Betsy winced. “I am sorry about that. She wanted to apply for a position, but she has no experience.”
“She will need to toughen up before she is suitable for the workplace.” He stared at the photo. Did it still belong on his desk?
Betsy nodded. “In her defense, her mother has just passed away. Yesterday, in fact.”
“And she’s looking for work? Is she destitute? I do wonder, in a case like this, if we should offer such a person a meal.” Greggory frowned. “Of course, we have to protect our clientele.”
“I gave her two boxes of baked goods. I’ll take the expense out of my paycheck, of course.”
“No, no, my dear. No need to do that. I appreciate your compassion with those less fortunate.” He opened a drawer and shoved in Letty’s photo. Maybe seeing her face less often would clear some cobwebs from his brain.
Betsy’s smile was strained, leading Greggory to wonder what he’d said wrong. Letty was the only woman he had never irritated. Until her pregnancy, at least, she’d been the most placid girl, peaceful. Sometimes, he had the impression Betsy Popham was anything but peaceful, but she was still the most magnificent example of buxom womanhood he’d ever seen.
“Perhaps we could keep a tray or two of day-old baked goods handy for just such occasions,” he suggested.
“We don’t have leftovers very often. I do not think it necessary,” she said. “If there is nothing else, I should continue my efforts to tidy the tearoom.”
He took a closer look at his assistant manager. She swiped at her bangs again, a gesture that struck him as nervous. Her color was high. Normally, her forehead, chin, and the tip of her nose weren’t so pink. “Where were you just before you came upstairs?”
“In the bakery, helping to load the cases for the afternoon.”
“That isn’t anything you have to do.”
She sighed. “The new girl isn’t pulling her weight, Mr. Redcake. I’m not sure she’s going to work out.”
Ah. “Every hire will not be a perfect fit,” he said, then attempted some reassurance. “We all make bad hiring choices at times, and it isn’t even always our fault. People can be quite deceptive.”
“She seemed bubbly in the interview. I may have mistaken her character for her energy level. She’s really rather languid.”
“We don’t have room for languid at Redcake’s,” he agreed. “Give it a couple of days. She may be so nervous about making mistakes that she’s moving slowly.”
“There is a lot to learn,” Betsy said. “Thank you, sir.”
“Thank you, Miss Popham.”
She nodded and left the room. Now, she was an employee who never had a slow-moving moment. She did the work of three of her counterparts, appropriate for someone, even young as she was, who had worked for Redcake’s since it opened, catching the notice of the owners. He’d heard rumors that she wasn’t as good as she ought to be, and might have entertained a fantasy or fifty that she’d show some of that reputed sexual fire to him, but it had never happened. Betsy Popham was the soul of propriety in his presence, and if she had ever been any different, he had never heard the details.
With a shake of his head, he returned to his perch at the window and stared out again. He really ought to tend to his reports, but the twins had earaches and had screamed through the night. The nursemaid had threatened to leave if she didn’t have at least five continuous hours of sleep, so he’d been up through the wee hours, rocking one baby while Mrs. Roach took the other. He ought to fire the nursemaid and find a new girl, but he just didn’t have the energy. While nursemaids were lower class than nurses, a good one had still proved difficult to find.
He’d never yet met a father who was so burdened with domestic concerns. Or perhaps, men like him were simply too tired to discuss it. Men like him weren’t relaxing at their clubs telling tales; they were at home tending their crises.
The mottled brown and white brick house in Turnham Green Terrace looked homely even in May’s gleaming evening sunlight, but Betsy still smiled as she saw it. Soon she’d be frying the sausages she’d bought up the road and toasting a slightly singed and therefore unsellable Redcake’s loaf of bread. Her father would be home already, reading a newspaper in the embroidered rocking chair in the parlor.
Most people like them would have a maid of all work at the very least, what with two incomes from two professional people, but she and her father got by with someone who came in to do the heavy work once a week. They split the household duties. Betsy handed over her pay without question, though she doubted it all went to the Carters. Had her mother poisoned more people than Mr. Carter? Were there reparations she was unaware of?
Now that she was twenty-two and needed to think about finding a husband of her own, money would become more of a concern. Even knowing she had a murderess for a mother hadn’t made her completely give up hope of finding a husband. But her one great love had been Ewan Hales, and she’d lost him to a blackmailer. Ewan, now the Earl of Fitzwalter, had married one of the Redcakes and was gone from her life. He’d been much too good for her. She still missed his touch, his eager hands caressing her, the way he’d worshipped her body those scant two months they’d been lovers.
With a sigh of regret, she stepped through her tiny front garden—more of a dirt patch really, because she didn’t have time to maintain it—and into the front hallway. She stuck her head into the parlor to say hello to her father.
“Sausages tonight,” she said, waving her packages at him.
