Free Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran Page B

took another step toward him. “Perhaps Jones has not sacked me because, thanks to me, your house no longer resembles a zoo. It’s cleaner now than it has been in months, not that you would know it. But I assure you, your rooms could be cleaner, too—and far less pungent .”
    The door slammed shut.
    “But I will settle for the books!” she called at the door. “Only let me bring in shelves for them!”
    In the ensuing silence, she listened intently, not daring to breathe. The dead bolt did not turn. That was surely as good as an agreement.
    She rushed into the hallway. The footmen were halfway down the stairs. “Come back at once,” she yelled down at them, “or I will say you were the ones who stole the truffles!”
    Bradley looked up and sighed. “We’ll take it as far as the sitting room,” he said. “But no farther, ma’am. I’m sorry to say we like our heads in one piece.”
    *  *  *
    “But he has never actually thrown a bottle at anyone,” Olivia said. She had gathered the upper staff into her small sitting room after supper. Jones was nursing acup of tea that Cook had brewed to “settle his nerves,” which, so he said, were suffering greatly, now that he knew what Olivia had done with the bookcases.
    “You just wait,” Vickers said gloomily. Whenever Jones and Cook looked away, he was sneaking slugs from a leather flask. “You only got them into the sitting room. They won’t ever go farther.”
    “They might have, if only I could move them myself. You didn’t see him—he didn’t mind them so very much . . .” Olivia hesitated. “Well, all right, I’m not certain he knows they’re there; he didn’t come out into the sitting room to see them. But he didn’t argue with me, either.”
    Vickers sputtered on his mouthful. “He’s a bloody duke . P’raps you’ve never seen him with all his sails flying, but trust me, it ain’t his way to argue with the likes of us . You say the wrong word, and he’ll simply . . .” He drew a finger across his throat.
    “That’s true,” Jones said—making his first contribution since he’d lapsed into a choking fit a quarter hour ago, in the wake of Olivia’s confession about the new location of the bookcases.
    Nevertheless, his remark was enough to win him a pat on the arm from Cook. “Quite right,” she agreed. “You must watch yourself, Mrs. Johnson. Being turned out without a reference . . .” She shook her head. “You won’t like it, dearie. Happened to me once, and it took years to recover from it.”
    “Did it now?” Vickers sat up, looking interested. “Scandalous past, eh?”
    “Oh, my. Well, if you must know, I exploded the range.”
    Vickers’s eyes bugged. “What? Did anyone die?”
    Cook gave him a comfortable smile. “Not so very many. But I must say, it did give me a turn, when I saw the range here is the very same kind.”
    Vickers sagged back, looking regretful that he’d asked.
    Olivia decided to confess something else. “He’s already sacked me. Twice, in fact.”
    Jones began to choke again. Vickers loosed a whistling breath. “Well, that’s bollocks,” he said, then turned red at Cook’s hiss. “Begging your pardon, ma’am. But you must admit, it’s very bold of our Mrs. Johnson to stay on, after.”
    “It—isn’t—bold,” Jones wheezed. Cook pounded his back, lending his next words a very forceful rhythm: “It—is— criminal ! Mrs. Johnson, you must”—he coughed again, violently—“pack your things at once !”
    “How now!” Cook recoiled from him. “I wouldn’t go so far as that, Mr. Jones. Seems to me that she’s been doing a world of good, don’t you say? A bookcase in his sitting room, no less. That’s a very fine thing.”
    “It will be,” Olivia said, brightening. “Once there are books on it.”
    Jones pulled himself into a straight-spined huff. “Mrs. Bailey, I am shocked by you! If His Grace has spoken, then it is our duty —”
    “Bunkum,” Cook said.