C
HAPTER
2
T
he recalcitrant stove was stone-cold. Major Ripton-Jones would be unhappy, but then that was his usual state, if the three days she’d been here was any indication. A gloomier man Anne had never met, and his house was even gloomier despite her recent efforts. It was nearly as wet and cold indoors as out. She was wearing two dresses, two pairs of woolen stockings and a cloak, hovering over the arctic stove. Even covered in woolen gloves, Anne’s hands were numb. No wonder she could not light the damn fire.
She pushed an ugly brown braid back into her ugly housekeeper’s cap. Her hair was less brown every day. At least she didn’t have to worry about Major Ripton-Jones noticing. If he raised his eyes up long enough from his drink, he looked at her as if she were a boil on his arse. A fly in his ointment. A hair in his soup. But there would be no soup or anything else if she didn’t get the stove going. If she couldn’t, Anne didn’t think she’d have the courage to work in the large open fireplace—she’d heard of cooks going up in flames as they walked in to tend food. No, a free-standing cookstove was much better. Modern, although this one looked as if it had been created at the dawn of Adam and Eve.
She gave a long-suffering sigh. Why wasn’t there a kitchen maid or a pot boy on the premises to help her? Someone she could order about in the nicest way, of course. The rambling stone house was big enough for an army of servants, but Major Ripton-Jones lived entirely alone with the exception of Martin, a charm-challenged man in the stable block who minded the major’s pair of horses. He and the major were a match made in heaven—their grunts and grumbles made Anne feel most unwelcome in Wales.
Her resolution to stick it out had wavered during the last three days of drudgery, but she was stubborn, and still desperate. For the most part, her employer left her alone, locking himself in his study cum ginhouse, apparently drinking the day away. He didn’t seem to care what she put in front of him to eat, which was a lucky thing, because she could no more cook than fly. His larder was well stocked—in fact apart from her own meager quarters, it was the only room in the house that was in any sort of order. Anne had discovered after the long damp walk to the village yesterday—to buy some soap that would not remove the top layer of her skin—that his previous housekeeper had died in November. She had known the end was near and had put up shelves of preserves and ordered what nonperishable goods she could for her master’s future comfort. However, the woman hadn’t been up to cleaning for months—or possibly years—and the major had not seemed to mind, letting the poor old thing stay in her bed off the kitchen and die in it.
The very bed that Anne tried every night to sleep in now. Lord knows, she was exhausted from her travels and travails, yet sleep would not come easily. She was not afraid of the housekeeper’s ghost, and almost not afraid that her father would discover her whereabouts. She trusted Evangeline Ramsey to keep her secrets. Ripton Hall was situated remotely enough that one would have to look very far afield from London to find her. In her current disguise with her meek brown braids and baggy servant’s black dress, she did not resemble flashy and fun-loving Lady Imaculata Egremont in the slightest.
A feeble spark caught her wandering attention, and she poked the kindling viciously with a twig. At last! Anne nee Imaculata was almost gleeful at such humble success. She would not freeze to death, and she might brew some coffee to stay awake after another near-sleepless night. Parts of her body that she had never known existed ached with fierce aggression. Dragging furniture around and beating rugs was far more difficult than swilling champagne and dancing the night away.
The house was deathly still this morning, not a creak in the old floors or rattle of a door latch. Perhaps the major, like the pack of poisoned vermin she kept finding in the most inconvenient places, was actually dead in his bed. She had never seen anyone consume so much alcohol so steadily during the course of a day and wondered how he could put one foot in front of the other to get upstairs to his room each evening.
But perhaps he wasn’t upstairs after all. Perhaps his body lay on the floor of his messy study—a place he’d forbidden her to clean—and was even now putrefying. Anne had an unclear idea as to exactly what dead people did, but did not really want to find out today. She would not search in his study for trouble—usually trouble found her anyway.
Wrapping her cloak against the stiff wet wind, she stepped outside to pump water into a jug, filled the kettle, and set it on top of the stove. Anne sat down on the kitchen bench to wait, surveying her new considerably cleaner domain. This pretending to be a housekeeper, while physically challenging, was not really so very awful.
