CHAPTER SEVEN
Below Stairs
GRITTING HER TEETH
,
Polly Jenkins stared up at the ceiling beyond the old airing rack.
I should have bloody well stayed up there. Made some excuse. I shouldn’t have left Miss Bea all alone with that sweet-talking bastard.
Concerned about her mistress, Polly was distracted. In other circumstances, she’d have been flirting by now. She was alone with the nice-looking brown-haired fellow who was loitering by the range, drinking tea and eating the slice of fruit cake with which Cook had plied him, and he was normally just the type she’d set her cap at. Especially as, with coast clear outside Cook and Enid had set off together for the market. Miss Bea didn’t like anyone to go out alone, so Cook went in person to haggle with stallholders for bargains now that tradesmen would no longer deliver, and Enid, who was a strapping lass, helped carry the bags.
With the coast clear inside too, Polly should have been making good headway with her handsome guest. But instead she was fretting about Miss Bea, and in danger of braining herself with the airing rack.
“Stupid thing,” growled Polly, grappling with the swinging monstrosity and getting slapped in the face by a dangling chemise for her trouble. The household was too hard up to send out its laundry but the rack was heavy and one of these days, it was going to collapse on their heads and bring the kitchen ceiling down with it.
That’s all I need. Miss Bea ravished or murdered by some high-handed stranger, and me out cold on the kitchen floor, with not even a grope from his mate for compensation.
It would never have been like this back in the happy old days at Westerlynne—a proper establishment, everyone seemingly comfortably off. Miss Bea happily engaged to her childhood sweetheart, the Honorable Tommy Hastings, and Polly herself courting his manservant, Sam. Even Mr. Charlie behaving with a bit of sense.
But here in London every new day bordered on chaos and most arrangements were topsy-turvy. Hence the shopping and washing at odd hours, and breakfast not served until Mr. Charlie rose from his bed, somewhere around lunchtime.
Polly tried to will herself into the morning room. She was a servant and should know her place, but still. Should she have insisted on waking up Mr. Charlie now? Even though she’d been told expressly not to by Miss Bea?
Not that Charlie would be any help. He was a sweet man when you knew him, but not the slightest bit of use in defending his sister’s honor. In fact he’d helped her lose it in a roundabout way. If he’d only introduced her to a decent, respectable chap with a bit of money, instead of that sod Eustace Lloyd, they might all have been nicely set up by now instead of fearing the bailiffs and worse at any moment.
Reaching for another chemise, she eyed her silent, watchful companion out of the corner of her eye.
And who the hell are
you,
when you’re all at home?
Was he a bailiff? A moneylender’s thug? Him and his mate had arrived together half an hour ago, with a letter for Miss Bea, and now the other fellow was upstairs, getting the answer. What a cheek, expecting that Miss Bea jump to it and reply straight away? And then insisting on going up to get the letter from her hand.
“If your mate doesn’t come down soon, I’m going up there to sort him out! It’s not right him bothering Miss Beatrice. She’s got enough to contend with as it is.” She turned on the man by the fire, who was the younger and had seemed to defer to his cohort. There was something decidedly fishy about the pair of them, and Polly had a feeling she knew the older one from somewhere. If only she’d never let Enid open the area door in the first place.
Even if she did fancy Mr. Quiet and Watchful over there.
“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you. Mr. Ritchie doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s conducting business with a lady.”
Polly’s blood boiled. How dare he threaten her, the scallywag? He was no better than she was, and neither was his mate. She didn’t trust the pair of them further than she could throw them.
“Mr. Ritchie, eh? Who the hell is he? Who the hell are the pair of you? Marching in here, laying down the law and getting Miss Bea up at an early hour when she was out late last night.” She glared at him, meeting his bold stare head-on. He might be a wiry, strong-looking type, just how she liked them, but she knew a trick or two herself, in a tussle. “She could easily have sent her answer round to your boss with Fred, the next-door’s boy. That is if we were allowed to know who your mysterious boss is?”
