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“So you’re trying to save the house by keeping the cook from walking out because the others don’t have the courage.”
She gave him a cool stare. “I believed I could convince Mrs. Feathers to stay, so I should try. Whether it is my house or not.”
“And you thought I’d thank you for it?”
“You must not take your grievances out on innocent people.”
“Her ladyship and the earl did.” Cal had to struggle to speak as calmly as she did. “Don’t speak to me like I must be scum because I was born poor. I was born to decent and honest parents who helped other people and were charitable, even when they had nothing.”
He could see the flash of surprise and shock in her eyes. His heart pounded.
He wanted to kiss her. Wanted to push her back against the plain white plaster wall and devour her with his mouth until she was panting against him.
But that wasn’t the way to do it with Lady Julia.
He raised her fingers to his lips. His father used to do this with his mother, and it always made Mam giggle, then melt and sigh and forget worry and despair.
Julia had soft skin. Pretty hands that smelled like flowers. His head told him to be angry that her hands obviously did no work, but lust shot through him at the idea of having such soft, pampered hands gripping his shoulders as he made love to her.
She pulled her hand back. “Stop this, Worthington.”
He loved hearing her speak so primly. It entertained him. “I want to make amends.”
“Then don’t tear Worthington apart. Your father was disowned and that was wrong. But what others did to you should not dictate whether you behave nobly or not.”
“You people would say a man can never rise above his birth.”
“I would never say that.” With that, she turned away from him and continued downstairs.
“You know what’s funny?” he said. “When I took a tour of the house this morning and came down to the kitchen, the servants assumed I’d gotten lost. Every footman and maid I encountered, the butler, the cook, all thought I must have gotten lost to be down in the servants’ basement.”
“We refer to it as ‘belowstairs.’”
He grabbed her arm, stopping her. “It’s a cold, damp, stone basement without enough light. Don’t give it a prim name so you people can pretend that the kitchen staff is happy to be trapped down there day and night, scouring pots.”
Julia recoiled from his harsh, accusatory words and continued to the bottom of the stairs, but she paused before she opened the door.
“You want to sell Worthington. Whoever buys it will employ a kitchen maid. Count the number of servants next time you’re at a house belonging to someone who is ‘new money.’ They will have more than us.”
“New money.” He scoffed at the term.
But Julia went on, “Inquire about the working conditions of those servants. Find out what their employers do when they can no longer work or become ill. All too often they are let go and replaced. There is no pension, no care, no compassion. We try to take care of our own. We truly do. You Americans champion capitalism, but it can be a harsh thing.”
She pushed open the door and walked out.
He let her get the last word. This time.
Cal followed her through a stone-arched doorway, into a room with a long wooden table. A woman sat at it, sewing. Two footmen where having cups of tea. Two maids sat there, giggling together.
Their happy demeanor startled him. He’d expected to see girls who were exhausted, who looked like they were being crushed. He never dreamed a girl would sparkle when she was working her fingers to the bone as a maid.
Had his mother sparkled and laughed like that? He’d rarely seen her do it while they were struggling to survive.
“Good morning,” Julia said. Every person at the table pushed back their chairs and bolted to their feet to stand at attention.
“My lady?” The housekeeper hurried out of a room, keys jangling at her waist. “My lord.”
“My lord. My lady.” The snobby butler hurried in. “May I help you both?”
“We wish Mrs. Feathers to spare a moment of her time,” Julia said. It wasn’t a question. It was a command, but a sugarcoated one.
“Of course, my lady.” The housekeeper disappeared into the kitchens.
A strident voice cried, “What does ’e want now?” Then it went quiet. A moment later, Mrs. Feathers showed up at the doorway. The pudgy woman wore a coat that strained over her ample figure, and a surprisingly stylish hat with a feather.
Cal was just about to capitulate and agree to a truce with the cook—just to see what would happen if he made nice with Lady Julia and to find out how she would coax Mrs. Feathers to change her way of thinking—when a loud crash sounded in the kitchen and Mrs. Feathers gasped, “Oh Lord, that was the sauce for the duck. Stupid, clumsy girl!”
Cal couldn’t see why the cook would care since she was walking out the door, but then remembered Julia had led the cook to believe he would apologize. Maybe even grovel.
And the crash had interrupted them.
Face reddening with impatience and anger, the cook whirled around and barked into the kitchen, “You daft twit, can’t you be careful? That’s ruined. And here’s his lordship, concerned about waste. Well, we know who’s to blame for most of the food that goes in the rubbish bin. You haven’t got the wits of a dog.”
Mrs. Feathers lunged into the kitchen with her hand raised as if ready to deliver a slap.
Cal had worked on the docks as a young boy. There he’d been hit and abused. No one was going to abuse anyone in his name. He stalked into the kitchen, sensing Lady Julia was close behind.
Mrs. Feathers gripped a young kitchen maid by the shoulders. Her face was contorted and red with fury. The girl, she’d been introduced as Hannah on his previous trip to the kitchens, was thin—skinny arms stuck out of the sleeves of a beige dress, and an apron was tied around a tiny waist. The cook shook Hannah, who had wide, frightened brown eyes and tears on her cheeks. “It was an accident. I was trying to be careful. But then I turned and the dog was there and I fell over him.”
His late uncle’s dog, a retriever, let out a whimpering sound and dropped to the floor, gazing up with pitiful eyes. The kitchen maid looked more scared than the dog.
Suddenly, Mrs. Feathers shook the girl, her face dark red with fury. She lifted her hand—
He grasped the woman’s wrist and hauled her away from Hannah. “So you are responsible for the bruises on this girl,” he said, his voice low and cold. He pushed up the girl’s sleeve, revealing a row of fading bruises along her forearm. “I noticed them when I was downstairs earlier. But she didn’t rat you out. She insisted she got them because she was clumsy. Now I see what’s been happening.” He dropped his voice lower, so it was nothing more than a growl. “No one hits anyone in my household.”
