Phoebe suggested, her face pleading.
How could he have found out who she was? There had been no one at Madame Beauclaire’s who knew her, except Geoffrey, and Geoffrey would never have told Stonehaven who she really was.
“He must—he must be coming to pay a call,” Julia stated, reason overcoming her initial spurt of fear. “Somehow he’s found out that we are here. That’s all, I’m sure.” But it would still be disaster if he saw her here!
She could hear the footman walking toward the door, Stonehaven’s steps right behind him. In another few seconds he would be here. She glanced around wildly. There was no other way out of the room. Aside from slamming the door in his face, there was no way to avoid his seeing her. Julia’s mind raced.
“Pardon me, Mrs. Willett,” she murmured as she reached over and pulled the woman’s spectacles from her face, followed by her large mob cap. Grabbing her own shawl from the back of her chair, Julia dived behind the chair just as the footman stepped into the room.
“Lord Stonehaven, my lady,” he droned.
Phoebe numbly turned toward the door, where Lord Stonehaven stood right behind the footman.
“My lord,” she said through bloodless lips, struggling not to look toward the chair where Julia had disappeared nor at her astonished housekeeper, who stood clutching at her disarranged hair and blinking.
At that moment Julia popped up from behind the chair like a jack-in-the-box. Phoebe let out a gasp, quickly smothered. Julia had wrapped the long shawl loosely around her, effectively hiding her figure. Atop her head she wore the housekeeper’s outmoded mob cap, covering up every last strand of her distinctive red hair. The older woman’s glasses were perched on her nose, turning her lovely blue eyes strangely large and swimming. To add to the disguise, she was frowning, her jaw set and her mouth narrowed into a thin line.
Stonehaven’s brows rose slightly at the sudden appearance of this apparition, and he faltered in the midst of saying Phoebe’s name. He added tentatively, “And, uh, Miss Armiger?”
“Yes!” Julia barked in a hoarse voice. “That is who I am—not that it’s any concern of yours.”
“Julia…” Phoebe protested weakly. She disliked the man fully as much as Julia, but she could no more bring herself to be rude than she could jump off the top of the house.
“Well, ’tis true,” Julia snapped. Her heart was thundering inside her chest so loudly that she thought the others must hear it. She wished she could see Stonehaven’s face, so that she could tell whether he recognized her in her disguise or not. But with Mrs. Willett’s spectacles on, the entire room was a blur. Lord Stonehaven looked like nothing except a large smudge of black and white.
“Mrs. Willett, you may go now,” Julia said, turning in the woman’s general direction. It was not really her place, but Phoebe’s, to dismiss the servant, but Julia suspected that Phoebe was too stunned at the moment to remember to do so, and she wanted the housekeeper out of the room before she could make any remarks about her cap and glasses.
“Yes, miss.” The housekeeper, looking confused, sidled past Lord Stonehaven, feeling her way along the wall and out the door.
Julia, equally blind, edged around the chair, thinking that if she could just get around it and sit down, she would be all right despite the sorry state of her eyesight. However, she had forgotten the footstool sitting beside the chair, and she stumbled over it, sending the stool flying. She let out a cry as pain shot up her foot, and she staggered, bumping into the arm of a chair. That was all it took: the bump, combined with her swimming vision and the fact that she instinctively hopped off her hurt foot, made her lose her balance, and she tumbled ungracefully into the chair.
Phoebe let out a gasp, and both she and Lord Stonehaven started toward her. Julia quickly waved them away, blushing a fiery red.
“No!” She swung her legs down off the arm of the chair and sat up straight. In her embarrassment, her voice had slipped back into its normal register, but now she brought it back down to a gravelly growl. “I’m fine. Just fine.