The man unwound himself from Cook’s chair by the hearth and joined her at the airing rack. Without speaking, he reached into the basket, took out a pair of Miss Beatrice’s drawers and, with a salacious grin, hung them up along with the rest of the washing. As he reached for another item, Polly grabbed him by the arm.
“I asked you a question, Mr. Whoever you are. What’s your real business here and who do you work for?” She held on tight to the solid muscle beneath the wool of his work jacket. He felt good, despite the danger he presented. “If I don’t get a straight answer, I’ll have to fetch Mr. Charles and then we’ll see.”
The brown-haired man laughed suddenly, as if he knew what she knew. Handsome Charlie meant well, despite his many faults, and he loved his sister. But he couldn’t knock the skin off a rice pudding, much less deal with a couple of toughs on his own.
A warm hand effortlessly removed hers from his arm.
“Well,
I
work for Mr. Ritchie, who’s the gent upstairs. And
he
works for no one but himself.” He held on to her hand, not in a cruel way but with no sign of yielding. Despite her crossness, Polly trembled with excitement. “And don’t worry, your lady won’t come to any harm. Quite the reverse, he’s here to do her—and this entire household—a lot of good.”
“What the dickens do you mean?”
“I’m not at liberty to reveal the particulars, but my Mr. Ritchie thinks very highly of your Miss Beatrice, and only wants the best for her. You needn’t have any concerns on that score.”
But she was concerned. She couldn’t help it.
Mr. Ritchie was a handsome bastard, that was a fact, even though for her own taste his friend here was more toothsome. But Miss Bea had been betrayed and exploited already by one despicable, smooth-talking beau, and she didn’t need it happening with another.
“It’s still not right,” she muttered. “Who knows what that blackguard is doing to her. And even if he isn’t doing anything, she shouldn’t be alone with him without a chaperone. It’s just not right!”
“Don’t worry, gorgeous, your mistress will be safe with Mr. Ritchie. He never forces women into doing anything they don’t want. He doesn’t have to. They lift their skirts without him even having to ask.”
“You wicked bastard!” Polly attempted to shake her hand free, and this time her antagonist relaxed his fingers and let her go. “Miss Bea isn’t like that. She wouldn’t lift her skirt for any man except if she were married to him, never mind your pal up there.”
The man laughed. Obviously he’d seen the cabinet cards.
“Look, I know what you’re thinking and you’re bloody well wrong! She’s a respectable gentlewoman, I’ll have you know. Posing for artistic photographs is just posing for artistic photographs, nothing more!”
“I don’t doubt that. But like I said, my Mr. Ritchie is a gentleman, and he’s very taken with your mistress, so there’s no need for you to make a fuss.” He reached down, took the last chemise from the basket and draped it over the drying rack. “There we go. I’ll haul it up for you, if you like.”
Polly eyed him up. Despite his cheeky smirks and his cockiness, he seemed an honest sort. And easy on the eye too. Despite everything, Polly had a peculiar urge to trust what he said. And he certainly seemed unshakably loyal to his boss.
“Thank you. That’d be very kind. It’s a heavy old bugger, and that’s a fact.”
He laughed, then looped his hand in the cord and effortlessly hauled the rack up to the ceiling. Polly imagined him being just as sure and effortless in his dealings with a woman, and beneath her skirts, her belly tightened with sudden desire.
“Thanks again, Mr… What is your name, by the way? Would you like some more tea?”
“Yes, I’ll take a drop, thanks,” her new friend said easily as he secured the cord with a competent-looking twist and turned to face her. “And the name’s Brownlow. But you can call me Jamie, if that suits you.”
Jamie. Such an easy, quiet, innocuous name, yet he looked very far from that. Jamie Brownlow was a man of the world, clearly, and tough. And he had a tricky, clever quality that was exciting.
“Jamie, eh? I expect I could call you that.” Polly reached for a cloth to push the heavy kettle onto the hottest part of the range. Jamie Brownlow was at her side in the blink of an eye, and before she could protest, he had the cloth and was doing the honors for her. “Thank you, Jamie… My name’s Polly Jenkins, but you can call me Polly, I suppose.”
