A Proper Mistress (19 page)

She found it a relief to escape, her dinner hardly touched, and she thought if that continued, she would be taking in Jane's dresses as well as having had to take them up.

The next two days did continue with Theo making himself scarce, and Molly could only wish she might, too. She tried to make a game of it with the squire. She would roll the dice and move her piece, and the squire would take his turn, pitting his will against hers. And they would play until one of them ran all their pieces off the board—only she was not certain which of them that would be.

He was not only a stubborn man, he was as bitter as cold tea. It amazed her that he could have the utter adoration of even so much as one of his dogs.

In the evenings, she at least had Theo's company. And he stole kisses from her when he encountered her on the stairs or alone in a room. That, however, did not help. It left feeling like dough wound up in a twist.

On the third day of this, she actually considered fleeing the house herself, for she longed for even a momentary rest from this perpetual anxiety. She had the excuse, after all, of having promised Lady Thorpe to visit. Only at the thought of slipping out, guilt stung her. She was here to earn her money.

However, she was also finding it impossible to eat in company, and she was half-starved.

She fled to the only haven she had ever known in her life—the kitchen.

Arming herself with Lady Thorpe's recipe for almond cake—for at least that gave her an excuse to venture into Mrs. Brown's domain— Molly found her way to the back of the house. She hoped she would find Mrs. Brown alone. If Simpson was there, or any of the other oh-so-superior staff, she would not stay. She just could not take any more disapproving or curious stares, not and try to take so much as a bite of anything.

However, stepping into the kitchen, she found it a bright, high-ceilinged room, blessedly empty of anything other than pots, a cheerful fire and something that smelled of meat cooking, bubbling in an iron pot that hung over the heart fire to her left.

The stone walls had been plastered and painted white. Copper pots hung neatly from hooks on the ceiling, carrots lay stacked on a well-scrubbed table in the middle of the room and it all looked tidy and inviting.

With her nose twitching, Molly stepped into the room and took up an iron hook from the fender to swing the pot out from the fire. Putting her face into the steam, she breathed in the aroma from the bubbling mixture. Soup, she gathered, already starting to wonder what spices had been added and wishing she had a spoon to taste it.

She had just begun to glance around the room for a ladle or some such thing, when a firm step on the stone flooring made her straighten, her cheeks warm for being where she had no right to be.

A tall, slender woman dressed in brown stopped in the doorway and stared at her, gray eyes wide in an angular face. Her high-waisted white apron, neatly starched, and her lace trimmed cap at once told her status as cook, and Molly found herself blinking in surprise. This woman looked only a year or more than her own age, and Molly banished the image she had been building of Mrs. Brown as ample, aged, and kind.

The woman's mouth puckered at once. Hands folded prim before her, she said, her tone pricking like the edge of a knife, "You should have rung if you wished something from the kitchen."

Molly struggled for an excuse, but could only find the truth. "If I did, that'd only bring Simpson scowling at me, and I am sorry for poking my nose into your soup, but it smelled too good to resist. Lamb?"

A reluctant answer came. "Beef bones reducing for carrot soup."

"Oh, but there's lamb in it, I'd swear it."

Mrs. Brown's eyebrows rose. "Well, I use a bit of mutton—only for flavor."

"And turnips, onions..." Molly's eyes narrowed as she considered the aromas. "And something else, I'd swear."

"Marjoram," Mrs. Brown said, her tone cautious and her glance now suspicious.

"Ah—I'd not thought of that. A very nice touch. But I'm intruding, and I only meant to bring you this." She stuck out a hand with the recipe. "It's for Lady Thorpe's almond cakes."

With her mouth still puckered, Mrs. Brown reached out and tentatively took the recipe. She unfolded the paper, glanced once at Molly, and began to scan the sheet, her eyes sharpening with interest. "Orange-flower water! I knew it."

Molly smiled. "Ah, I thought you might appreciate it."

Mrs. Brown glanced up, her expression sever again. "Why is that?"

"You'd never serve such a duck as you did the other night if you couldn't. Duck's so easy to come out greasy or tough. And it needs just the right sauce—the currant was lovely."

Mrs. Brown's mouth softened. "You seem to know your way around a kitchen."

"Well, why not be interested in food—we all have to eat. And I wish I could, only between the squire and Simpson, it's hard to manage a swallow of anything. Which is why I've been sending your dishes back—please don't think it reflects on your talent."

The faintest of militant glimmer shone in Mrs. Brown's gray eyes. "Simpson glowered at me for four months after I took on the job from Mrs. Rummer."

"Was she the cook before?"

"Aye. Plain and simple was her motto—took me three months after she retired to even slip in so much as a curry."

"Oh, you do curries—I've not had a proper one since I was a girl in India. Other than what I cook myself. But I'd rather eat someone else's. If I cook it, I taste too much to want to sit down after for a meal."

"India was it?" Hesitant interest stirred in Mrs. Brown's eyes and Molly's heart lifted. The woman still looked uncomfortable, but perhaps they might just manage a truce.

And Mrs. Brown asked, with only a little doubt in her tone, "I don't suppose you've a recipe for a mulaga-tawny soup?"

Molly brightened at once, and she began to talk about the foods of India and the dishes she had learned to cook as a girl for her uncle—Madras lamb,
sag
or spinach,
dal
or lentils. Her uncle had disliked the spiced native foods, but Molly soon learned that combinations that could be used to sooth as well as to stimulate. The household cook—an elderly woman with silver hair and dark skin and a red dot on her forehead—had been willing to teach Molly, and she learned ways to use spices to tempt any appetite. Molly felt an obligation to be as ready to pass on such knowledge, only she had found few interested in learning.

