Free Fiona by Meredith Moore

say, my tone full of fake deference.
    I step back, a smile flitting across my lips, and step around him to leave. He says nothing, just lets me go.
    Back in my room, all of my confidence fades away. I just told my boss to sober up. My
boss
. And I leaned in close to him, so close that I could smell the whisky on his breath and then, beneath that, a scent like rain and wood fire.
    I shiver and fling myself on my bed, only pausing to take my shoes off before curling up under the blankets. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and it will all have been a dream. Or maybe it really did happen, but he was so drunk that he won’t remember anything at all.
    I hide my face in my pillow. How could I have lost control over myself? How could I have acted like that in front of my boss? No matter his behavior, I should have been able to keep up some kind of professional demeanor. It’s what normal people would do.
    There’s a muffled sound of laughter from the other side of the wall. It almost sounds like it’s coming from the left, but I’m in the last room in the hall, so it must be coming from Keira to my right. She’s one of the maids, and she seems friendly enough when we cross paths around the castle. I hope she’s not laughing because she heard me throwing myself on the bed.
    I burrow back into my blankets and do my best to calm the whirling storm in my mind. I have to get a good night’s sleep if I want to figure out how not to lose my job tomorrow.
    I’m just about to slip into unconsciousness when a large bang on the other side of the wall jolts me upright. The left side, the outside wall. The room falls silent again, the only sound my staccato breathing.
    But then there’s another muffled sound, and I sit up, straining to hear. From the tinny sound of whispered conversation, it seems like someone to my left is watching TV. At two in the morning. There must be some weird acoustic thing happeningto make it seem like the noises from Keira’s room are coming from the other side.
    I bury my face back in my pillows, but I can’t block out the sound. I consider getting up and asking Keira to tone it down, but I don’t want to offend her. Not when I’m still so new to the house.
    Finally, after about an hour of indecipherable whispers, the room falls silent, and I fall asleep.

CHAPTER 7
    I wake up the next morning groggy and tired, determined to avoid Charlie all day. If I don’t see him, he can’t fire me. But when I walk into the dining room with Poppy for breakfast, he’s sitting at the table, not sleeping off his hangover as I was predicting. He winces when he sees me.
    Poppy approaches him cautiously. “Sorry,” she says, almost in a whisper, “about last night.”
    He raises his eyebrows, and his whole face brightens. “Me too,” he says.
    She nods, grabbing the dish of potato scones and sliding one onto her plate. Charlie looks over at me. “Thank you,” he mouths, and I nod.
    I grab a piece of shortbread and bite into it, just to have something to do, but as soon as it hits my mouth, I freeze.Because it’s not just any shortbread. It’s my mother’s shortbread, with a hint of cayenne pepper, just enough to shock the taste buds. She made it accidentally one day, when I was eight, after knocking a bit of cayenne into the batter. We liked it so much that, ever after, she made it the same way.
    I nearly spit it out.
    Mabel marches into the room, setting a plate piled with thick bacon and a fried egg in front of Charlie.
    â€œWhere did this recipe come from? For the shortbread?” I ask her.
    She turns around and blinks at me. “Mrs. Mackenzie’s been making it this way for years. Is it not to your taste?” she asks with a sneer.
    â€œIt has cayenne in it.”
    â€œWhat?” Mabel asks.
    â€œWhat’s
cayenne
?” Poppy asks. She’s staring at me, too, now. My face must have gone white,