Chapter 16 #2
And this time, determined to Take Responsibility, he interviewed everyone and their grandmothers.
Or so it seemed. Scores of applicants came from an agency.
Scores more received word of the vacancies via the servant gossip grapevine, and came on their own initiative.
Osgood proposed some candidates, as did Cleake and Zoe’s sisters and sisters-in-law.
Sorting them out was tedious. It would have been unbearably so, had Marchmont done it alone.
But Zoe was there, taking notes and occasionally asking a question.
Mainly she left it to him until they were alone.
Then she had a great deal to say, some of it hilarious, and some stunningly perceptive.
Their one major dispute was about the butler.
In the end, they agreed to keep Thomas in that position.
Since none of the house steward candidates satisfied them, the position remained unfilled for the time being.
The household operated relatively smoothly in spite of the vacancy.
Not as smoothly as it had under Harrison’s despotic reign, but nothing like the chaos Marchmont had dreaded.
He’d imagined servants pestering him constantly, asking questions he didn’t know the answers to.
Evidently, they pestered Thomas and Osgood instead.
With their world restored to something like order, the duke and duchess were preparing to go out to a rout when Marchmont received a message from Bow Street: Mrs. Dunstan had been caught and was in custody.
Ten minutes later
Being well aware that Marchmont was protective to an extreme, Zoe wasn’t at all surprised when he told her she was not going with him.
She had no objection to being protected by a big, strong man when the occasion called for it. A woman in jail, however, could do her no harm. There was no rational reason for him to leave Zoe behind—and she had no intention of encouraging him to be irrational.
“There’s no need for you to upset yourself,” he said as she followed him into his dressing room.
“I will not interfere,” she said. “This is your business. I only want to hear what she has to say.”
“I’ll tell you what she has to say.”
“I want to see her face.”
“I’ll describe it.”
She shooed away Ebdon, his new valet.
“I don’t want to be kept in a cocoon,” she said when she and Marchmont were alone.
“With any luck, I’ll be back in plenty of time to dress for the rout. There’s nothing cocoon-like about going to a rout. You’ll be surrounded by people. You’ll have no protection from their elbows and feet and perfumes or lack of bathing.”
“If I’m present, the housekeeper might be more forthcoming,” she said. She advanced to help him out of his coat. “She might say more than she would when only men are present.”
“I don’t deny you might be helpful,” he said. “You were immensely helpful in hiring new servants. You were especially helpful in finding me a valet who doesn’t cry and faint. He is shockingly calm. I am not sure he breathes.”
“Only in the discreetest way,” said Zoe.
“He doesn’t blink, certainly. But a valet is one thing and a lot of constables and lawbreakers is quite another. The Bow Street magistrate’s house is no place for a lady.”
“I know,” she said. “The place will be filled with drunkards and prostitutes and pimps and thieves and murderers. Just like Yusri Pasha’s palace.
Sometimes they made us watch when others were punished.
I saw them strangle a slave girl, and I’ve seen slaves whipped many times.
I know how they make a eunuch. What do you think I’ll see at Bow Street to shock me? ”
“That isn’t the point,” he said. “Merely because you once lived among unspeakable people doing unspeakable things doesn’t make it right for you to spend your time among the dregs of London. The point is, you’re the Duchess of Marchmont, and she doesn’t frequent low places.”
Having peeled off the snug coat, she started unbuttoning his waistcoat.
“You’re the Duke of Marchmont, and you mean to frequent this place,” she said.
“I’m a man.”
Oh, I know, she thought. The waistcoat undone, she let her hand stray over the front of his shirt. “A big, powerful man,” she said. “With big hard muscles and a godlike instrument of delight.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” he said.
“I’ll be safe with you,” she said. “Who would dare to trouble me when you’re by my side? Even at Almack’s, everyone was amiable to me for your sake.” She let her hand slide over his muscled chest. She felt the heat begin, low in her belly, the snake of desire stirring.
“No time for that,” he said gruffly. As her hand slid downward, he gently lifted it away.
“Everyone was amiable for your sake, Zoe, not mine. Because you’re pretty and amusing—and because they were worried that if they weren’t amiable, you’d hit them with that great diamond of yours and break their skulls. ”
She smiled up at him. If he was making a joke, he was calming, and he would take her with him.
