The Charmer Read Online Free PDF Page B

nose, and her smile
revealed a gap in her front teeth. "M'lady said there'd be an extra mouth
to feed for a few days. She didn't say you had the face of an angel."
    An angel? That was new.
"Orlando Holt at your service." He bowed, eliciting a surprisingly
girlish giggle from the cook.
    "You can call me Cook,"
she said. "Everyone does. I've been called Cook for so many years now I
can't even remember my own name no more." She giggled again, making her
large bosom bounce beneath her apron. "Go and wash up outside." She
jerked her head at the door he'd just come through. "When Bessie's
finished with the mistress, she'll show you to your room. You're to have supper
here with Bessie, Mr. Hendricks and me, and breakfast too. We dine with the
mistress at midday every day in here."
    "The servants dine with Lady
Lynden in the kitchen?"
    "That's the way we do things
here at Stoneleigh. M'lady says it's too lonely now that Mr. Farley must stay
abed so she likes to dine with us. She has her supper with her father in his
room and breaks her fast in her own parlor, but for dinner we all come in here.
She says she's too dirty after working all morning in the garden to sit in the
dining room so the kitchen it is." She slammed her fist into the dough
then picked it up and placed it on a cloth laid out on the table. "I know
it's probably not how things are done where you come from." Her gaze was
challenging, defiant, daring him to make fun of the arrangement or her
mistress. He wondered what Cook would do if he did. Hammer him with one of
those paws?
    "I think it's a fine
arrangement. I wouldn't want your mistress to be lonely." He ducked out
through the door and found a pail of icy water and a scrubbing brush in the
corner of the kitchen garden. He washed up and was about to return inside when
he heard a man speaking.
    "...just turned up, out of
the blue," he said.
    "Does he know the master
can't pay him?" That was Cook.
    "Aye. They offered him board
and food but no money."
    "And he still took the job?
He must be desperate."
    "That's the thing. I know
there's work up at Sutton Hall, but this man Holt said he'd been round there
and got turned away. There's probably work at Cowdrey too, but he says he's a
gardener, not a farm laborer."
    "Aye, there's a difference
you know. The old mistress told me that once. She said gardeners got more
knowledge so they're smarter."
    "You think this Holt fellow
has a brain?" The man snorted.
    "He might have. Just because
he's got a face like an angel and the seams of his jerkin are popping apart
trying to cover those shoulders doesn't mean he's got wool between the
ears."
    "Humph."
    "So you think he's lying
about asking for work over at Sutton Hall?" Cook asked, her tone
challenging.
    "Could be."
    "Hendricks!"
    "Well, none of us know him.
And he...never mind."
    "He what?"
    "He looks at Lady Lynden
like..."
    Orlando pressed himself against
the wall and leaned closer to the open doorway.
    "Like what?" Cook
prompted. She sounded indignant, defensive. Orlando liked her even more.
    "Like he wants to...you
know..."
    Cook clicked her tongue.
"They all look at her like that. She's a beauty, and any man with
eyes in his head goes a little foolish around her."
    "Yes but he's...I don't
know. There's something about him I don’t like."
    "You haven't met him!"
    "I've seen him through the
window just now. He's got a swagger about him."
    "Well, I never thought I'd
hear you judge someone before meeting them, Mr. Hendricks." The
sound of chopping filled the strained silence. Orlando thought the man called
Hendricks may have left, but then Cook spoke again. "You can't protect her
forever."
    A deep sigh then, "I know. I
know, Cook. But something tells me this man Holt is going to bring trouble to
Stoneleigh."
    "If he does..." Whack went the knife on the chopping board. "...I'll slice his balls off."
    Orlando winced. "Slice whose
balls off?" he asked as he entered the kitchen.
    Cook looked up at him but
continued to chop the