“That’s exactly what I mean! Where could they have gone? Andwhy, for heaven’s sake?”
Tamsin chewed on her lower lip. “Overzealous laundering, perhaps?”
“Does this staff strike you as overzealous at any household task?”
“Well. No.” Tamsin inclined her head. “You have me there.”
“I think they aremakingit worse,” Ruby said. “I’m almost certain there are more books in this library today than there were yesterday evening when we left. And the piles we made seem to have moved around in the night.”
“If we’re listing oddities,” Alice murmured, “I can’t quite grasp how that seagull got into the music room.”
“Unless someone put it there!” Ruby exclaimed. “Andwhereis this mythical housekeeper? I’ve never seen the woman, for all they keep saying she’s just around the corner.”
Tamsin’s brows drew together as she pondered Ruby and Alice. “You are proposing that the Pomeroy House staff is engaged in some sort of machination to... magnify the house’s defects?”
“I know it sounds like a flight of fancy, but—”
“No,” Tamsin said. “Well, yes, rather ludicrous but also—strangely plausible?” She gestured to the leaning tower of veterinary books at her side, which exceeded the level of her head. “There’s no way all of this happens by chance.”
“But why would they do it?” Alice asked. “To what end?”
Ruby scavenged one of Tamsin’s chocolate biscuits. “I have no idea. Surely they can’tenjoyliving in squalor and surviving on clam cakes.”
“They’re not ignoring their responsibilities and gadding about the village like absentee landlords,” Tamsin said. “Because they’re alwayshere. I tried to make my way into one of the offices earlier, and their so-called secretary was already there, surrounded by papers and ink. She managed to remove me from the premises with the politest misdirection I’ve ever had the pleasure of being subjected to.”
Ruby bit down on her chocolate biscuit and consideredmisdirection.
Perhaps half a dozen times now, she’d stumbled upon Captain Archer deep inside the labyrinthine corridors of Pomeroy House. She’d been looking for turpentine and lye the first instance, and then later some sort of plates or spoons for their bizarre breakfasts of courgette confit. In each encounter, he had rapidly covered his surprise with a brilliant smile. He’d cupped her elbow in his big callused hand and led her down corridors that she’d never seen before and had not intended to visit, and the fact that shelikedthe strange little rooms he showed her only made the whole thing more suspect.
He was too charming. The curled-up corners of his mouth screamed deceit and deception; every time he grinned fetchingly down at her, some black pirate flag began to wave in the back of her mind.
Was he trying to hide something from her?
Was he, for some inexplicable reason, trying to lead her in the opposite direction of a proper meal?
She picked up the teacup and gazed down at the walnut therein. “I think,” she said, “I am going to search for some food.”
Alice looked up, an expression of delight crossing her face at the prospect of spending time out-of-doors. Before her disgrace, she had been an enrolled member of the Aurelian Society, London’s social group for entomology enthusiasts. “Do you mean down in St. Petroc’s? For more biscuits? I wouldn’t mind another ramble past the—”
“Notin St. Petroc’s.” Ruby brandished the cup. “In the house. Perhaps I can rescue some walnuts before they are pickled.”
Tamsin cast a dubious glance in her direction.
“I shan’t be long,” Ruby said. “Wish me luck.”
She took her leave of Tamsin and Alice and made her way in the direction of the kitchens. If the Pomeroy House staff wasnotdining on clam cakes and innumerable jams—if they had some alternative and more salutary food store of their own—perhaps she could work out where they were keeping the comestibles. As she strode down the corridor, it occurred to her that if the staff members were having their own, decidedly more palatable tea, she might be able to sneak around a corner and catch them in the act of stealth dining.
But then again—
She hesitated, chewing on her bottom lip. According to the papers—which, to be sure, had not proven especially reliable—there was meant to be a fantastically elaborate and plentiful wine cellar somewhere on the premises.
Could there be a secret store of food hidden there? And could Ruby simply pilfer some?
A direct assault on the staff was, perhaps, not a good idea. It seemed altogether too much like something the old Ruby would have done: as blunt and impolitic as she’d been back in London.
Three years ago, her sister Cassandra had debuted to general acclaim and fanfare. Cassandra was two year younger than Ruby, four inches taller, and possessed of the shy grace of a baby fawn.
Their mother had died when Cass was only five. Their father had been devastated and rudderless; he had never, as far as Ruby knew, considered marrying again. And so with no one else to fill the role, Ruby had stepped into the role of Cassandra’s protector. Cass was compassionate, sweetly earnest—when she’d been presented in all her gentle beauty to theton, Ruby had been determined to shield Cassandra from rakehells and fortune-hunters.