“I see what will happen,” he said. “You’ll fondle and flatter and smile me into it. I might as well admit defeat, instead of wasting time fighting you. But you’d better run along—and dress quickly, because I will not wait one extra minute for you.”
She reached up and grabbed his neckcloth, and pulled his face toward hers and kissed him hard.
He was turning into a far better husband than she’d dared to hope for.
He was not the shallow, capricious man she’d believed him to be.
He was truly kind and truly caring…and she was afraid she was falling quite hopelessly in love with him.
Two hours later
The Bow Street Office stood a short distance from the Covent Garden Opera House, and on the same side of the street.
Zoe and Marchmont were able to bypass the busy courtroom at No.
3—where, Zoe supposed, the thieves and prostitutes and pimps and drunkards were gathered at present.
This was because Mrs. Dunstan was being kept in a room in No.
4, the house adjoining. Here, among other things, Bow Street held its prisoners.
The housekeeper had been taken to a room separate from the felons’ room, in consideration of Marchmont, who’d asked to interview her privately. Otherwise she would have been shackled in the one room with all the other prisoners, Zoe learned.
A Runner had caught Mrs. Dunstan before she could board a Dover packet, bound for Calais.
She had not been cooperative, the Runner explained before Zoe and Marchmont entered the room.
The housekeeper insisted she didn’t know where Harrison was.
She had not been involved with him in any way, she said.
She had left the duke’s house in a temper, she claimed, because the new mistress had questioned her methods.
She refused to hang about, she said, and be accused of incompetence, and have her authority undermined in front of the rest of the staff.
“That’s her story, Your Grace,” said the Runner. “Doesn’t matter how we ask or what we ask. It’s always the same.”
When Zoe and Marchmont entered, they found Mrs. Dunstan seated stiffly upright upon a bench against a wall. Though the room was dimly lit, Zoe saw her eyes blaze at their entrance. She didn’t need to see it. The woman radiated hostility. But she was impotent, her ankles chained.
“Oh, Your Grace has come, have you?” she said. “You and she, to see me like this, in chains, like a common thief.”
“I should say, madam, on the contrary, that you are a most uncommon sort of thief,” Marchmont drawled. “I should say you are a genius among felons. Your aptitude with figures is a true marvel of sleight of hand.”
This small show of bored arrogance instantly lit a very short fuse.
“What did you ever have to complain of us?” she burst out. “We did our work. There’s no better-kept house in all of London. Everyone said so.”
The officer attempted to intervene, but Marchmont held up his hand. “Let her have her say,” he said.
“Oh, I’ll say, all right,” she spat out.
“Not one of all those servants in that great house ever gave you any trouble at all, did they, Your Grace? But you don’t know what a trouble it was to us, to keep it that way.
Everything always done for you. Like magic, wasn’t it?
It was the best-run house in London, in all of England—and you had to bring her in and spoil it. ”
She shot Zoe a murderous look before reverting to Marchmont.
“What did we ever do that harmed you? We had a right to our perquisites and more, for all we did and how well we did it. When did you ever need to take any notice of the running of the house, Your Grace? When didn’t the windows sparkle and the floors shine?
When was the sheets ever dirty or damp or the fires not lit when wanted?
When was the dinner not laid exactly to the minute, whether you and your guests sat down on time or half an hour late?
When was it ever cold or overcooked? When did you ever have to ask, ‘Why wasn’t this done?
’ When did you ever have to ask for anything?
Wasn’t it always as you wanted, before you even knew you wanted it?
What was so wrong that she must come in and start looking for a fault?
Why did she ever go looking in those books but because she couldn’t find any fault anywhere else? ”
“Yet such a great fault there turned out to be, in those books,” Marchmont said.
“And there, you see, is the nub of the matter: theft and fraud, fraud and theft. So unnecessary. You might have asked for an astronomical salary, and I’d have paid, without question—because what did I care?
Instead, you made a great deal of unnecessary work for yourselves with your clever conspiracy.
I would have paid you as much as you stole and cheated me of, and I’d never have noticed or cared what it cost. But no, you must commit forgery and fraud and theft and make it a hanging matter, you foolish woman. ”