her face was still glowing a bright pink when she hurried into the kitchen to find Mr Gledhill rocking the baby’s basket and the chair beside the fire empty.
‘T’babby woke up and started mithering.’
‘I expect he’s hungry,’ Marianne told him.
‘Aye, he is an all, by the looks of it. Got a little ’un of me own—a grand lad, he is,’ he told her proudly. ‘I’ve sent t’nurse packing for you, an’ all. Aye, and I’ve put the bolt across t’back door in case she were thinking of coming back and filling her pockets. A bad lot, she is. There’s more than one family round here ’as lost someone on account of her. After what happened to the master’s missus, me wife said as how she’d rather t’shepherd from t’farm deliver our wean than Dr Hollingshead.’
‘I’ll take you up to Mr Denshaw now, if you’d like to come this way?’
This time when she knocked on the bedroom door and then opened it Marianne purposefully did not look in the direction of the bed, but instead kept her face averted when she announced the mill manager, and then stepped smartly out of the room.
It was some time before the mill manager returned to the kitchen, and when he did he was frowning, as though his thoughts burdened him.
‘T’master has told me to tell you that for so long as he is laid up you can apply to me for whatever you may need in your role as housekeeper. He said that you’re to supply me with a list of everything that needs replacin’—by way of sheeting and that. I’m to have a word with the tradesmen and tell them to send their bills to me until t’master is well enough to deal wi’ them himself. There are accounts at most of the shops.’
He reached into his pocket and withdrew some bright shiny coins, which he placed on the table.
‘He said to give you this. There’s two guineas there in shillings. You’re to keep a record of what you spend for t’master to check. If there is anything else I can ’elp you with…’
‘There is one thing,’ Marianne told him. ‘The house is cold and damp, and I should like to have a fire lit in the master’s bedroom. There is a coal store, but there does not seem to be anyone to maintain it, nor to provide the household with kindling and the like.’
The mill manager nodded his head. ‘T’master said himself that he wanted me to sort out a lad to take the place of old Bert, who used to do the outside work. Should have been replaced years ago, he should, but t’master said as ’ow he’d worked ’ere all his life, and that it weren’t right to turn him out. Not that ’e’d been doing much work this last year. ‘The mill manager shook his head. ‘Too soft-’earted t’master is sometimes.’
Marianne couldn’t help but look surprised. Soft-hearted wasn’t how she would have described the Master of Bellfield.
‘I’ll send a lad up first thing in the morning. I know the very one. Good hard worker, he’ll be, and knows what he’s about. Master said that you’ll be needing a girl to do the rough work as well.’
Marianne nodded her head.
For a man who less than a handful of hours ago had barely been conscious, her new employer seemed to have made a remarkable recovery.
‘And perhaps if Mr Denshaw could have a manservant, especially whilst he is so…so awkwardly placed with his wound?’ Marianne suggested delicately.
The mill manager scratched his head. ‘Begging your pardon, ma’am, but I don’t think he’d care for that. He doesn’t like all them fancy ways. Mind, I could send up a couple of lads, if you were to send word, to give you a hand if it were a matter of lifting him or owt like that?’
‘Yes…thank you.’
He meant well, Marianne knew, but that wasn’t what she’d had in mind at all. With the nurse dismissed, she was now going to have to nurse her employer, and if what she had experienced earlier was anything to go by, the Master of Bellfield was not going to change his ways to accommodate her female sensibilities.
‘T’master also said to tell you that you can have the use of the housekeeper’s rooms, fifteen guineas wages a year and a scuttle full of coal every day, all found.’
Fifteen guineas! And all found! Marianne nodded her head. Those were generous terms indeed.
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