‘More likely his head.’ Adam grinned and lifted the tray. ‘I’ll check on Pru while I’m up there.’
Automatically Decima set the table, buttered the rest of the toast, put out the jam and the platter of bacon. It looked decidedly overcooked, but somehow, against all the odds, the kitchen table seemed homely and charming with the fragrant bacon and the chairs close to the warmth of the range. Why that should so overset her she had no idea, but her eyes filled with tears, a sob caught in her throat and before she knew what she was doing she was sitting down, her face in the apron, weeping.
‘Hey! What’s this? Decima?’ Adam was on his knees by her side, gently prising the apron from her face. ‘Have you burnt yourself?’
‘No, I am sorry, this is ridiculous, I’m not crying, I never cry.’ She tried to hide her face again and was firmly prevented. Adam pressed a large white handkerchief into her hands.
‘Never?’
‘Never.’ Her voice wavered. This was dreadful. Her nose would be red, her eyes red, her face blotchy.
‘Oh well, then, if you aren’t crying,’ Adam said briskly, ‘you are sick of the mulligrubs. That is easily cured.’
‘The what?’ Decima emerged cautiously from the shelter of the white linen.
‘Mulligrubs. Look, come and eat something, that’s the best thing to cure them. It ought to be cake, or sweets—the stickier the better—but bacon will do.’ He heaped a plate and pushed it towards her. ‘Go on.’ This had to be some kind of dream. A viscount, sitting in his breeches and shirtsleeves at a kitchen table, eating her burnt offerings and discussing mulligrubs.
‘But what are mulligrubs?’ The bacon smelled delicious. Decima took a forkful, chewed, followed it with a bite of toast and the wobbly feeling inside subsided.
‘I am not sure exactly.’ Adam was gingerly cutting into the egg. ‘It’s what my old nurse used to call it when I was a little boy and was cast down or in the dumps for no good reason. But food always works.’
‘Do you…do you get the mulligrubs often now?’ she enquired. He ate the egg without any expression of revulsion; perhaps her cooking was not that bad.
‘I haven’t had them for years. I suspect they go away if there isn’t anyone around to cure them with a dose of toffee. Bates is awake and appreciating your bacon, too. He says that his blanking leg is hurting like blank, if his lordship will excuse him saying so, and he’d have done a better job himself on a dog, but he is sure his lordship did his best considering he hasn’t had much practice. Pru fortunately slept through that expression of gratitude for our efforts.’
‘Is he always that outspoken?’ Decima blew her nose and stuffed the handkerchief away.
‘Usually he just grunts. It was one of the longest speeches I have ever heard him make, other than that tirade when I carried him in last night. I inherited him from my father, another man of very few words, who took him on as a half-starved brat. I think they suited each other. He’s tough, loyal, damn good at his job—all qualities I would put before obsequiousness or a tendency to chatter.’
‘Indeed, yes.’ Decima pushed away her greasy plate and reached for the preserve jar. The memory of breakfast the day before and her sudden resolution came back to her. ‘Do you know, it is New Year’s Day tomorrow?’
‘So it is. We must do something to celebrate.’ Adam took the jar and began to heap gooseberry jam lavishly onto his toast. ‘We could bake a cake.’
‘No eggs. Even I know you need eggs for a cake.’
‘True. Then we will play in the snow.’
‘In the snow? But what can we do?’
‘I will think of something. Now, you are going back to bed.’ Adam poured another cup of coffee and pressed it into her hands. ‘Off you go.’
‘But I have only just got up! It is nine o’clock and there is goodness knows what to do.’
‘Such as?’ He began to push her gently towards the door. ‘Bates will be scandalised if you try and nurse him, Pru’s asleep, the horses are fine until this evening. If Pru needs you, I will wake you.’
‘But…’ Decima dug her toes in on the threshold and waved a hand at the kitchen table.
‘A few plates and some knives and forks are not going to exhaust me. They may ruin my lily-white hands, of course, if the lanolin runs out. Now go on. You are tired out.’
‘But—’
‘If you say that once more I will carry you. Do you want me to put you to bed?’ That was not said with the slightest edge of flirtation. That was a threat. Decima turned tail and did as she was told.
She woke when the clock struck one, although she had slept through the twelve-o’clock chimes like someone drugged. There were sounds from the adjoining room, interrupted by a fit of coughing.
Decima scrambled out of bed, dragged her stay laces to and buttoned her gown. ‘Pru? Are you awake?’
She was, bleary-eyed and very pale, but propped up in bed with a tray by her side bearing a jug of cloudy white liquid, a spoon, a bottle of Mrs Chitty’s cough linctus and the remains of what looked like a bowl of soup.
‘Hello, Miss Dessy. Did I wake you?’
‘No, not at all. Pru, I’m so sorry to have been asleep when you woke up.’ Decima perched on the edge of the bed, disturbing a pile of journals. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Weak as a baby.’ Pru grimaced. ‘But the fever seems to have burned itself out; there’s just this pesky cough left. That medicine’s good, though. His lordship brought it up, and the barley water, and some soup at luncheon time.’
‘Where on earth did he get soup?’
Pru shrugged, then coloured. ‘Don’t know, but honestly, Miss Dessy, I didn’t know where to look. I was dying for the you-know-what, but I wasn’t sure if I could walk there all by myself and he said, bold as brass, “Would you be wishing to visit the other end of the corridor, Miss Prudence?” Well, I didn’t know where to look, but do you know, he carried me, set me down outside and strolled off, all tactful like, until I opened the door again. He’s a real gentleman, even if he is a viscount.’
Perplexed, Decima tried to work that one out. ‘But, Pru, if he is a viscount, you would expect him to be a gentleman.’
‘Doesn’t follow,’ the maid said darkly. ‘Most of them are out-and-out rakes from all one hears. No woman is safe with the likes of them.’
This conjured up an image of Adam, grinning lecherously and chasing Pru’s buxom figure and Decima’s lanky one round and round the kitchen table. Decima bit her lip and said merely, ‘I think we are safe with this particular viscount.’ She was not entirely sure whether she was glad about that. Or even whether it was entirely true. ‘Now, don’t you think you should lie down and rest again?’
‘I keep nodding off. Miss Dessy—you aren’t going downstairs looking like that, are you?’
‘Like what?’
‘Your hair is a mess, and that gown’s all crumpled and I don’t reckon you’ve laced your stays up tight, either.’ She levelled a disapproving look at Decima’s bust line.
‘I will do my hair, but I am not going to try and lace myself up tightly. I’d need to be a contortionist to do that!’
‘Let me,’ Pru nagged. ‘You want to look your best.’ Decima merely gave her speaking look over her shoulder as she went to find her hairbrush. ‘You never know,’ Pru retorted mysteriously. ‘I’ll