Somewhere behind her, a chair scraped as it was pushed aside to make room for a broom. It then rasped over floorboards. The study of her brother’s house no longer looked like a battlefield. It resembled, just barely, a room used by human beings rather than a pack of drunken wolves.
Alistair snored softly in the corner, slumped on the sagging sofa where they had heaved him an hour ago. A blanket covered him to the waist. His hand still curled loosely as if around a glass.
“Leave him,” Edward had said. “If he rolls off, he deserves the floor.”
They had not left him. Isla had insisted on the blanket. Edward had rolled his eyes and fetched it. She straightened slowly, pressing her hand into the small of her back. Alistair had retained one maid, a cook and a scullery boy. The maid and the boy had been sent away half an hour ago at Isla’s insistence. They had both had been dead on their feet doing the work of ten and terrified of their employer’s drunken rage beside.
Now the candles in the hall had been extinguished. Only the downstairs rooms still held light. Somewhere a clock chimed ten with a dull, apologetic tone. In the doorway Edward appeared, collar open, coat discarded somewhere upstairs, shirtsleeves rolled to his forearms. Dust streaked one cheek. A faint smear of ash ran along the back of his hand. He looked tired, the way a man looks when the day has taken more from him than he cares to admit.
“That is the last of the glass from under the desk,” he said. “Your brother will cut his own throat on it if he goes looking for another bottle.”
“Good,” Isla said. “He deserves the inconvenience.”
She dropped the cloth into the bucket and flexed her fingers. The nails, once carefully cleaned by Moira before she left Scotland, were now rimmed with black. She did not mind.
Dirt from honest work bothered her less than the polished dust of rooms no one dared to disturb. Edward surveyed the room. Papers had been stacked into neat piles, charred edges trimmed and removed. Bottles, empty and otherwise, had been banished to the scullery. The candle had been replaced, its holder anchored safely on the mantlepiece, out of reach of wayward arms.
“It will do,” he said quietly. “For a night.”
She nodded. Weariness crept over her all at once, a soft, heavy cloak. “I am for the kitchens. I shall fall upon whatever Alistair has left in there.”
“Cook left an hour ago,” Edward said. “She declared there was nothing more worth saving but the house and her temper.”
“Then we shall raid her stores,” Isla said, lifting her chin. “My brother may drown in brandy. I mean to drown in tea.”
The kitchen lay at the back of the house, down a narrow stair that smelled of coal and cabbage. It was dim and strangely peaceful after the chaos upstairs. The great range glowed low, embers breathed gently behind the iron door. Copper pots hung in orderly ranks along the far wall. A large scrubbed table sat squarely in the middle, solid and indifferent.
No one else remained. The scullery boy had been sent to his cot. Cook had indeed departed, leaving her world in reasonable order. Edward went at once to the dresser, opening and shutting drawers with the cautious determination of a man faced with an unfamiliar battlefield.
“Tea,” he muttered. “There must be some. It is illegal, I believe, to run a London household without it.”
“There,” Isla said, pointing to the blue canister on the second shelf.
He ignored her and opened a jar of sugar. Then a tin of salt. Then something that, from his expression, contained suet.
“Edward,” she said.
He opened the spice drawer and frowned at the riot of labels. “Isla.”
“Move.” She came round the table, nudged him gently aside with her hip, and plucked the proper canister from its place. “You are at sea here.”
“It is not my usual province,” he admitted.
“A kitchen?”
“A house where the servants have not put everything directly into my hands for the last thirty years.”
She snorted softly. “You are hopeless. However did you manage at sea?”
“Because ordinary seamen put everything in my hands instead of servants. Much the same thing.”
She smiled despite the ache in her chest. The familiarity of the work soothed. The kettle was filled from the pump and set over the fire. Cups were located in a lower cupboard and bread discovered under a clean cloth, still soft from earlier baking. There was cheese, and a heel of ham. It took her no time at all to assemble a meal on two mismatched plates. Edward watched as if she were performing a small, mild magic.
“You have done this before,” he said.
“Every day before you met me,” she said. “Moira would have had my head if I could not lay a simple tea. We had staff, but not enough to grow lazy.”
“And Strathmore?” he asked, lifting a brow. “Did he not feel it beneath his dignity to pass you a knife?”
