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The woman was carrying a leather portmanteau, and her high colour and angry expression told Marianne immediately that this was no ordinary leave-taking.
The man who had pulled open the door looked equally furious. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with thick dark hair and a proudly arrogant profile, and both his appearance and his demeanour made it plain that he was the master of the house and in no very good humour.
‘If you think you can turn me off with nothing but a few pennies and no reference, Master Denshaw, then you’ll have to think again—that you will. An honest woman, I am, and I’m not having no one say no different…’
‘An honest woman? So tell me then, Mrs Micklehead, how does such an honest woman, paid no more than ten guineas a year, manage to afford to clothe herself in a bonnet and a cloak that even to my untrained male eye would have cost in the region of ten times that amount?’
The woman’s face took on an even more crimson hue.
‘Given to me, they was, by Mr Awkwright what I worked for before I come here. Said how I could have them, he did, after poor Mrs Awkwright passed away on account of how well I looked after her.’
‘So well, in fact, that she died of starvation and neglect, you mean? Well, you might have hoped to starve me into submission—or worse—Mrs Micklehead, with your inability to perform any of the tasks for which you were employed—’
‘An’ ousekeeper were what I were taken on as—not a skivvy nor a cook. I come here out of the goodness of me heart.’
‘You came here, Mrs Micklehead, for one reason and one reason only, and that was so that you could line your own pockets at my expense.’
‘If you was real quality, and not just some poor brat what managed to marry up into a class what was too good for him, you’d know how the real quality and them that works for them goes about things. Call yourself the Master of Bellfield? The whole town knows there was another what should have had that right, even if they’re too feared of you to say so.’
‘Hold your tongue, woman.’
The order thundered round the chaotic room.
‘You’re no housekeeper,’ he continued grimly into the silence he had commanded. ‘You’re a lazy good-for-nothing, a thief and a liar, and I’m well rid of you.’
‘You may well be, but I’ll tell you this—you won’t find no one daft enough to come looking to take me place, that you won’t,’ she told him vigorously. ‘Not when I’ve had me say—’
‘Excuse me…’
At the sound of her faltering interruption they both turned to look at Marianne.
‘Oh, I see—got someone to take me place already, have you?’ The housekeeper gave Marianne an angrily contemptuous look, and then, without giving either Marianne or her late master time to correct her, she continued challengingly, ‘So where’s he had you from, then? One of them fancy domestic agencies down in Manchester, I’ll be bound, with that posh way you talk. Well, you won’t last a full day here, you won’t. You’ll have come here expecting to be in charge of a proper gentleman’s household, with a cook and parlour maids, and even one of them butlers. There ain’t nowt like that here. Take my advice, love, and get yourself back where you’ve come from whilst you still can. This ain’t no place for the likes of you, this ain’t.’
Turning away from Marianne, she addressed the man watching them both. ‘She won’t last five minutes, by the looks of her. She don’t look like no housekeeper I’ve ever seen.’
‘I know enough to recognise a house with a kitchen that isn’t being run properly,’ Marianne told her pointedly. On any other occasion it might almost have made her smile to see the look on the other woman’s face as she realised that Marianne wasn’t going to be manipulated, as she’d hoped, or used as a bullet she could fire at her employer.
‘Well, some folks don’t know when they’re being done a favour, and that’s plain to see,’ she told Marianne, bridling angrily. ‘But don’t expect no sympathy when you find out what’s what.’ With a final angry glower she stormed past Marianne and out into the darkness.
‘I don’t know what brings you here,’ the Master of Bellfield said to Marianne coldly once the housekeeper had gone, ‘But we both know that it wasn’t an interview for the post of housekeeper via an employment agency in Manchester.’
‘I am looking for work,’ Marianne informed him swiftly.
‘Oh, you are, are you? And you thought to find some here? Well, you must be desperate, then. Didn’t you hear what Mrs Micklehead had to say about me?’
‘She is entitled to her opinion, but I prefer to form my own.’
Marianne could see from the look of astonishment on his face that he hadn’t expected her to speak up in such a way.
‘Is that wise in a servant?’
‘There is nothing, so far as I know, that says a servant cannot have a mind of her own.’
‘If you really think that you are a fool. There’s no work for you here.’
Marianne stood her ground.
‘Forgive me, sir, but it looks to me as though there is a great deal of work to be done.’
There was a small silence whilst they both contemplated the grim state of the kitchen, and then he demanded, ‘And you reckon you can do it, do you? Well, you’ve got more faith in yourself than I have. Because I don’t. Not from the looks of you.’
‘A fair man would give me the chance to prove myself and not dismiss me out of hand,’ Marianne told him bravely.
‘A fair man?’ He gave a harsh shout of laughter. ‘Didn’t you hear what Mrs Micklehead had to say? I am not a fair man. I never have been and I never will be. No. I am a monster—a cruel tyrant who is loathed and hated by those who are forced to work for me.’
