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Grace’s eyes were dancing when she looked over at her. “Maybe Agnes’ backbone. Now, are you vegetarian today or do you want bacon?”
“I thought you were against bacon?”
“I am.” She sighed. “Working here is lowering my standards. Now do you want bacon or not?”
“Bacon, please.” She thought about it. “Is there any cake?”
The cook frowned at her. “I’ll give you bacon with your omelette, but I draw the line at cake for breakfast.”
“Don’t you think I’ve suffered enough?”
“Aye, I do. I also think you could cut it in half just by saying no to people when they corner you.”
“That is so much easier said than done. Trust me, I’ve tried. Now, how am I going to get Duncan out of the way while the Women’s Institute are here?”
“You’ll think of something.”
“That doesn’t help at all.”
“You know what I think about this situation,” Grace said. “You need to come clean with Duncan. Sneaking around and lying to him is just going to backfire.”
“How exactly? It isn’t like he’ll fire me. I’m the only person around here he doesn’t want to get rid of.” And wasn’t that an honour?
The smell of sizzling bacon made her mouth water. Donna wasn’t a very good vegetarian. It turned out she had a hard time saying no to meat as well as people.
Grace came over and placed a perfectly cooked, vegetable-filled omelette in front of Donna, with three strips of crispy bacon on the side. Donna couldn’t wait to get at it and nabbed a piece before the plate hit the table. It had the perfect crunch and tasted like a salty piece of heaven.
“Manners,” cook reprimanded, but there was a sparkle in her eye.
“Yum,” Donna said around a mouthful of food. “I’m so glad you came to work here, Grace. We needed you.”
“You wouldn’t have starved to death.”
“We might have. Neither of us can cook and the mansion’s on the no-delivery list for takeaways.”
“That boy needs to start behaving himself,” Grace said on a sigh.
“I’m no’ a boy,” Duncan said from the doorway.
Donna gasped at the sight of him and choked on her bacon. Her eyes streamed as the cook clapped her on the back. When she was done coughing up a lung, she reached for the glass of water Grace had placed in front of her.
“You’re a boy to me,” Grace told him, making him frown.
“Then I’m the boy who pays your wages.”
Grace just rolled her eyes and went back to the stove. This was another reason Donna had been keen to hire Grace as their cook—she knew the woman wouldn’t let their boss intimidate her.
Duncan slid into the bench seat facing her. “Morning,” he said with a knowing smile.
He sat there, perfectly relaxed, as though he did this every morning and it was nothing new, when in fact, it was the first morning in her entire time at the mansion that he’d turned up for breakfast.
“What are you doing here?” she said when she could talk again without coughing.
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “I live here.”
Great, she had to deal with an early morning smart arse. “You never come into the kitchen for breakfast.”
He reached over the table and nabbed one of her strips of bacon. Donna scowled at him as she lifted her fork. “Do that again, and I will maim you.”
