~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Mrs. Right thought Mr. Grimsby was having a time of it. Her staff were so clever at carrying out her instructions. Mr. Grimsby, as it turned out, had very specific ways of doing things. That was exceedingly helpful to their plans.
He would lay out precise instructions on how to do a thing and Charlie and Thomas would do it another way. In the dining room, Mr. Grimsby wanted chargers and plates down, then the silver, then the glasses. The footmen would go willy-nilly with glasses first, then silver, then plates. They would purposefully forget the chargers and have to upset the whole thing and start again. That particular maneuver was done as slowly as possible until the minutes ticked down and Cook raved for someone to come and get his platters.
Service was to the left and clearing to the right? The footmen served right and cleared left, though they knew perfectly well it was wrong. When Mr. Grimsby passed by them and hissed in their ears to correct it, Charlie and Thomas made a great show of bumping into each other and dripping things on the carpet.
A footman was meant to stand ramrod straight at all times? Thomas had slumped so far over while attending the drawing room that Valor had asked him if he was sick and told him he should go to bed.
And what was Mr. Grimsby to do about all of this? He’d made one tentative foray into the duke’s library to air his complaints and had come out of it white as new laundered linen.
Mrs. Right did not know what the duke had said, but she knew that gentleman well enough to know it had been appalling to Mr. Grimsby and another visit was not likely to be tried.
Who else could the butler turn to? She supposed he could go running to Lady Marchfield, just as the last one had. No matter, Mrs. Agnes Right was well prepared to do battle with Lady Misery.
As Mrs. Right made her way to her room to change her fichu, which had got a stain on it somehow, she heard quiet weeping from the direction of the men’s quarters. Very much fearing it was either Thomas downhearted over how long it would take to save up for his tavern or Cook having his last nerve snapped by an incompetent grocer, and having no idea of anywhere in the house being off-limits to her, she followed the sound.
She paused in the corridor. The weeping came from Mr. Grimsby’s room. Of course, she knew perfectly well it was the room he had been assigned, as it had been purposefully done. It was the hottest in hot weather and coldest in cold weather, had creaky floors, and a window so small it did not deserve the name. Charlie and Thomas called it the little box of hell on earth.
Could this be the moment? Had they broken him and now he would flee the house, proving Lady Marchfield wrong for a third time?
It certainly sounded like it. Though, she had to be certain. And help him along with it if that was needed.
She knocked softly.
The weeping paused. There were sniffles. A clearing of the throat. Then the door opened.
Mr. Grimsby staggered back to see her there. “Mrs. Right! This is the gentlemen’s end of the corridor!”
“Aye, don’t you think I know that,” she said, pushing past him. “Now I suppose all this blubbering is on account of you leaving soon?”
“I only wish I could! This house is a shambles, I have never worked with such degenerates in all my life!”
“Dales people aren’t for everybody, I reckon. Best you found it out now before you were trapped all remote-like on the estate with no way to escape.”
Mr. Grimsby placed a hand over his heart. “Do you actually imagine that I would travel to Yorkshire with this circus?”
“I hadn’t imagined, actually. It is well we have the same views on it though.” Mrs. Right paused. “Wait a moment. What did you mean when you said ‘I only wish I could.’ What’s holding you up? If it’s pride, I’d say that’s a mannish and foolish reason. Get packing, get going, and forget you were ever here.”
Mr. Grimsby paced the small and rather dim room, his footsteps creaking the floorboards. “That is just it, I cannot leave! Not this soon. Oh, what am I to do? I feel I am wrecked, I am just a shell of the man I was when I arrived. I cannot bear another minute, but I have no choice! What is to be the end of it?”
“Why aren’t you to have a choice, though? Lady Marchfield got the last one a new situation, Mr. Button was his name. I’ll wager she’ll do the same for you.”
“No she certainly will not. If I do not last a month, she washes her hands of me. That is our agreement. After one month, she hands over fifty pounds. My seed money to open my own haberdashery. She does not know of the shop, of course. She believes that if I can last a month, I can last forever.”
“Does she, now,” Mrs. Right said thoughtfully. This was indeed interesting information. It seemed Mr. Grimsby was planning to cross Lady Marchfield by lasting a month and then making off with her fifty pounds.
Mrs. Right had the inclination to help him do it. Not only would he be out of the house, but Lady Misery would be entirely stymied to be out a pile of pounds. Satisfactory on all counts.
“I believe we can come to some sort of genial agreement, Mr. Grimsby. Your whole problem is that you care how the house is run. What’s say you stop caring? Then you can relax and ride out the month. Stay up here all day and read books if you like—I’ll even put you in a better room. Take turns in the garden. Do whatever strikes you. Then, collect your money and be off.”
Mrs. Right was pleased to see a glimmer of hope in Mr. Grimsby’s eye.
“Yes, I could do that, I suppose. Yes, of course I could. What do I care how this house is run? Nobody else does! Should I care if that dinner on Tuesday is a shambles? I was caring very much, but why was I doing it?”
“Now you’re catching on to it.”
Mr. Grimsby straightened his coat. “Consider me disengaged, Mrs. Right. I believe I will go for a walk in the square and everybody can do what they like about tea. If Thomas attends the drawing room slouched like he’s broken in half, that’s not my concern. He can fall asleep and fall over on the floor for all I care about it!”
