'Twas the Night After Christmas Read Online Free PDF Page B

her was nigh unto impassable. Especially when her ladyship might not even share his feelings.
    “Like most widowers,” Camilla said, “Mr. Fowler is merely desperate for another woman to look after him.”
    “True, true.” Cook cast her a considering glance as she tucked back a gray curl. “Though it would be a good situation for you, given Master Jasper and all.”
    Camilla sighed. Any marriage would solve her problem of what to do with her son as he got older. But she’d married for practical reasons once, and except for Jasper, that had proved oddly unsatisfying. If she ever remarried it would be for love, and she felt nothing like that for Mr. Fowler.
    “Did his lordship say anything about Mr. Fowler’s coming to dinner?” Mrs. Beasley asked. “It’ll be a trial for Cook to do a large meal on such short notice. She’s got her hands full preparing the plum pudding for Christmas so it can sit a couple of weeks.”
    “No trial at all,” Cook retorted. “I’ve already got the pudding steaming, which it has to do for a few hours. So I can cook whatever dinner you want.”
    “Actually,” Camilla said, “his lordship is only staying the night, and he doesn’t intend to come down to dinner. He wants a tray sent up.”
    Cook gaped at her. “Well, don’t that just beat all? Waltz in here with no warning and then not even have the decency to join his mother for dinner.” She sniffed. “I suppose he thinks to get a better meal up there at the manor, with that foreigner cooking the food and that snooty Mrs. Perkins running the place.”
    “That foreigner” was his lordship’s French cook, and Mrs. Perkins was the manor housekeeper. The two cooks were archrivals, as were the two housekeepers. Mr. Fowler had hired both sets of servants upon the earl’s inheriting the estate and inexplicably pensioning off the old ones. Apparently Lord Devonmont had wanted to install his own, who now took on airs because they served the earl. They were fiercely loyal to him.
    Meanwhile, the dower house servants were equally loyal toher ladyship. So with the countess and her son estranged, neither group mixed with the other to any great degree.
    It left poor Mr. Fowler somewhat in the middle.
    “I’ll put together a tray that will have his lordship tossing the ‘monsieur’ out on his ear,” Cook said almost militantly. “The earl will be begging to stay here a week, just see if he won’t. And if we could keep him here until Christmas, I’ve got the biggest goose picked out—”
    “I wish we could,” Camilla said with a sigh. “But I fear that’s impossible.”
    Mrs. Beasley set her hands on her hips. “Now I’ve got to spare Sally to go bring up the tray, just when I need her.”
    An idea leaped into Camilla’s head. “Actually, he wants me to bring up the tray.” Why not? It would give her an excuse to have it out with him.
    “You?” Mrs. Beasley exclaimed, then exchanged a veiled glance with Cook.
    “Is something wrong with that?” Camilla asked, perplexed.
    Cook made a clucking noise. “The master does have a reputation, m’dear.”
    “Wouldn’t be the first time a man took a fancy to someone in his employ, if you know what I mean.” Mrs. Beasley turned to fetch a tray. “And if he’s asking you in particular to carry up his meal . . . ”
    “It’s nothing like that,” Camilla said hastily, wishing she’d considered how the servants would regard her claim. Her eyes went wide as something else occurred to her. “Surely you’re not saying that the female servants at the manor . . . That is, there’ve been no complaints of—”
    “No, indeed,” Cook said firmly.
    “Not yet, anyway,” Mrs. Beasley said in her usual voice of doom. “But plenty of gentlemen do toy with their servants, and your being so young and handsome—”
    Camilla burst into laughter. “I don’t think you need worry about that. I’m not all that young.”
    And “handsome” was what people called a woman