She began to talk now of what she knew.

It wasn't long until Mrs. Brown offered up a taste of her broth—serving up a bowl of it, actually, and asking for suggestions. And nothing would do for her but to take down the tea canister, unlock it, and set a pot brewing.

With them comfortable around the kitchen table in high-backed wooden chairs—and with Molly stuffed on Mrs. Brown's biscuits, and Mrs. Brown's leather-bound household book now six pages thicker with Molly's knowledge of cumin, turmeric, and coriander for curry, saffron for rice, and which peppers to use with which meats—it seemed to Molly as if they had known each other for years.

"The Hindu," she said, taking another biscuit, "believe food can balance temperament to keep a body in harmony. Hot food stimulate hot tempers."

"Then I'd best thrown out my peppers for this household," Mrs. Brown said, her tone dry.

Molly grinned. "
Pitta
is what the Hindu would say—all fire and no air or water. I'd wager Theo's brother's the same, for all the trouble he seems to have caused. And here's Theo—"

She broke off. She had almost confided about Theo's plan to get himself disinherited.

Mrs. Brown seemed not to notice. She only poured fresh tea from the pot and settled back in her chair. "Well, I don't like to gossip, but I will say the squire brought this on his own head. I grew up hereabouts—started off a between-maid under Mrs. Rummer—and after Mrs. Winslow died, the squire let those lads of his run wild."

"So you knew Theo's mother?"

"I did that—lovely lady. Elegant as a willow, and just as frail. Her husband's temper used to lay her flat with the megrims so that she was forever going off to some watering place for a cure. Only one time she didn't come back. Or least the squire came home with her only mortal remains to bury. Buried his heart too, that's what Mrs. Rummer used to swear."

"How awful," Molly said, thinking of the death of her parents and her uncle, and how little sympathy she had felt for the squire. It would be harder to judge him harshly now.

"What was awful was how he locked himself in his shooting room and wouldn't see no one for weeks after. Word went around that he might shoot himself, but he finally came out and he took to drink something fierce. Mrs. Rummer swore he'd end buried in a bottle or breakin' his neck on one of those horses of his, but he hasn't so far. However, I say—and so did Mrs. Rummer—that if he'd taken a proper interest in his sons, his eldest wouldn't have ended in such trouble and the youngest wouldn't be looking to follow his brother's path."

Molly frowned. "Terrance didn't go so far as to murder anyone did he?"

"No—but it might have been less fuss if he had." Pausing, Mrs. Brown glanced toward the doorway and leaned forward. "He ran off with Mr. Meers's daughter—he's the vicar, as you may know. 'Course, not that she's what I'd call a pious miss—not a bit of it. But Mr. Terrance ought not to have left her in Brighton! Particularly not when he's her third-cousin."

"Gracious—well, I see why that might upset his father. But to disinherit him!"

"It might not have come to that, only Mr. Meers tracked his girl down and found her being kept in some inn by a military fellow—well on her way to being nothing more than a..." she broke off, her mouth puckering.

"A woman such as myself?" Molly suggested. "You need not think I have any feelings to hurt there. It's not a trade I'd wish for any woman, so I do feel for this poor girl. Did her father take her back?"

"He did—true Christian charity. You have to admit that. But that's when the real trouble started. He was for telling everyone he'd go to the law and sue for damages, he would, and I heard the squire had to pay a dear sum to put a stop to it. Then Mr. Terrance wouldn't so much as answer a single note from the squire to return home and account for himself, decent-like. That's what really did for Mr. Terrance, if you ask me. For the squire to be touched in his pocket and not have so much as the satisfaction of ringing a proper fury down on his son's head—well..."

She shook her head and stirred her tea. "The squire was in a proper fit when he sent for Mr. Braysworth—he's the solicitor, but you wouldn't know that. Not a bit of the land's entailed, so the squire could cut out his eldest from everything—and he did, too. You could hear him shouting orders to Mr. Braysworth clear through the house, you could. But I expect Mr. Theo told you all that already."

"Well, actually—he hasn't. He gets into a proper fit himself at the mention of it. And I have to say, it still seems extreme to throw away a son like this, so I can't blame Theo really for being so angry about that part of it. Oh, it's such a tangle!"

Speculation lit Mrs. Brown's eyes. "You actually care for Mr. Theo, don't you?"

Molly couldn't stop the warmth that tingled on her cheeks. She fixed her stare on her half-empty teacup, worried her lower lip with her teeth and finally glanced up again. The sharpness had faded from Mrs. Brown's gray eyes, replaced by curiosity. Still, the woman could gossip with the best of them, and while it would be a treat to share her troubles, Molly hesitated at confiding too much when she wondered if it would too rapidly spread through the house.

She only smiled and said, "Is there a woman in the neighborhood who can resist him?"

"Oh, there's one as I could name."

"Miss Harwood?" Molly asked, thinking of Sylvain Harwood's comment that Theo had been interested in her sister.

"So you've heard—did Mr. Theo tell you of her?"

Molly shook her head.

"I'm not surprised. I doubt he even thinks of her anymore, really. Cecila Harwood was the prettiest girl in the neighborhood, but flighty as a pheasant in shooting season. Nothing but a relief—even for Mr. Theo, if you ask me—to see her married off. And I wish her well of it, and hope she found a gent who can settle her."

"But now Theo's brought me home—is that out of the pit and into the fire?"

Mrs. Brown tipped her head and regarded Molly, her stare so direct it almost unsettled. "A day ago, I'd have said yes, but now—well, let's just say that maybe this pot ought to simmer a bit more before I can tell if it's to my taste or not."