It was unlikely that one of the aristocratic visitors to Five Mile House would recognize Hal as the elusive Duke of Havilocke, but it wasn’t impossible.
It was damned lucky that Hal had never had much use for Polite Society.Of course there were the years he’d spent at Eton and Oxford with the scions of other noble families, but since then, he’d spent more time traveling than he had in England.Until Walter died, and Hal finally came home.
There had been a bad moment when the Duke of Thornecliff stared at Hal across the taproom, he recalled uneasily, but the reprobate hadn’t said a word to indicate he’d seen anything other than what he expected to see: a barman.
A duke saw a man behind a bar, a man whose job it was to serve him, and that servant instantly became invisible to the duke.It would be a rare peer of the realm who deigned to even acknowledge the existence of someone so supposedly beneath him, much less to look at Hal closely enough to recognize him beneath his beard.
Hal’s secret was safe.
All the way to Little Kissington, Peter kept up a steady stream of gossip (“The coachman thaid the baronet has theven thousand a year and a houthe in Mayfair and a country ethtate in Kent!”“Lady Gemma has waited on him hand and foot thince he arrived!”“Sir Gilbert complains of many ailments but he et a huge thupper latht night including of goose and plenty of port, so I think I know what’th ailin’ him and maybe I ought to be a doctor one day, what do you think?”) which made Hal very glad he’d suggested the boy for the position.
Anything that happened at Five Mile House was observed by Peter’s keen brown eyes, and faithfully related to his good friend, Hal.
Of course, now Hal could barely hear the boy’s chatter over the incessant drumbeat in his ears, throbbing out one word over and over:MINE.
Finally, they reached the village.“You’ve done well, Peter,” Hal complimented the boy as they walked into the inn’s courtyard.“Run along to Mrs.Pickford in the kitchen and see if she has any jobs for you, there’s a good boy.”
With a cheeky grin creasing his brown cheeks, Peter tugged at his forelock and took off for the kitchen door at a run.Sparing a moment to envy his youthful energy, Hal took a detour through the stable to inspect the carriage and horseflesh residing within.
Nothing flashy—nowhere near as fine an equipage as the Duke of Thornecliff’s had been, for example—but a tidy little coach and four with scrupulously polished harnesses and fastenings.The horses were good stock but not exceptional.
Hal frowned.Sir Gilbert, thus far, seemed sensible and unpretentious.Hal disliked him immensely.
Pushing open the door to the taproom, Hal stood still for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dimmer indoor light.His little spy had reported previously that when the gentry stayed overnight, the bar would be repurposed into a breakfast buffet the following morning, but today there was nothing set up.
Interesting.Hal took the back stairs down to the kitchen to scrounge a cup of coffee and get the full story from Bess.
But when he got to the kitchens, they were in a full uproar.Instead of Bess’s usual oasis of calm competence, there were pots askew in the washbasin, multiple pans on the cooktop, piled high into wobbly towers, a fine coating of flour dusting the table and a slick of some spilled gravy or sauce striping the center of the floor.
Bess herself was standing at the counter beside the oven, stirring something in a bowl with swift, frantic whips of a bundle of clean, flexible twigs.
Before Hal could ask what the hell was going on, a bell rang.Bess audibly groaned, her eyes fluttering shut for a moment in despair, before the clatter of racing footsteps heralded Lucy’s progress down the stairs.
Red-cheeked and scowling, she slammed down the tray she was holding and growled, “This porridge was ‘too rich’ if you can believe it.Now he’s saying what he really wants is a light consommé with some dry toast.”
Bess dropped her bowl, apparently not noticing or caring that some of whatever she’d been stirring slopped out of the side.“Consommé?That’s like broth, isn’t it?Let me see.”
Whirling to reach the top of her shelf of pots and pans, where a few cookbooks resided, Bess caught sight of Hal.“Oh!Hal.You’ve caught us at sixes and sevens this morning, I’m afraid.There’s no coffee.”
He blinked.No coffee.From somewhere upstairs, a bell rang again, insistently.
“If he keeps ringing that bell, I vow I shall snatch it from him and, and…stick it somewhere very unpleasant!”Lucy looked up at the ceiling, crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue before running back upstairs.
Laughing, Bess shook her head and leafed through a tattered, stained copy of Eliza Acton’sModern Cookery for Families.“She won’t.Gemma says we’ve all got to do whatever it takes to make Sir Gilbert’s stay a pleasant one.Ooh, it says here it’s an extra rich stock, but it’s also supposed to be perfectly clear somehow, not cloudy a bit.Comes from being boiled for hours and skimmed, I expect, but we don’t have hours!And it’s not as if I keep con-som-may on hand!”
“Bess,” Hal said firmly, marching into the kitchen to grasp her lightly by the upper arms.“What in the devil is going on around here?”
“It’s that Sir Gilbert,” Bess burst out, her complexion more skim milk than sweet cream.“Nothing we do is right for the man, and he can’t decide what he wants to eat to treat his…whatever he has.Oh, do let me go, there’s a dear, I’ve got to figure something out about this broth.Do you want some breakfast?You can have this porridge, I doubt he’s even touched it.”
Hal eyed the “too-rich” porridge, which actually looked far thinner and gloopier than Bess’s usual thick, smooth oatmeal.
“No, thank you,” he said politely as another peal of the bell sounded from upstairs.Bess jumped at the sound and hurried back to her stovetop.Hal looked at the stairs.
Morbid curiosity propelled him up them, along with a need to see this Sir Gilbert for himself.
Upstairs was no more calm or serene than the kitchens, he found.Lucy and Henrietta both appeared to be rushing about like chickens who didn’t realize their heads had already been chopped off, aimless and squawking.
They fetched and carried various things while he watched: clean linen face towels, smelling salts, a new pillow, then a different pillow pilfered from another bedchamber, and then yet a third pillow when the first two proved inadequate.