“I brought home irregular tartlets for dessert. Want any help?”
“No, it’s better if I keep moving,” she said. “If I sit I’m going to stay in the chair.”
He nodded. “I’ll let you be.” He puffed at his clay pipe, the one bowl of tobacco he allowed himself each night. The rich smoke of the Virginia leaf curled around his head.
Betsy smiled and left him to his vice. Forty minutes later, she had the sausages cooked and a tidy pile of toasted bread on a plate in the center of the table. She called her father in and they ate a companionable meal, sharing the small details of their day.
“Looked haggard, did he?” her father said, shaking his head at Mr. Redcake’s vague behavior that afternoon. “Must be the little ones getting to him. Can’t be easy, losing his wife just after his twins were born.”
“I do not know very much about him,” Betsy said, setting her napkin on her plate. “He keeps to himself. How old are the babies?”
“About a year.” Her father shook his head again. “I remember Lady Hatbrook speaking about him, back when he was in Bristol at the factory. Meant to be a proper husband and father, she said. Such a pity to lose his wife so soon, but I suppose there is none better to take responsibility for the children.”
“He is a mild man,” she agreed. “I told him about the unsatisfactory performance of the new bakery girl and instead of telling me to remove her, he said to give her a few days more.”
“Might be too nice to run a business,” her father said. “But it was kind of Sir Bartley to give it to him as a wedding gift. You’ll keep him sorted, my girl. You’re made of tougher hide.”
She nodded. He was right of course. Having no mother from the age of four made for a hard life.
“Did you hear that?” Her father frowned.
“Someone knocking,” she guessed. “I’ll see who it is because you’re still eating.”
The small house made her arrival at the front door almost instantaneous. She opened it assuming she’d find one of the neighbors begging for something they needed for their own meal.
Instead, she saw the back of a short, stocky young man with a pouf of dark blond hair that she knew was far too angelic for his soul. Her sausage dinner threatened to reappear.
Victor Carter, Violet twin’s brother, had come to visit. Whenever Betsy dealt with him, she understood a little why her mother might have felt it necessary to kill the father, if he was anything like his son.
Chapter Two
“B
etsy,” Victor said, in a voice that seemed older and deeper than his nineteen years.
“Miss Popham,” she said. “Thank you very much.”
“Sure,” he said with a careless wave, and attempted to get around her and into the house.
She lifted her arms and placed her hands on either side of the doorway. “You know you aren’t welcome here.”
“Lost me mam on Sunday,” he said conversationally, as if she was meant to offer some personal sympathy.
“I know. It’s such a pity.” She forced the words out. While she’d never had much of an opinion of the Carter women, Victor made her flesh crawl.
“Who is it?” her father called from the kitchen.
When she turned to answer him, Victor dashed past her and into the house. He veered left to go into the small parlor they kept just for themselves. On the other side a slightly larger room was ready for guests, not that they had many, but passersby could see through the bay window, so they kept their best furnishings on display there.
Immediately, Victor went to the mantel above the fireplace and opened her father’s tobacco tin. He took a short clay pipe from his pocket and helped himself liberally.
Betsy pressed her lips together and went to direct her father upstairs. While he was head of the family and it was his job to protect her, she knew he was too soft and would probably give the young man money they could not afford to take out of their housekeeping budget, not if they wanted to keep eating decent food.
“I should offer him condolences,” her father said, standing up from the table.
“He’s in a mood,” she said. “And I’m not as polite as you are, Father. Let me speak to him.”
He smoothed his hair across his balding pate. “I can do the washing up. You made dinner.”
“Thank you.”
“Should I make tea?”
“Let’s wait until he’s gone.” She wouldn’t be surprised if Victor tried to steal the teacups. Time and time again, he’d shown resentment of anything nice that they owned. Over the years he’d made off with candlesticks, books, her father’s new overcoat, even the coverlet from her bed. Her father continued to treat him like a mentally challenged relative and excused his behavior without complaint.
When she walked back into the parlor, she found Victor striking matches against the box strip and dropping them, still burning, into the fireplace.
“What are you doing that for?” she asked, ripping the box out of his hands. The match he held dropped onto the varnished wood platform in front of the fireplace. She stamped it out quickly, glad she had forgotten to change out of her street shoes for slippers.
“Me mam died,” he said again, turning those dark, cold eyes on her. He had the round face of youth and that glorious golden hair, but his eye sockets were too small for his face and his nose had a bulbous quality. His lips were too red for his skin and looked somewhat obscene.
“I know that, Victor. My condolences. We have to rise early for work, so please leave. Thank you for visiting.”
“I haven’t eaten dinner,” he said plaintively.
“We haven’t any food left,” she lied. “We ate it all.”