The cook had turned white.
“Apologize to Hannah.”
“What?” gasped Mrs. Feathers.
“You had no right to say what you did. No right to touch her. She’s a person, not a whipping boy.”
“She’s not a person, she’s a kitchen maid. I know how to keep my staff in line. I know what works with them and what doesn’t, my lord—”
“And I know when I see behavior I refuse to condone,” he said with lethal cool. “I was told to give you an apology to keep peace in this damn house. But you don’t deserve one. I don’t want a woman like you working here, taking out your anger on a defenseless girl. I don’t care if you’ve quit or not, because you’re fired. Now get out.”
The woman’s jaw dropped.
Lady Julia’s jaw also dropped.
Hannah the kitchen maid stared at him with red-rimmed eyes. She was older than she looked, older than Mam had been when she had to start working as a maid in that Fifth Avenue house.
“Can you cook?” he said to her.
“Y-yes.”
“Her? Cook?” cried Mrs. Feathers. “That’s a laugh.”
“She’s going to cook from now on. Congratulations, Hannah. You’ve been promoted.”
He turned to find Julia staring at him, in as much shock as the others. “I’ve solved the problem,” he said. “I have a cook.”
* * *
Julia pursued the infuriating Earl of Worthington along the downstairs corridor. “You simply cannot do that.”
The earl stopped and faced her. He looked smug, of course, for he had no idea what he had just done. “It’s my house. I can do what I want.”
“What you have done is completely unkind to that girl.”
His brows shot up. “I gave her a promotion.”
“The poor kitchen maid has been just thrust into a terrible position, Worthington. She is too inexperienced, and she must be absolutely terrified.”
He glared at her, his eyes a blue blaze. “I wasn’t going to stand by and let her be abused. If you think I’m going to let my household be run by bullies, you are wrong, Julia. I don’t give a rat’s arse if that is the way things have always been done.”
She supposed he had a point. “But Hannah has to face tonight’s dinner without enough help.”
“So she serves a bad dinner, so what?”
“I do not believe she is the sort who can easily ignore a failure. Not to mention she will be teased mercilessly by the other staff, who will not want her to get above herself.”
“I’ll make someone else help her. There are other kitchen maids. Some of the other staff can help. If they don’t like it, they know I am more than willing to fire people who cross me.”
“What are you going to do to me because I’ve crossed you? Forbid me from coming to the house?”
“I’d never do that.” That slow, sizzling smile—like the path of a flame on a fuse—lifted his lips again. “I’d never get the chance to bring out your passionate side. When you’re angry, you burn. You glow with an energy that crackles like lightning.”
A mad thought hit her. “You did not just do all of that to make me angry.”
“No, but I’ll keep it in mind for the future.”
He took two steps toward her. She had to tip her head back to meet his eyes. His arms bracketed the wall on either side of her, making her suck in a sharp breath.
“I figure the cook was stealing from the pantry, too, but I don’t much care about that.”
“That’s a bold accusation to make. Don’t Americans believe in a proper trial with evidence, just as the English do?”
“I’m not firing her for the theft, even though I’m sure she’s guilty. She was offended right off the mark and I figured all that outrage and indignity was because she was hiding something. Also, she kept glancing at the pantry door. Her guilty conscience revealing itself.”
“I—I had no idea this was going on.”
“Why should you? It’s not your house.”
“Anthony—” She broke off.
His fingers gently touched her cheek, turning her to face him. Just the contact of his fingertips made her knees feel wobbly, as if she’d danced to jazz all night.
“What about my cousin Anthony?”
“He asked me to look after his family when he went away to war.”
“Why would an earl and countess need you to look after them?”
She couldn’t answer that. She’d never really understood why. “I did make him a promise and Lady Worthington needs my help now.”
“Well, you’ll have to excuse me. I have a painting to finish. I’m hot to get all this fire and fury in you down on canvas. But before I go—”
His lips lowered. They were in a shadowed downstairs corridor, but only feet away in the kitchens came the voices of the servants—all filled with vehement astonishment over what had just happened.
Anyone could walk in and see.
That thought alone should make her draw back at once.
But his lips seemed to have become the whole of Julia’s universe. His lips were full and sensual and she wanted to touch them. The ache that shot through low in her belly made her gasp.
Now she knew what she felt for him. Lust. Pure and simple. And ladies with sense never let themselves be controlled by lust. Even in this modern age.
She had opened her heart twice and had been terribly hurt. She was almost twenty-seven and it was so hard to think she might never touch a man and be touched by him. She might never know passion or make love.
But she wouldn’t do it without marriage. She couldn’t...
She couldn’t do it with this man who wanted only to destroy an estate and people she loved.
She jerked back. “You championed Hannah. What about the other people who live on this estate and who work hard? When you sell to the highest bidder, what will happen to them? You should meet the people who will lose everything when you sell. Or are you afraid to face them?”
He was breathing hard. “You’re goading me.”
“I’m pointing out the truth,” she said sweetly. “I challenge you to take a tour of the estate with me. To meet the people who are now putting their faith and their trust in you. Who are doing so with no idea that you want to destroy everything they’ve worked for. Some of those families have farmed for generations—”
“All right. I’ll go.”
“Fine. Why don’t we go now? We could ride out from the house? Or do you ride—”
“Of course, I don’t ride,” he said brusquely. “The closest I’d gotten to a horse before the army were the ones pulling rag-and-bone carts in our neighborhood.” His eyes narrowed. “My father did that at one time for the money. He drove a rag-and-bone cart. When do you think I should share that story with the countess?”
“Don’t. It would kill her.”
