Free Ashworth Hall by Anne Perry

spoilt child about to throw a tantrum. She had found with Charlotte’s children, once they were out of the three-year-old frustration tempers, such incidents usually occurred because they felt somehow overlooked or unimportant.
    “Beginning to find your way around, Mr. Tellman?” she said cheerfully. “I never bin in such a big place before, an’ I don’t even ’ave ter bother wi’ outside.”
    “Well I do,” he said tartly, looking sour. “If we do get any trouble it won’t be blacking boots an’ carrying coals they’ll be thanking me for!”
    “You shouldn’t be carrying coals,” she said quickly. “You’re an upper servant, not a lower one. In fact, you are one of the top ten, so don’t let anyone take advantage of you.”
    His face twisted with disgust. “One of the top ten! Don’t be ridiculous. If you spend your time waiting on other folk and taking orders, you’re a servant, and that’s all there is to it.”
    “It most certainly is not!” she said indignantly. “That’s like saying if you’re a policeman it’s all the same whether you’re a senior detective wi’ knowledge and cleverness or a rozzer wot walks the beat carryin’ a lantern an’ don’t know a robber from a priest less someone shouts ‘Stop thief!’ ”
    “But you’re at other people’s beck and call,” he said.
    “An’ you in’t?”
    He started to deny it, then met her blunt, candid gaze and changed his mind.
    “An’ if yer don’t know wot ter do, I’ll find out for yer,” she said generously. “You don’t want ter look like yer don’t know yer job. I’ll show yer ’ow ter brush a gentleman’s coat proper, an’ ’ow ter take orff spots. Do yer know Ow ter get grease orff?”
    “No,” he said grudgingly.
    “An ’ot iron an’ thick brown paper, but not too ’ot. Lay it on a piece o’ white paper first, an if it don’t scorch, it’s a’ right. If that don’t ’move it all, a little bit o’ clean cloth an’ spirit o’ wine. If’n yer get stuck, come an’ ask me. Don’t let ’em see as yer don’ know. I’ll find out for yer.”
    She could see from his face that he resented it profoundly, yet he could appreciate the point of her argument.
    “Thank you,” he said between his teeth, then turned and walked into the house without looking back.
    She shook her head and went on with her explorations.
    She was in the stillroom when she saw Finn Hennessey again, his dark head and slender shoulders unmistakable. He stood with a grace unlike anyone else’s.
    He turned the moment he heard her step, and his face lit up with pleasure when he saw her.
    “Hello, Gracie Phipps. Looking for someone?”
    “No, just discoverin’ the ’ouse, so I know where ter find things,” she replied, delighted to have encountered him, and yet now tongue-tied for something sensible to say.
    “Very wise,” he agreed. “So am I. Funny isn’t it, how we work so hard for days preparing to come, and when we’re here, at least today, there’s almost nothing to do until dinner.”
    “Well, at Orne I ’ave children ter care for as well,” she said, then realized that categorized her as a maid of all work, and wished she had kept silence.
    “Do you like that?” he asked with interest.
    “Oh yeah. They’re pretty much obedient, an’ ever so bright.”
    “And healthy?”
    “Yeah,” she said with surprise. She saw the shadow in his face. “Isn’t children ’ealthy where you come from?”
    “Where I come from?” he repeated. “The village my mother lived in, and her mother before her, is a ruin now. It was abandoned after the famine. There used to be close to a hundred people there, men, women and children. Now it looks like the tombs of a departed race crumbling back into the earth.”
    She was genuinely shocked. “That’s terrible. Yer ma married an’ moved then? Din’ she ’ave no brothers wot stayed there?”
    “She had three. Two of them were evicted when the land was sold and the new