Page 21 of The Cold Duke's Hired Bride

The house had changed under her hands in a few short weeks, and she let herself see it that morning for the first time, as a person sees a child’s growth only when a visitor remarks on it. She went down later than she had gone down on any morning of her matrimony, and the kitchen did not fall upon her like a creditor.

“You’re late down,” Mrs. Croft said. She said it to a pot. A cup stood already poured beside the pot and going cold in the waiting, and that was the nearest the cook had yet come to flinging her arms about anyone.

Renae took up the waiting cup. “I was instructed to be late down. In writing, no less. I intend to have it framed.”

“Hmf.” Mrs. Croft pushed the cup an inch in her direction. “There’s them as would say a housekeeper kept abed till ten is a housekeeper getting above her station.”

“And what do you say, Mrs. Croft?”

“I say the bread’s risen true for the first time since Mrs. Bellamy had the keys, and the girls aren’t weeping in the scullery of a morning, and I slept clean through last week without once wondering would the roof outlast me.” She thumped the dough over. “If that’s what comes of you lying abed, I’ll carry the water up the stairs myself.”

“You will not. You will give it to Annie and complain to the parish that I have made you sentimental.”

“I’ll complain regardless. It’s the only seasoning I’ve got left that doesn’t cost me a thing.” She worked the dough a moment, deciding something. “You want to know what’s altered, you’ll not get it out of me twice, so mind it the once. Mrs. Bellamy ran this kitchen on fright. You eat short when you’re frightened, and you waste long, and the master’s table groans while the scullery goes hungry, and the whole sorry business gets itself called grandeur.”

“And now?”

She wiped her hands down her apron. “Now somebody counts. Nobody’s counted in this house since the old butler took fright and went off in March, and a kitchen that’s counted is a kitchen that’s trusted, and a kitchen that’s trusted stops stealing from itself.”

“Even the footmen who were fond of Thomas?”

“Thomas’s particular friends ate best of anyone and laboured least, and they’ve gone quiet as church mice since he went, which tells you they were his audience and never his friends.” She jabbed a floury finger at the cup. “Finch does the work of three and asks nothing back for it. That one I’d keep through a famine.”

Renae said nothing to that. She had her own column open for Finch, and it had not yet balanced, and she had told no living soul that it was open.

“Drink your tea, Mrs. Trelawney, before I take it back for the loaf. You are growing fond of me.”

“I’m growing used to you. It’s cheaper than fondness and it lasts a great deal longer. Don’t mistake the one for the other and we shall do very well together.”

***

The duke had stopped eating, as is the way of those who fast decline when food becomes one more thing the body is too tired to want, and Renae took it for a professional affront and carried the soup up to him herself.

“I am not hungry, Mrs. Trelawney.” His voice was papery thin now, worn thin at the folds. “Though it is kind in you to climb all these stairs only to be refused.”

“Hunger has very little to do with it, Your Grace. You will take it because the alternative is that I draw that chair to your bedside and describe to you, in considerable detail, the present condition of the third-floor linen cupboard, until you swallow the soup purely in self-defence.”

A sound came out of him that she did not at first place, because she had never once heard it from him, and it plainly cost him breath he could ill afford, and it was worth the spending. He was laughing.

“You are a tyrant, madam.”

“Your Grace, I have bullied footmen twice your size into taking soup they had sworn off for life. I should be sorry to add a duke to the list, but I will, and you would not enjoy the boasting afterward.”

He took the soup. He took it slowly, a spoonful at a rest, and between the spoonfuls he watched her with eyes that had read a great many men over a long life and had not yet mislaid the trick of it.

“Sit, if you will. A man eats poorly with someone standing over him like a gaoler. You may guard the bowl from the chair.”

She sat, and kept the tray balanced on her knee where he could see the soup was still in play.

“You have done a great deal to this house in a very short while.”

“I have counted it, mostly, Your Grace. It seems that a house wants counting more than it wants anything else, rather as a child wants looking at. The most of what I have done is look at it honestly and write down what I found.”

He set the spoon to rest before he asked it. “And what did you find, when you looked at it honestly.”

“A house that had been frightened into pretending it was affluent, Your Grace. There is no shortage of that about. Fear in its best coat, calling itself plenty, and everyone too well bred to mention the elbows have gone through.”

He was quiet, and the spoon stayed where it lay. “That is the truest sentence anyone has spoken in this room in a year, and they have sent me clever men past counting to speak in it.”