“Oh, yes.” Mrs. Robinson paused for another sip of her tea. “Now, I’ve been in service since I was nine years old. I’m not about to break down in tears if my employer raises his voice. I’m made of sterner stuff than that. But the rages he would fly into… I’ve never seen anything like it! And over the most trivial things! It reached the point that we had trouble keeping maids and footmen because of the constant shouting. And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, he went and changed the menu.”
Rosalie was still shaken from how close she had come to marrying a man who would have made her life a misery. She blinked at the cook, wondering if she had misheard. “He changed… the menu?” This seemed like a trivial complaintcompared to terrorizing the staff, although perhaps a cook would feel differently.
“For his grandfather,” Mrs. Robinson clarified. “Bear in mind, at that point, I’d been cooking for the old viscount for six years. I knew what he liked for breakfast, for luncheon, for all of it. But then Lysander moves in, and suddenly, his lordship wasn’t to have anything but porridge for breakfast! The viscount had never once asked for porridge before. And I meanplainporridge. No sugar. No raisins. And for lunch, it was cold chicken and bread. No butter. No sauce.” She made an incredulous sound. “Lysander would berate me if I used the lightest sprinkling of salt. It was as if he wanted it to taste bad! And then for dinner, his grandfather got nothing but bread and broth. All while Lysander was feasting like a medieval king, mind you!”
Rosalie frowned. That did sound quite restrictive. At the same time, it sounded as if the fifth viscount’s health had been in decline, and physicians did sometimes order a lowering diet in order to balance the humors.
Rosalie made her voice sympathetic. “Did his physician order the change of diet?”
Mrs. Robinson shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, my lady.”
Rosalie nodded and made a note. “I understand that the present viscount, Lucian, used to take his grandfather out once a week, on Tuesdays.”
“He did, my lady.”
“Did the old viscount appear worse off following those visits?”
Mrs. Robinson paused as if she were considering her words. “The thing is, in my role as cook, I’m always below stairs. So I didn’t see the old viscount with my own two eyes all that often. Now, people talk, and I’ll own that I heard some things. And I have my opinion about what the current Lord Valentine wasdoing. But I think it might be better for you to ask Mr. Collins and the other servants who saw it for themselves.”
“An eminently sensible suggestion, Mrs. Robinson.” Rosalie looked up from her notes. “Thank you for your time today.”
“You’re most welcome, my lady.” Mrs. Robinson rose and headed for the door.
Just before she laid her hand upon the knob, something occurred to Rosalie. “If I might ask you one more question.”
The cook turned her head. “Yes?”
Rosalie swallowed. “You mentioned that the fifth viscount did not pass his easy nature on to his grandson. Does that apply to the present Lord Valentine as well?”
She could almost see Mrs. Robinson weighing her words. “He’s been here for all of a week. So it’s hard to say for sure. But the only words he’s spoken to me so far have been, ‘Thank you, Mrs. Robinson. That was delicious.’” She gave Rosalie an arch look. “Make of that what you will.”
She strode through the door, leaving Rosalie to wonder which cousin was really the devil himself.
Chapter Twenty
After that, Rosalie interviewed two footmen, a scullery maid, and a housemaid. Although she interviewed them individually, they all told much the same story.
The fifth viscount had been a kindly man and an ideal employer. Around his eighty-eighth birthday, he had begun to experience lapses in his memory. Sometimes he would remember your name, and sometimes he would forget. Sometimes he would forget that he had already eaten breakfast and would go back to the breakfast room, then express surprise that the table was empty. But he never argued or grew angry when the servants gently reminded him that he had already eaten. “Oh,” he would say, “I suppose that explains why I don’t feel all that hungry.” He would tell the same stories over and over, but he was a nice man, and no one minded.
Still, the lapses were growing more frequent, so everyone had thought it was a good thing when they learned that Lord Valentine’s heir would be taking up residence to look after his grandfather. Lysander had such an upright reputation, after all.
“We couldn’t have been more wrong!” was the way Sally, the housemaid, had put it.
“He wouldnae allow his grandfather to leave the house,” said Hamish, one of the footmen. “Dinnae mistake me, he couldnae go out on his own. Not with the state of his mind. But when he wanted to take a walk in the park, or make a trip to his club, one of us would go with him.”
“I think the fresh air did him good,” Timmy, a footman who had served as houseboy at the time, advised when it was time for his interview. “As soon as that Lysander moved in, the old viscount’s condition took a sharp turn for the worse.”
“Lysander said the reason his grandfather couldn’t go out was that he would cause some great scandal,” Hamish advised. “That he would fail to recognize an acquaintance and inadvertently give them the cut direct.” Hamish snorted. “I can tell ye, I went out with his lordship any number of times, and to be sure, he sometimes forgot someone’s name. But he never forgot his manners. He would touch the brim of his hat and say ‘Good morning’ to every person he passed in the park. To be sure, some of them were milkmaids, not marchionesses. But who cared? And I can tell ye, absolutely nobody takes it as some grave insult if an eighty-eight-year-old man stumbles over yer name. Even thetonhas more sense than that.”
Hamish’s ears flushed red. “Beggin’ yer pardon, Lady Rosalie.”
Rosalie gave him a smile. “Not at all, Hamish. Believe me, your point is well taken.”
“He would come into the breakfast room, look around, and ask if there was anything other than porridge,” Timmy said. “But that Lysander was so picky about what the old viscount could eat. I always hated to tell him that was all there was. He always looked so sad.”
“Sometimes,” Annie, the scullery maid, confided, “when no one was around, I would try to remind him thathewas the viscount. Thathewas in charge of this household, not thatgrandson of his. That he could tell Lysander he wanted toast with jam and two poached eggs, like he used to have!” Annie shook her head sadly. “In a way, he wastoogood-natured. He would never complain. He just said, ‘Oh. All right.’ And then sat there looking sad.”
“But then,” Sally related, her voice growing excited, “his other grandson came back to London. The present viscount.”