‘As I’ve said, I prefer to make my own judgements, sir.’
‘Well, I must say you have a great deal to say for yourself for a person who arrives at my door looking like a half-starved cat. You are not from ’round here.’
‘No, sir.’
‘So what brings you here, then?’
‘I need work. I saw that this is a big house, and I thought that maybe…’
‘I’d be mad to take on another housekeeper to pick my pockets and attempt to either starve or poison me. And why should I when I can rack up at a hotel and oversee my mills from there?’
‘A man needs his own roof over his head,’ Marianne told him daringly, drawing courage from the fact that he had not thrown her out immediately. She was pretty certain that this man would want to stay in his own house, and would not easily tolerate living under the rule of anyone else.
‘And a woman needs a clever silken tongue if she is to persuade a man to provide a roof over hers, eh, little cat?’
Marianne looked down at the floor, sensing that his mood had changed and that he was turning against her.
‘It is work I am looking for, sir—honest, decent work. That is all,’ she told him quietly. She could feel him weighing her up and judging her, and then putting that judgement into the scales to be weighed against his past experience and his cynicism.
‘And you reckon you can set this place to order, do you, with this honest, decent work of yours?’
Why was she hesitating? she thought. Wasn’t this what she wanted—why she had come here? The kitchen might be untidy and chaotic, but at least it was warm and dry. Where was she to go if she was turned away now? Back to where she had come from? Hardly. Yet still she hesitated, warned by something she could see in the arrogant male face with its winter-sky-grey eyes. His gaze held a hint of latent cruelty, making her feel that if she stepped over the threshold of this house and into his domain she would be stepping into danger. She could turn back. She could walk on into the town and find work there. She could…
A gust of wind rattled the windows and the door slammed shut—closed, Marianne was sure, not by the force of the wind but by a human hand.
‘Yes.’ Why did she feel as though she had taken a very reckless step into some dark unknown?
She could still feel him looking at her, assessing her, and it was a relief when he finally spoke.
‘So, tell me something of the cause of such an urgent need for work that it has brought you out on such a night and to such a place. Got turned off by your mistress, did you?’
Although his voice had a rich northern burr, it was not as strong as that of the departing housekeeper. She could hear the hostility and the suspicion in it, though.
‘No!’
‘Then what?’
‘Beggars can’t be choosers, sir,’ she replied quietly, looking not at him but down at the floor. It had taken more than one whipping before she had known that it was not her right to look her betters in the eye.
‘Beggars? You class yourself as such, and yet you are aspiring to the post of a housekeeper?’
‘I know the duties of a housekeeper, sir, and have carried them out in the past. On this occasion, though, I was not in any expectation of such an elevated post.’
‘Elevated? So you think that working for me as my housekeeper would be a rare and juicy plum of a post, do you?’
‘I had not thought of it in such terms, sir. Indeed, I had not thought of taking that position at all—you are the one who has done that. All I was looking for was the chance of work and a roof over my head.’
‘But you have worked as a housekeeper, you say?’
‘Yes, sir.’ It was, after all, the truth.
‘Where was your last post?’
‘In Cheshire, sir. The home of an elderly lady.’
‘Cheshire! So what brings you to Lancashire?’
The baby, who had fallen asleep, suddenly woke up and started to cry.
‘What the devil?’ He snatched up a lantern from the table and held it aloft, anger pinching in his nostrils and drawing down the corners of his mouth into a scimitar curve as he stared at them both. ‘What kind of deceit is this that you try to pass yourself off as a servant when you have a child?’
‘No deceit, sir. I am a respectable widow, forced to earn a living for myself and my child as best I can.’
‘No one employs a woman with a child as a servant.’
It was true enough. Live-in domestic staff were supposed to remain single. Housekeepers might be given the courtesy title of ‘Mrs,’ but they were certainly not supposed to have a husband, and most definitely not a child.
‘I was in service before my marriage,’ she answered his charge, speaking the truth once again.
‘So you’re a widow, are you? What happened to your husband?’
‘He died, sir.’
‘Don’t bandy words with me. I don’t have the temperament for such women’s ways. There’s no work here for the likes of you. You might have more luck in one of the bawdy houses of Manchester—or was that how you came by your brat in the first place?’
‘I am a respectably married woman.’ Marianne told him angrily. ‘And this child, my late husband’s child, was born in wedlock.’
‘I’m surprised you haven’t had the gall to farm it out to someone else, or left it outside a chapel door to add to the problems of some already overburdened parish. Without it you might have convinced me to give you some work.’ He was walking towards the door, obviously intending to force her to leave.
It was too late now for her to wish that she had not allowed her pride to overrule her caution.