As long as Major Ripton-Jones remained too drunk to interfere with her unconventional methods. He didn’t need to know she stuck the dirty dishes in a pan and set them out in the pouring rain, did he?
Anne’s stomach rumbled. She was perfectly capable of cutting thick slices from the loaf of bread she’d bought in the village yesterday. She supposed at some point she needed to open
The Compleat Housewife
so she could learn to make some of her own. Anne had placed the tattered volume Evangeline had given her on the Welsh dresser among chipped mud-brown Staffordshire.
Trust Major Ripton-Jones to fancy depressing dinnerware. Brown was so . . . brown.
Since he was not stirring, she ate her breakfast first and alone. Yesterday he’d come to the kitchen, tossed some money down on the warped pine table and told her to get whatever she deemed necessary for the running of the household. Anne did not expect he meant French-milled soap, but the little shop had two bars of that luxury item and Anne bought them both at hideous expense. They smelled of lilac, her very favorite flower, and she would need an occasional whiff from her wrist so she could keep shoveling dead rodents out the door without casting up her accounts. The major had poured himself a cup of bitter coffee—this morning’s was a little better, she thought—and slumped in a chair, eschewing her offer to fix him breakfast. He’d looked wretched and smelled worse. A bit of lilac soap for
him
would not go amiss.
Two years of this. By the terms of her mother’s will, Anne would receive her inheritance at the age of twenty-one. Then she could tell both the major and her father to go hang. Become the true “Toast of the Continent,” as she had once been styled by
The London List
. She could do this job. She had to.
But she wouldn’t do it alone. There must be someone from the village the major could afford to hire to help her. Keeping a house this size running all by herself would be difficult even if she knew what she was doing, and she most assuredly did not. Anne resolved to speak to the major first thing when he finally dragged himself out of his sour-smelling bed.
She did not have long to wait. Her heart kicked a little when she heard footfalls upstairs. Perhaps she should bring up hot water so he could wash off the stink of gin. Offer to shave him, although she was likely to cut his throat. It must be hard to button one’s trousers with one hand. Anne felt a blush rise that had nothing to do with the now-warm kitchen. She hung her suddenly heavy cloak on a hook and went back to her breakfast.
There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing upstairs. Parts of the house were very old, and each tread above resulted in a shower of dust from the ancient kitchen beams onto Anne’s bread. She snatched the last of it from her plate, swallowed quickly and rose when she heard him clatter down the back stairs.
Lowering her eyes—almost afraid of what she’d see—she bobbed like all the proper, obedient servants she’d grown up with. “Good morning, sir.”
“Is it? You’ve seen the rain, aye?”
His voice was low and steady. Anne looked up. He’d made some attempt to shave himself, and his left cheek was streaked with blood. His face was thin, his cheekbones sharp, his eyes the brightest blue. They were the exact color of a sapphire ring she was sorry she’d left behind in her jewel box. His over-long dark hair had been brushed back from his forehead, and a few strands of silver gleamed in the dull morning light.
“It has rained each day since I arrived, Major, but every morning is a good morning. May I fix you breakfast?”
He shook his head. “Just coffee.” He pulled back a chair and sat, his single elbow resting on the table. Today the sleeve of his shirt was pinned up. He had not bothered with a cravat or waistcoat or jacket. Anne thought a proper housekeeper would be shocked to see the column of throat beneath his unbuttoned collar, but she was not a proper housekeeper now, was she?
“Do you take sugar and milk?” He had not added anything yesterday and must still be regretting that.
“Only if your brew is as bad as it was the last time.” He did not smile, but there was a teasing light in his eyes.
Anne couldn’t take offense. She had tasted the vile coffee herself. “I am happy to say I believe it’s much improved this morning. I’m still settling in, sir. Getting to know my way around your kitchen. Give me a few days and all will be ship-shape.” Such optimism, but she was an optimistic young woman despite the odds. A nimble liar, too. She poured the coffee into a cup and set it, without a saucer, in front of him. One less thing to wash, and she didn’t think he’d mind.
