more suitable for us.’
She was uncomfortably aware that not only were her feet frozen, but that her light boots were soaked as a result of her long trudge through wet snow. Approving of being shown into the kitchens or not, she found herself holding her skirts before the huge fire in an attempt to dry them. She would wait to remove her boots until she finally reached a comfortable bedroom. The rest of her party were clustering round the fire, which was large enough to heat even this most cavernous of kitchens. Steam was beginning to rise from their wet clothes.
Jeb, who was finding life in the frozen wastes of northern England even more amusing than he had anticipated, if not exactly comfortable, gave a snort of laughter on hearing Stacy’s orders. Horrocks, whose wits seemed to decline daily, began to speak, caught Matt’s stern eye, and thought better of it.
Matt Falconer offered the stone-faced termagant who was speaking to him so brusquely his hardest stare. All the pent-up anger created by this wretched visit to England, compounded by what he had found at Pontisford Hall, was making him behave in a manner totally unlike that of his usual good-humoured self.
Oh, yes, he’s Lord Radley to a T, thought Jeb gleefully, guessing what was passing through Matt’s mind as he was addressed so peremptorily, and this icy-faced bitch had better watch her step. He’s had a hard time lately, has our Matt, and someone is going to pay for it.
Matt was thinking the same thing. What a shrew! She hadn’t even the decency to enter the house before she was throwing orders about like confetti. She deserved a few lessons in good manners, if not to say due humility. Never mind if she had had to endure the storm and a wrecked coach—that was no reason for her to carry on like a mixture of the Queen of Sheba and Catherine the bloody Great rolled into one.
‘There are no warm rooms other than this one,’ he announced, his voice as cold as the snow outside. ‘We shall all have to sleep down here tonight. By tomorrow some of the bedrooms may be fit for habitation, and if so I shall arrange for them to be made ready for you. Kate,’ he told the little maid, who was helping Polly into a chair and exclaiming over her damaged wrist which Stacy had bound up with a length torn from the bottom of her petticoat, ‘go and fetch Mrs Green from her room. And Cook, the soup left over from dinner can be heated up to stop these poor folk from dying of the cold.’
He stretched out a booted foot to kick one of the logs on the fire into a more useful position. ‘And you, madam,’ he added, drawing up a tall Windsor chair, ‘may sit here—unless, that is, you care to make yourself useful. You seem to have come out of this accident more fortunately than the rest of your party. Instead of shouting the odds about what we are all to do, you would be better employed doing something yourself.’
Matt watched with a wicked delight as the shrew began to say something, then bit her tongue before the words could fly out. Stacy wanted to scream at him that she and the postilion, who was now on his knees before the fire with his frozen hands held out to it, had trudged more than a mile through the snow while the rest of the party had ridden, but her pride forbade it. She would not bandy words with servants; she would not.
If the half-conscious Louisa Landen had ever wondered how her wilful charge would fare when faced by someone with a will as strong as her own, and who did not give a damn for her name and fame, which he didn’t know in any case, she was soon to find out.
Hal walked up to her, his face worried, to say in a low voice before she sat down, ‘He should not speak to you as he does, mistress. Let me tell him who you are. That should silence his impudent tongue.’
‘No, I forbid it,’ Stacy whispered fiercely at him. ‘On no account—and you may tell John Coachman and Polly the same. We shall not be here long, I trust, and I do not bandy words with servants.’
Hal was doubtful. ‘As you wish, mistress.’
‘I do wish, and now go and sit down. You have had a hard day.’
She sat down herself, in the chair which the butler had earlier offered her, and began to pull off her ruined boots, seeing that she was not going to be offered a decent room of her own in which to do so, only to discover that her stockings were as wet as they were. Which did not improve her temper, for she could see that there was no way which she could pull them off surrounded as she was by staring underlings, some of whom seemed to be taking a delight in her discomfort. She put her boots before the fire to dry after first helping Polly to remove hers; her damaged wrist was making life difficult for her.
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
