Gabriel winced.
“It’s the piano. It’s out of tune,” Birdie explained as played another chord.
“You’re hacking onto the keys with brute force. You have to play with more feeling.”
“Oh?” She hammered down once more. “I think it sounds rather good.”
Gabriel hovered by the doorway, hesitating as if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to enter or leave. Birdie wondered what had brought him out of his den. Was it really the atrociousness of her playing?
“I found something in the desk's drawer.” Birdie got up. She picked up the ledgers and handed them to him. “You should look at them. There is something deeply wrong with those numbers, but I can’t figure out what it is.”
He didn’t take them.
“Don’t you want to have a look at them?”
“It is no concern of mine.”
Birdie almost dropped the books. “What! This is about your estate! Your lands, your tenants, your income. Normally, dukes have a steward who takes care of it. But since you aren’t possessed of even the most basic of serving staff, maybe it is to be expected that you do not have a steward, either.”
He tucked his hands under his armpits. “You brought in all those women today. What did you think you were doing?”
She thought that was obvious. Lifting a hand, she waved it about as if to show him the room in all its glory. “They were cleaning the castle. It was well overdue. Don’t you like what they did today? This castle is actually not that bad when you’ve cleared away all the muck and grime.”
“I preferred it the way it was before.”
Birdie stared at him. “I am about to throw the candlestick at you,” she declared, reaching for the candlestick.
Gabriel ducked immediately. He looked so ridiculously alarmed that an involuntary laugh escaped her, which took the gravity out of the situation.
“I take it you paid them from the pouch I gave you,” her husband asked.
Birdie thought of how that pouch was now considerably lighter than it was before. She shrugged.
He scowled. “The money was meant to be for you, not for paying servants.”
Birdie folded her arms. “Someone has to pay the servants.”
“How often do I have to say it: I don’t need anyone other than Higgins.” Gabriel jutted out his chin like a spoilt child.
Dear me. The man was dumb, deaf, or inordinately stubborn. But then, so was she. Well, just stubborn. She was definitely not dumb, and certainly not deaf. She peeked at the man before her. Why did she have the impression he was sulking? Could he seriously be miffed because she told someone to mop the floor?
“We also have a cook now who is capable of cooking more than porridge,” she chattered on. “Higgins will no longer have to spend his valuable time in the kitchen but will be able to devote himself to more important things. Where is he anyhow?”
“He left. He leaves every night.”
“What? Where to?”
Gabriel shrugged. “He has a room in one of the outer houses.”
“You are saying that he doesn’t sleep in the castle?”
“It would seem so.”
“But why?”
“It appears he is afraid of ghosts. Along with the rest of them.”
Birdie digested his words. The women had left at dusk. As far as she knew, not because they were afraid of ghosts, but because they needed to be home before the men returned from work. That was a slightly different matter. Tomorrow morning, they would return.
