He looked down at her, unexpectedly amused by her haughty demeanor. She was due for a set-down, but he wasn’t quite ready to administer it. “You are dismissed, Miss . . . what are you calling yourself?”
It seemed to take her a moment to remember. “M-madame Camille.”
“My lord,” he prompted. “You are dismissed, Madame Camille.”
She didn’t like that, he noticed. He hadn’t had such a firecracker in his bed for a long time—he’d gotten used to placid females who did what he told them to do and took their dismissal gracefully. This one wasn’t going to make anything easy, and he ought to get rid of her right now.
But he wasn’t going to do so. In the darkness of losing the one member of his family he liked, he needed the distraction, and this woman would damned well provide it.
“Go,” he said again, while she hesitated, probably wondering how far she could push him.
“Yes,” she said between admirably gritted teeth. “My lord.”
He waited until she was out of sight before he gave in to laughter.
She was pretty enough! Sophie fumed. Pretty! Why didn’t he go all the way and tell her she was nice as well. No one in her entire life had insulted Sophie with such a lackluster turn of phrase. Pretty. Faugh!
It was a good thing she’d spent most of her life in these halls, or she’d have no idea how to get back to the kitchen. She certainly wasn’t waiting around for that man to show her. He was the most disagreeable creature it had ever been her misfortune to meet, and if he turned out to be a villain and a murderer then she would be perfectly happy, no matter how good he looked without his clothes on. A trace of her bad mood lifted at that shocking thought, and she almost giggled. The disdainful viscount would be livid if he knew she’d been spying on him while he swam. The thought of his fury cheered her.
But what in the world had he been talking about? She’d gone along with whatever he said—Mrs. Lefton must be the woman who ran the employment agency—but what had Sophie’s looks to do with anything? She was pretty enough! She made a growling noise low in her throat.
She certainly didn’t want to be set up in the dower house. The very idea of such a thing was outrageous—who put a cook in the dower house? Of course the dower house had been empty during their years of occupancy, but Bryony had always made certain it was kept clean and in good repair, and occasionally guests would use it. It was far, far too grand for a cook. Besides, she needed to be in the house, be as close to the Dark Viscount as she could bring herself to be, if she wanted to find out the breadth of his crimes. Everyone said he’d thrown his first wife off the battlements of his house, though there hadn’t been enough evidence to go further than an enquiry. It had been the talk of London, even though Mr. Griffiths, as he’d been at the time, had never bothered much with society.
Fortunately there were no battlements at Renwick. Besides, why should he want to throw her off? Certainly he’d be displeased if he found
out she was lying to him and the employment agency hadn’t sent her, but that would hardly countenance murder, now would it? Unless he really had killed her father as well, and she found out something that would incriminate him.
Which was exactly what she planned to do. She was counting on being able to carry this off for at least a few days. Clearly the real Madame Camille had changed her mind about working so far out in the countryside, and even if the employment agency sent someone else, it would take a while. Besides, hadn’t he announced that his stepmother had outraged all the employment agencies in London? Perhaps that was why the famed Madame Camille hadn’t shown up.
Her sisters thought Sophie was too young and self-absorbed to be of any help in finding out what truly happened to their father, but she’d show them. Without getting tossed from the battlements.
When she reached the kitchen she found everyone as she’d left them, the bread dough still puffing over the bowl, the piecrusts half-rolled, the pheasants unplucked. It was unfortunate she was so short, Sophie thought, removing her shawl and placing it on the back of one chair. It took a little more effort to convince people to do what you wanted. She usually relied on a winning smile and mild flirtation to get anything she desired, but she could hardly flirt with the viscount’s other servants.
There was a pile of clean, starched aprons over by the ironing board, and a full basket beneath it, but the laundry maid had ceased her efforts and was sitting back with a cup of tea in her hand.
Sophie took an apron from the pile and threw it over her head, tying it with quick efficiency. And then she pulled out a chair and climbed on it so that she towered over all of them, and began the work of rallying her troops. “Gather round, everyone, and prepare yourselves, my companions of the cuisine. You are about to work harder than you ever have before, and if you fail to do so, I’ll convince his lordship that better workers are easily found.”
It was almost funny to see how fast they could move when they had incentive. Funny that a twenty-year-old who’d never been able to tell her sisters what to do suddenly had a staff of more than a dozen to obey her every whim. She was going to like being back here, most especially in the kitchen.
From what she’d observed in her dash down the corridors after the viscount, it appeared that someone had redecorated the lovely old walls of Renwick with garish, “modern” colors and chinoiserie furniture that was just a bit terrifying. But the kitchens were the same, thank God, the kitchens where she used to play under Cook’s watchful eye. These were the kitchens where she’d learned to cook, much to her sisters’ amusement. Such industry was very unlike the baby sister they tended to underestimate.
She looked out over her busy army of workers, searching for a familiar face. The Russells had usually brought their own servants down from London with them, including the chef and kitchen staff, keeping only a caretaker and his wife on the estate, as well as the gardeners. As far as she knew they were all gone now—the new mistress of the house, the Dark Viscount’s stepmother, had fired the few remaining servants, but Sophie needed to be careful she didn’t run into anyone she knew.
The other servants in the house were all strangers to her. She’d never spent much time in the gardens anyway; if any of those workers had remained, they wouldn’t know her.
She hopped down from her chair and approached the suddenly industrious woman who’d been in tears when Sophie had first arrived. She’d always had an excellent memory, for names, for recipes, for artists, and this one was easy. “Prunella,” she addressed her in a gentler voice. “Or should I call you something else?”
The woman looked up, flushed but pleased. “Prunella’s good enough for me, Madame Camille. We’re right glad to have you here. It’s been . . . difficult.”
“The master of the house seems a bit challenging,” she said softly, aware that Dickens was just out of earshot, overseeing the defeathering of the pheasants.
“Eh, he’s not so bad. It’s his stepmama who’s the real problem. Has tantrums, she does. His lordship’s fair enough most of the time, unless he’s been pushed too far.” She gave Sophie a searching look. “I don’t think he’s going to be too mad at you, madame.”
It felt absurd to be called “madame” at her age, but that was the role she’d stepped into and she had to accept it. “We’ll see. I imagine a good dinner will go a great deal toward making both the viscount and his mother more sanguine. What did you have planned?”
Prunella’s face fell. “Game pie,” she said. “With a cream of turnip soup, buttered cod for the fish course, and bread pudding for dessert. Problem is, Mrs. Griffiths don’t care for turnips, and she thinks cod is déclassé, or so she says, and I was going to give them turnips for the vegetable course but they’ll have already had them, and . . .”
Sophie put a calming hand on the woman’s burly arm. “Not to worry, Prunella. We’ll figure something out. What about the joint?”