He sniffed and puffed away at his pipe, then blew the smoke in her face. She coughed. Somehow, when it wasn’t her father smoking, the tobacco wasn’t nearly so pleasant.
“I need money for the burial costs,” he said.
“Your mother paid into a burial society. The expenses should be covered.”
“We need new clothes,” he said, blowing more smoke.
She waved it away. “Customs are changing. You don’t need anything but an armband. And I saw Violet. She has a black dress.”
His nostrils flared. “Where’d you see ’er?”
Betsy shrugged, not wanting to give him any ideas. “Nice to see you, Victor. You are welcome for the tobacco, but it is time to leave.”
He tilted his head as if processing her words, then snatched up her father’s tobacco supply and tucked it into a pocket with a sneer. She turned away to go into the hall and escort him out the front door. A hand came down on her arm and he pulled her against him in a rough embrace.
“Guess I need a wife now to care for Violet an’ me,” he said, blowing more acrid smoke into her face. “Ye’re too old, but at least you work.” He tilted his head again. “Get all your money that way, right?”
As she pulled back, outraged, he pushed his mouth against her in a revolting, tarry kiss. She stomped on his foot and he let go of her, swearing. Reaching a hand behind her, she felt for the fireplace poker and picked it up. If she left the room to escape him, he might destroy their furnishings, so she held her ground. He was an opportunist but also a coward. She hoped.
Victor wiped spittle from the corner of his mouth and grinned. “What I wouldn’t do for a chance to tame a spitfire like you, Betsy. But I don’t suppose they’d keep you on at that fancy place you work with your face all bruised up, and I wouldn’t be able to help myself from flattening that snotty nose.”
She lifted her chin defiantly and brought up the poker to lay it across her chest.
He snorted. “Like I don’t know where you keep the money.”
He stood on his tiptoes and pulled down what appeared to be an old Bible from their shelf. Chortling to himself, he opened it. He poured coins into his fist, then tossed the fake book into the fireplace. “Ha-ha, Betsy Popham. Outsmarted you yet again.”
The hand holding the poker trembled. Her only recourse at this point was physical attack, but she couldn’t strike. She doubted the court would be merciful to a girl who killed the son of the man her own executed murderess of a mother had killed. All she could do was hold her ground, powerless. He trod on her skirt as he passed by. She ignored the sound of rending fabric with difficulty and kept her gaze on him. He walked out of the house and down to the street without another word.
Betsy swore as she set the poker down by the front door and locked it. In the dimming light, she saw he’d torn off the ruffle of her skirt and ripped the fabric clear up to her knee, and not on the seam either. It would need significant repair.
Straightening her shoulders, she picked up the poker again and set it back in its place by the fireplace, then picked up the fake book. It had a dark smear where a not-quite-out match had singed it. She wiped at it with her ruined skirt and set it back on the shelf. Her father would have to find a new place to hide the housekeeping money now.
“I am sorry, Mr. Redcake, but your children are more than me nerves can take,” said the nursemaid, twisting her hands into her bread-and-milk–stained uniform.
“Are you giving notice?” Greggory stared at his bawling twins on the carpet. Artie had a runny nose and Sia was about to bite her brother’s foot. Probably teething. Hastily, he handed his daughter a round wooden rattle, hoping she’d bite that instead.
“Immediately, sir. I do apologize. I hope this won’t mean you’ll refuse me a character.”
The silly girl was leaving him flat and she wanted him to take time out of his day to write her a reference?
His housekeeper appeared at the nursery door. “Your brother is here to see you, Mr. Redcake.”
His brothers all lived outside London. “Which one?”
“Mr. Dudley Redcake, sir,” Mrs. Roach said.
Oh, him
. “Our nursemaid will no longer be working with the children, Mrs. Roach. Can you help her gather her belongings and take her to the bus? Make sure we have an address for her.”
“My character, sir?” the nursemaid begged.
“I’m not going to write you one now,” he said, waving his hands at the children. “It can’t have escaped your notice that you’re leaving when Mrs. Roach is meant to have her half day.”
“But sir—”
“But nothing. Your conduct is offensive. Mrs. Roach, take care of this. And send Dudley upstairs.”
“Yes, sir.” His rather fierce housekeeper took the nursemaid by the arm and marched her out of the room.
Greggory had no doubt she’d be leaving the house with a tongue-lashing. Mrs. Roach had a few flaws, like a temper. Also, her power of animal attraction was decidedly limited. In her late forties, she had an abundance of lush moles dotting her face, a considerable overbite, and a bulbous nose. Having said that, she had proven herself to be a great comfort to him, almost a grandmotherly figure to the babies, and she had been an angel to Letty during her fatal illness. Mrs. Roach would never leave him and he was happy to overpay her. If she were a couple of decades younger, he’d shock the relatives and marry her.