He looked around the room slowly before testing her word. “I see you’ve been busy.”
Here was her chance—how simple he’d made it for her to ask for extra servants. “I have, Major Ripton-Jones. I’m not afraid of hard work. But I’m just one woman and your house needs more. Work, that is. Not a woman. Women. No, that’s just what it does need,” she babbled. This was not quite as easy as she thought. “I don’t suppose you could hire a maid or two to help me?”
The cup stopped inches from his lips. “A maid? Or two? Are you quite mad, Mrs. Mont?”
Anne swallowed. “Not at all, sir.” Although some people certainly thought so. She’d been quite flighty over the years, deliberately so.
He set the cup of coffee down without tasting it. “I haven’t the money, Mrs. Mont. I can barely afford to pay
you
.”
“Perhaps if you indulged less in spirits, you might find the wherewithal.” She clapped a hand over her mouth and runaway tongue. Lord, she would find herself out in the driving rain in the middle of nowhere and it would be her own damn fault.
The major’s barking laugh was not a thing of beauty, but at least he wasn’t rising up to strike her. She’d seen her father punish his servants with impunity. When he was done, wiping an actual tear from one of his blue eyes, he leaned forward. “I do apologize for your reception, Mrs. Mont. You must think me a drunkard, but I assure you, I am not. Not usually.” He paused. “Nay, that’s wrong. It
has
been a bit of a habit lately, but not a lifelong one. I’ve had some trouble to deal with.”
“Whatever happened must have been spectacularly bad,” Anne said. Drink had been useless to her to ward off the pain of her father’s attentions—in fact, she’d needed her wits about her to evade him, earning every resultant spanking.
“Aye, it was that. But I’m better today, as you can see.” He took a suspicious sip of the coffee, then drank the whole of it down in one gulp. His throat must be made of iron.
Anne was disappointed he was not more forthcoming. Any news that resulted in the three-day bender she’d witnessed must have been interestingly catastrophic, and from the state of his house, she was sure he’d devoted himself to drinking even before she arrived. But it was not her place to ask—she’d already overstepped her bounds. She was a housekeeper, no more, no less. The earl’s daughter was up to her eyelashes in drudgery, and apparently doomed to soldier on alone, one day, one room at a time.
Major Ripton-Jones stood, almost grazing his head on a blackened beam. “I won’t keep you from your duties. I’m going into Hay today to meet someone who might be able to get me out of my current difficulties. Do you need anything? Or perhaps you’d like to put down your dust rag and join me?”
Anne thought back several days to the huge sense of relief she’d felt as the mail coach crossed over the Welsh border and deposited her in the charming market town. Every mile from London had meant she was further away from her father’s reach. But she had spent too much time there securing the donkey cart to Llanwyr, and worried that somehow her journey would be traced to the major’s doorstep. She had vowed to never stray very far from Ripton Hall again. Strangers in the country always attracted attention, and she wanted none of that. Not anymore.
Anne gave him a wobbly smile. “Besides someone to help me? No, I think not. Thank you for asking. Should you go out in all this rain?”
“If I wait for the rain to stop, it will be May. At least it’s not snow. Yet, although these old bones say that’s not too far off. I
am
sorry we got off on the wrong foot. I’m sure you never had to deal with the likes of me at Lady Pennington’s.”
So he remembered the name on her letter of reference. Evidently he was not the sort of drunk who was forgetful. Very different from her father, who would claim not to remember what he tried to do to her when he was in his cups. She shivered at the remembrance.
He noticed. “Here, you’re cold. Let me feed the fire before I go.”
“That’s my job, sir. And anyway, I’m warm enough. I may even have to remove a dress.”
Idiot.
The man couldn’t know she was wearing two. He probably just thought she was fat and volunteering to show him every inch. “I—I put on two dresses this morning, Major, and my cloak. I’m afraid I forgot to bank the fire last night and the kitchen was ch-chilly when I got up.” Her face felt as hot as the stove.
His lips quirked, and the mischievous light was back in his eyes. Oh, dear. She really should not look at him at all. Anne became fascinated with the slate tiles at her feet as he headed toward the door.