‘Please…’ She hated having to beg for anything from anyone, but to have to beg from a man like this one was galling indeed. However, she had given her promise. A deathbed promise what was more. ‘Please let me stay—at least for tonight. If nothing else I could clean up this kitchen. Please…’
She hated the way he was looking at her, stripping her of her dignity and her pride, reducing her to nothing other than the miserable creature he perceived her to be.
He gave a mirthless bark of derisory laughter.
‘Clean this place—in one night? Impossible! What is your name?’
‘Marianne—I mean Mrs…Mrs Brown.’
Something too sharp and knowing gleamed in his eyes.
‘You don’t seem too sure of your surname, Mrs Brown. Could it be that you have forgotten it and that it could just as readily be Smith or Jones? Where were you wed?’
‘I was married in Cheshire, in the town of Middlewich, and my name is Brown,’ Marianne told him fiercely.
‘Aye, well, anyone can buy a cheap brass ring and lay claim to a dead husband.’
‘I am married. It is the truth.’
‘You have your marriage lines?’
Marianne could feel her face starting to burn. ‘Not with me…’
He was going to make her leave…
‘If I turn you out, you and the brat will no doubt end up on the parish, and the workhouse governors will have something to say about that. Very well, you may stay the night. But first thing in the morning you are to leave—not just this house, but the town as well. Is that understood?’
He had gone without giving her the opportunity to answer him. Which was just as well, given the circumstances that had brought her here.
For tonight at least she and the baby would have the warmth of this kitchen. A kitchen she had promised to clean in return for its shelter, she reminded herself, as she rocked the baby back to sleep and prayed she would be able to find some milk for him somewhere in the chaos.
Her arms ached from carrying both the child and their few possessions, and her ankle was still throbbing. She limped over to an empty chair and placed the silent swaddled bundle down on it. Her heart missed a beat as she studied the small waxen face. She turned towards the fire glowering sullenly in the range. Ash spilled from beneath it, suggesting that it was some time since it had been cleaned out properly, and she would need a good fire burning if she was to heat enough water to get this place properly clean.
Picking up the lantern, she walked slowly round the kitchen. Half a loaf of bread had been left uncovered and drying out on the table, along with some butter, and a jar of jam with the lid left off, causing her mouth to water at the sight of it. But she made herself resist the temptation to fall on it and silence the ache of hunger that tore at her insides. Everywhere she looked she could see filthy crockery, and the floor was sticky with dirt.
A door opened off the kitchen into a large pantry, in which Marianne was relieved to find a large pitcher of milk standing on a marble slab. Before she did anything else she would feed the baby. Another door opened down to the cellars, but Marianne decided not to bother exploring them. A good housekeeper would keep a domain like this well stocked and spotlessly clean, and it would be run meticulously in an ordered routine, to provide for the comfort of its master and mistress and their family. If the kitchen was anything to judge from, this house did not provide comfort for anyone.
In the back scullery Marianne found a sink piled high with dirty pots. The pain in her ankle had turned into a dull ache, so she found a small pan, unused and clean enough to need only rinsing under a tap before she put some milk in it to heat up for the baby. He was so very, very frail. Tears filled her eyes.
Ten minutes later she was seated in the rocking chair she had drawn up to the range, feeding the baby small pieces of bread soaked in the warm milk into which she had melted a teaspoon of honey and beaten a large fresh egg. He was so weak that he didn’t even have the energy to suck on the food, and Marianne’s hand shook as she gently squeezed so that the egg and milk mixture ran into his mouth.
It was over an hour before she was satisfied with the amount of nourishment he had been able to take, and then she removed the swaddling bands to wash him gently in a bowl of warm water in front of the range. After she had dried him, she used a clean cloth she had found to make a fresh clout for him. He was asleep before she had finished, and Marianne put him down in a wicker basket she had found in the larder, which she had lined with soft clothes she had warmed on the range.
Was it her imagination, or was there actually a hint of warm pink colour in his cheeks, as though finally he might begin to thrive?
Marianne turned her attention to the range, ignoring the aching misery of her ankle as she poked and raked at the old ashes until she had got the fire blazing brightly and the discarded ash swept into a bucket ready to be disposed of. An empty hod containing only a couple of pieces of coke told her what the range burned, but whilst in a properly organised household such a hod—and indeed more than one—would have been ready filled with coke, so that the range could be stoked up for the night, in this household no such preparation had been made.
There was no help for it. Marianne recognised that she was going to have to go out into the yard and find the coke store, otherwise the range would go out.
The wind had picked up during the time she had been inside, and it tore at her cloak, whipping it round her as she held a lantern aloft, the better to see where the coke supply might be. To her relief she found it on her third search of the yard. But again, just like the kitchen, the store was neglected, and without a cover to keep the rain from the coke. The handle of the shovel she had to use to fill the hob was gritty, but she set her jaw and ignored the discomfort.