Not really. If he were to marry an employee, it would have to be someone he was attracted to, like Betsy Popham. Though, as he glanced at the mewling infants on the rug, he questioned whether he wanted to marry someone of childbearing age. He could end up with a dozen more children. However, at twenty-eight, he could hardly marry a woman over forty.
Or could he? He thrust his hands into his pockets and chewed his lower lip.
“What is that caterwauling?” asked his brother, coming into the room a couple of minutes later.
“Teething,” Greggory said, having just investigated his daughter’s mouth. “Possibly a little ague in this one. Fancy working as a nursemaid?”
Dudley folded his storklike legs and dropped onto his bottom next to his niece. He picked her up and she immediately fixed her gums on his left index finger. “Oh, dear.”
“Long night ahead,” Greggory said. “Any plans?”
“Lose your girl again?”
Greggory nodded. “So many applicants won’t work here at all once Mrs. Roach tells them about the household. Either they are too eager or refuse.”
“They want you to marry them or are afraid you’ll ravish them,” Dudley said. “I can’t live here. Two of us would scare them off even more.”
“Too bad I can’t find a man to do this kind of work. We’d be set then.” He narrowed his eyes. When his brother made a comment like “I can’t live here,” it meant he was planning exactly that. “What is going on, Dudley?”
“You need to put a new advertisement into the papers, that’s what,” Dudley said, staring at Sia with rapt attention.
“Mrs. Roach takes care of that, obviously,” he said. “Why are you in London? Shouldn’t you be—I don’t know, cleaning up after some cows or something in Almondsbury?”
“It’s a wheat farm,” Dudley said without a hint of humor. “Must you make fun? Besides, I’m starting to think farm life is not for me.”
“You are managing the Redcakes’ concerns, not actually doing any of the farming,” Greggory pointed out.
“I know, but village life is getting to me. I’m not growing any younger, and I don’t want some ill-educated, big-bosomed farm girl to wife. I need to spend some time in the city.”
So his younger brother wanted to find a wife. Rather sweet really. Maybe he could tolerate the old boy under his roof for a few months.
“I want to move into hotels,” Dudley said. “Cousin Gawain tells me that he’s looking into a hotel investment and there are ownership shares available. I could take a floor manager position with my piece, start a new career.”
Greggory had some vague awareness of the hotel plan. The idea was to buy it from the original bankrupted builder, to be opened and managed by their cousin’s wife’s former brother-in-law, Harry Haldene. But he’d been too wrapped up in his new marriage and tea shop at the point it had all happened to know much about it.
“You must be making a fortune with the tea shop,” Dudley said, tickling Sia’s tummy until she giggled. “Uncle Bartley gave it to you outright. If I find a wife, he might bankroll my investment in the hotel as a wedding gift.”
“He very well might, but I hope you don’t marry just to embark on a new career.”
Dudley shrugged. “I haven’t anyone in mind; that’s the problem. Can you stake me? I live too far out in the country to spend much money. I have most of two years’ salary tucked away, but that’s not enough to bring to the table.”
Greggory had Letty’s money set aside, a considerable sum, but he’d planned to keep it tucked away for Sia’s use some day, while he hoped Artie would take over the business. Silly thoughts when he looked at his babies, but then, a father had to plan for his children’s future. It wouldn’t do to leave them flat. He of all people knew the fragility of life. They could lose him tomorrow.
“I’ll look into it. I’d have to be sure the investment was utterly sound. I don’t have money I can afford to lose.”
“Of course, of course,” Dudley said, switching Sia in his arms so she could gnaw on a different finger. She laughed as he accidentally brushed her sensitive tummy with his arm. “But you know Cousin Gawain has the Midas touch. He’s never wrong, and he’s considering the hotel investment most seriously.”
“I’ll speak to Midas,” Greggory said, “if you spend the night in the nursery so I can get some sleep. You seem to be on holiday, but I’m not.”
“We should wife hunt together. Marry sisters, perhaps? You are less than two years older than me. We can be a matched set marrying a matched set.”
“Dear God,” Greggory muttered. “I’d hate to think the sister of whoever you’d marry would want me. We’re chalk and cheese.”
Dudley nuzzled his niece’s plump shoulder. “Two peas in a pod, you mean.”
“Au contraire. I couldn’t wait to settle down into comfortable domesticity. You still don’t seem to have found what is going to make you happy.”
“You aren’t happy,” Dudley said.
“But I am,” Greggory protested. “Or at least I was, when Letty was alive.”
“I know you loved her, but courtship seemed to suit you better than the actual marriage.”
“She had a rough time, carrying twins. It all happened so fast,” Greggory said. He blinked rapidly.
“I know.” The corners of Dudley’s lips turned down. “It was a sad thing, and you ended up with these two lovely scamps to raise all alone. Not fair. Letty was the best of girls.”