“Polly it is then.” Laughing, Jamie reached for the teapot. “Let me make the tea. You maids are always worked to a standstill. Take the weight off your feet, and have a breather for a change.”
How very modern. Men almost always expected women to do the serving, even if they were belowstairs types like Jamie. Not even Mr. Charlie, when he wanted some comfort, was so courteous.
“That’s very decent of you, I must say.” Polly settled on the old, ill-stuffed sofa that was set to one side of the fire, opposite from the armchair. “Although I’m not sure that Cook will be so pleased with you handling her pots and suchlike.”
Jamie grinned over his shoulder as he set about his task. “Oh, don’t you worry, my Polly. I’m fully accustomed to handling a female’s pots and suchlike. In fact I’ve been told I’m quite an expert in these matters.” He winked, and Polly was struck by his provoking, wicked eyes. They were green, quite light, but with an unusual slate-colored cast, and they twinkled with intelligence and guile.
“Don’t be so saucy, Mr. Brownlow. We’ve only just met, and I don’t hold with overfamiliarity with men I don’t know anything about.”
“Ah well, we’ll have to rectify that, won’t we? What do you want to know about me?” He was moving about the kitchen as he spoke, working efficiently through the ritual of making the tea.
“I…I don’t know.” Polly felt flummoxed. As he neared the stove again, he unbuttoned his jacket and tossed it over the back of a chair, then rolled up his sleeves to show strong, well-shaped forearms. “Who are you, really? Why are you here? And who’s your Mr. Ritchie when he’s all at home?”
“So many questions… Let’s have our tea, eh? And then maybe I’ll answer some of them.” He waggled his eyebrows at her in a way that made her belly tingle. “When’s your Cook coming back, by the way? Will she be long?”
“Oh, she’ll be a while. I think one of the stallholders is sweet on her, so who knows when she’ll be back. I don’t like to think of what they’re up to, an old bird like her…and Enid will just wander around willy-nilly if there’s nobody to supervise her.” Polly grimaced. “We’re not a very well-run household, are we?”
“There’s worse about, Polly. I wouldn’t worry.” He shrugged.
She barely knew him, and yet, suddenly, she loved the way he moved, so loose and so easy. He was originally a country man, she guessed, and he still had a free way about his body as if only yesterday he’d been out trudging fields and copses with broken gun over his arm. For a moment, she frowned at the piercing pang of yearning, remembering her lost Sam, who’d always loved the outdoors. It was cruel how he and Mr. Tommy had died in the same boating accident, leaving both her and her beautiful mistress lost and distraught.
“Wake up, Polly!”
She blinked, finding Jamie before her with a steaming cup of tea.
“Sorry, I was miles away.”
“In a happy place?”
Yes, it had been. But dwelling morbidly on the past wasn’t her habit, and like Miss Bea, she always tried to make the best of life and look forward rather than backward.
“It was once,” she said, “but me, I like to make every place I pitch up in the best I can.”
“Me too. Hitch up.” Taking his own cup, Jamie edged his way onto the narrow sofa beside her, and Polly’s last wisps of melancholy dissolved in the sudden excitement of his proximity.
Lord, but he was a forward so-and-so!
Polly wasn’t complaining though. He was handsome and he smelled lovely. She gave him an arch look and he waggled his eyebrows at her again as if he knew she thought he was forward but didn’t care.
“It’s a good philosophy is live for the moment.” He took a sip of his tea, then put the cup down on the floor beside him. “I like to take advantage of every opportunity. You never know what’s around the corner, do you, sweetheart?”
“True, very true.” Polly sipped her own tea, barely tasting it, then placed the cup on the shelf next to the sofa.
She did like to seize any opportunity. For happiness. For pleasure. Since she’d lost her Sam. She was a careful girl and didn’t take silly risks, but there were ways to enjoy oneself without treading the road to ruin.
And you know that, don’t you, Jamie?
She looked into his lambent eyes and knew he understood her without having to spell it out.
“You’re still worrying about your mistress, aren’t you?” he said unexpectedly. “But you shouldn’t. The boss admires your Miss Beatrice…and he wants her…but he’ll take care of her too. He’s like that.”