“Oh yes, we must always do what is proper. Mustn’t we? Especially our fine butler, whose name is muttered in other houses as one of the finest butlers there ever was!”
“You flatter me,” Owen said, shaking his head. “Be sensible for a few minutes at least, please.”
“As you wish, I will be sensible.” Tommie clapped his hands together and turned his full focus on Owen. “Ask her what is wrong.”
“I cannot do that!”
“Yes, you can,” Tommie said, gesturing to him again. “You are better placed than any of the rest of us, and we all know her husband is hardly going to ask, is he?” He rolled his eyes with the words.
Owen lifted a hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was something he couldn’t understand, why the duke was so uninterested in his wife.
The day that the new Duchess had walked through the door, Owen had nearly lost his footing on the marble floor. She was striking indeed, with long golden hair frequently curled into an updo, bold green eyes, so large they were like pools of water, and a delicacy of manner that Owen found intriguing indeed.
He rather thought she was like a fairy, some ethereal creature he could find out in the woods surrounding the manor house. She should not be locked up in the house, trapped here with no company, a practical prisoner.
“So, if her husband will not speak to her, you must,” Tommie said and pushed forward something on a silver tray.
“What is this?” Owen asked, looking down at it in wonder.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures and all that.” Tommie smiled and gestured down at the tray. “One of my greatest creations!” he said with drama, as though he were an actor on the stage. “It is clear she did not like the peach pudding and syllabub; she had only one mouthful of that. So,thisis chocolate cake.”
Owen leaned down towards it and sniffed it, finding the richness of the cocoa powder invading his senses.
“Good Lord, how much cocoa powder did you put in?”
“A lot.”
“That’s expensive. If the duke knew how much you were using …” Owen trailed off, for he barely needed to say the latter part of the sentence.
“It will be worth it if we manage to make her eat. Go, take this to her. Let’s see what happens.” Tommie slid the tray across the workbench again. As Owen picked up the silver tray, there was a sound behind him, a sort of scoff that made him look round. “Something caught in your throat, Jessie?” Tommie asked before Owen could.
The young maid was someone Owen knew well, and he had once thought the two of them friends, though recent months and the distance she had put between them suggested they weren’t anymore. She scoffed again in answer and leaned over the silver tray, curling her nose up at it.
“Why do you go to such lengths to please our duchess, Tommie?” she said with clear derision.
“You do realize she is our master’s wife, do you not?” Tommie asked.
“Some wife, she barely seems interested in him,” Jessie said and turned away, ready to walk back to her duties with the cleaning.
“Jessie,” Owen said, adopting a firmer tone. It was a voice he rarely used, but being a butler meant sometimes using discipline, and on this occasion, it worked perfectly, for she froze and glanced back at him over her shoulder, flicking the few loose copper curls that had fallen out of her bun.
“You will not talk that way about our superiors. Their personal lives are not for us to judge. Is that understood?”
She looked startled at the reprimand, her eyes widening before she scuttled off. Tommie’s laugh brought Owen’s attention back to him.
“You can be rather frightening when you act the part of superior butler, did you know that?”
“Good,” Owen said firmly. He’d been called many things in his time. Tommie in particular liked to call him ‘quiet man’. He’d been labelled mysterious too, harsh at times; then there was another side to him he didn’t let many people see. Tommie had seen it, though, which had earned him the label of ‘charming man’ for a while.
“You do know whatever you say to Jessie about our lords and masters will have little effect,” Tommie said, leaning over the workbench and whispering to him.
“Do not tell me it; I do not want to know,” Owen said, lifting one hand to quieten Tommie as his other hand readjusted the silver tray in his grasp.
“You do not wish to know that we could be in danger of losing another maid someday?” Tommie asked, his voice so quiet that no one else could hear them.
“It is none of our business, Tommie,” Owen said with finality and walked across the kitchen, ducking down behind herb bundles.
“Remember to ask the duchess why she didn’t like dinner,” Tommie called after him.
