Chapter 6 #3
"Yes." She released him and sat back, and her gaze went past him to the house behind, cracked and leaning and half-swallowed by ivy. "And by the look of things, that road begins with fixing this ruin you have the nerve to call home."
Benjamin looked up at the stone fa?ade, then back at her. "It has had a rough twenty-three years."
"Hmph." She sniffed. "It looks as though it has been under siege."
"It rather has."
She sighed. "You have your father's stubbornness. That is not a compliment."
Then she worked the door open before he could reach it and got down into the weeds without assistance, and stood there a moment looking up at the front of the house with her chin lifted, the way a woman looks at a thing she has already decided to defeat.
"Well," she said. "I hope my kitchen is somewhere among all this."
"It is." He offered his arm. "Though I must warn you, the passage has come down in one place and we shall have to go round by the yard."
"Of course it has." She took the arm.
He nodded smiling and then he led her inside. It took them some time to find the kitchen. When Benjamin finally put his shoulder to the scullery door it opened onto a room with a hole in the ceiling and a great deal of the ceiling on the floor beneath it.
Mrs. Miller stood in the middle of it and turned around once, slowly.
Benjamin waited for the verdict. He had been braced for it since Southwark.
"The range can be saved," she said. "The stone is sound.
Somebody built that properly, and it has outlasted everyone who ever cooked upon it, and it will outlast me besides.
" She crossed to it and tapped the iron with the toe of her boot, and something inside shifted and fell.
"The flue wants clearing. There are birds in that chimney and there have been birds in that chimney for twenty years, and I would not be the one who lights the first fire under them. "
"I shall see to it."
"You shall not. You will fall off something and I shall be obliged to explain it to a coroner." She moved along the wall, tapping as she went. "The dresser is firewood. The shelves are firewood. And that corner has water coming in from above, and it has been coming in a long while."
"The roof," Benjamin said. "A few patches are cut and ready. I have not yet found a way to get myself up onto it to put them in place."
Mrs. Miller tipped her head back, though there was nothing to see from inside but the hole and a square of sky, and looked at him again, unimpressed.
"Are you certain that is wise? Climbing about on beams that have not held weight in twenty years."
"It has to be done. There is no one else to do it."
"You are right that it must be done," she said, "and wrong that you must be the one doing it this instant, with no breakfast in you and half a night's work already behind you.
" She went back to her tapping. "The roof comes first, then.
And my kitchen comes second, and I shall be very gracious about it and complain to you only twice a day. "
"That is more generous than I deserve."
Then she straightened, one hand at the small of her back.
"Now then. Let us go up and see the bedrooms."
Benjamin did not move.
"I have not been above stairs since I arrived," he said.
"Not at all?"
"Not once."
Mrs. Miller looked at him a moment. Whatever she saw in his face, she did not remark upon it.
"I do not know what state the upper floor is in," he went on, more evenly. "The roof has failed somewhere over the west end, and I would not have you standing on a board that has been rotting since before I was sent north. Another day, in daylight, with somebody who knows what he is looking at."
"Another day, then." She let it go, which she did not often do. "Whenever you are ready, Your Grace."
"Mrs. Miller." He said it evenly. "I thought we had an agreement."
"We did. I agreed not to say it in public." She folded her hands in front of her, entirely unrepentant. "When it is only the two of us, I shall remind you who you truly are, as often as I please. That was never part of the bargain, and you did not think to ask for it."
"There is no arguing with you."
"None whatsoever." She smiled. "Some things are worth remembering, even in whispers."
He shook his head, but he was smiling too, and after a moment he crossed the room and put his arms around her, briefly.
"Come," he said. "I have taken a room for you at the inn in the village, and it is getting dark, and I want you settled before it is."
"And you?" She tilted her head, and her voice sharpened. "Do not tell me you have been sleeping in this tomb."
"I have."
"All this time?"
"Yes."
"Your Grace. There is a hole in that ceiling a horse could fall through."
"My body is used to a good deal worse than this," he said gently. "There is no need to worry."
"I am your housekeeper, not your nursemaid.
That does not mean I will not drag you to a physician myself if you drop dead of a fever in my kitchen.
" She took his offered arm all the same, and let him steer her toward the door.
"My kitchen. I have said it twice now and you have not corrected me either time. "
"I would not dare."
"No," said Mrs. Miller, entirely satisfied. "You would not."