“This way, miss,” Gracie, who had followed along with Maude, announced, and started for the door, only to hear Dickens’s calm voice sounding oddly panicked.
“Deliveries,” he gasped.
“Oh, we should go out and supervise,” Sophie said, starting to move past the maid, when Prunella suddenly dragged her arm and moved her back into the small room, with Maude slamming the door and leaning back against it.
“We should recount the jars of honey,” Prunella announced firmly. “I believe I am way off. And did anyone see a bottle of wine? Open and half gone.”
Sophie looked at her in surprise, both for her words and her odd behavior. Was she a drinker? “I counted eighteen,” she said flatly. “And there was no wine.”
“That’s a serious situation,” Prunella announced. “Someone’s been here getting into the wine. The footmen know better, and I can’t imagine anyone else doing it. I wouldn’t want to face Mr. Dickens, telling him wine has gone missing.”
“Wouldn’t the wine be in the cellar, with Mr. Dickens keeping the keys?” Sophie asked. She could hear voices outside the room, the sound of things moving around. “You know, I really should be out there if they’re delivering food. I need to choose what looks the freshest before I come up with a menu.”
There was a panicked look in Maude’s eyes, and she glanced at Prunella uneasily. The senior maid took over with suspicious smoothness. “I’m sure you can trust Dickens. He usually oversees deliveries of everything, including food. Nothing to worry about. Unlike this missing wine . . .”
“But I intend to change things,” Sophie said stubbornly. If she was going to finally have a chance to throw herself into cooking anything she wanted and hang the budget, then she needed to pick and choose.
“God bless you, miss, and I’m sure that will be fine with Mr. Dickens. But we’d best make sure about the wine. Mr. Dickens takes inebriation very seriously indeed, miss.”
“I haven’t seen anyone inebriated.”
Prunella looked at Maude and Gracie with almost a flash of amusement. “Yes, miss, but you’re the newest one here. If wine goes missing for the first time, then you’d be the obvious suspect, and doubtless they’d double-check your credentials and . . .”
“Never mind,” Sophie said hastily. “I didn’t touch the wine, and I certainly wouldn’t have expected to find any among the cooking supplies. Not that I have anything against wine in certain dishes—in fact, I applaud it. But I didn’t touch it.”
“I’m sure Mr. Dickens realizes that,” Gracie piped up. “But maybe we’ll just make certain it hasn’t fallen somewhere.”
Sophie was about to tell her that Gracie could make certain while Sophie met with the vendors who came to the kitchen door, when something stopped her. Some look that was moving between the three of her staff, a warning expression, and she hesitated. Did she trust these three strangers who’d been kind to her? What were her own instincts telling her to do?
She dropped to her knees and peered under one row of shelving. “I don’t see anything under this one, but that doesn’t mean it’s not here.” She sat back on her bum and looked up at the three. “A little help?”
The three of them immediately sank to the floor, and the next half hour was spent crawling around on the spotlessly clean pantry floor, giggling and squashing spiders and indulging in the kind of harmless gossip that wiped away the last of Sophie’s misgivings. For some reason her kitchen staff didn’t want her out in the room when the deliveries were made. She would trust them.
She heard the soft, rhythmic rap on the door, so quiet that she might have missed it if Maude hadn’t immediately lifted her head like a bloodhound scenting a rabbit. She sat back, trying for a casual expression. “I think we might see what’s been delivered, miss.”
Sophie raised an eyebrow as she scrambled to her feet. “Oh, really? It’s safe?” she said with only mild sarcasm. “Then by all means.” She pushed open the door, and this time no one got in her way.
The long center table in the kitchen was covered with food. A huge basket of fresh peas that had probably come from the Martins’ farm, as well as the spinach and mushrooms, plus a haunch of beef whose proper aging could only be the work of Delbert the butcher. There were fresh spring potatoes, newly dug, from the Bonethwistles’ potato farm, and an order of wine that would have come from London but may or may not have moved through the hands of Jacky, the lad who owned the delivery cart.
In other words, her masquerade would have been over almost as soon as it had begun, and she glanced at her suddenly industrious kitchen staff. She could happily bless them. She had no idea what was going on with them earlier, what they were trying to hide from her, but she didn’t care. The most logical explanation was that someone was skimming off the deliveries—they were receiving short rations or someone was taking food from the kitchen. Either way, she’d put a stop to it. No one had expected her arrival, and plans had already been in place. She would simply have to make it clear to the girls that she would tolerate no dishonesty when it came to the kitchen staff.
She suddenly realized her own hypocrisy, and she wanted to laugh. No one was allowed to be dishonest but the cook herself, lying to get the job, lying about her name, her age, her identity. She was no one to point a finger of blame. One did what one had to do. Her father had taught her that.
Which was why she wasn’t as convinced as her sisters that her father was an innocent man. He’d started his life as a laborer, a shipbuilder, and he’d built his business and amassed his fortune much too quickly to have followed all the rules. It had been his business in the beginning, and still bore his name—he could have justified stripping it of its assets.
But he never would have taken the money and run off, abandoning his daughters. And there was still no explanation as to why he was alone in the middle of Dartmoor, and where all that money had gone.
“I’ll add this to the inventory,” Prunella volunteered. “Unless there’s something you’d rather have me do.”
Sophie glanced at the heavy-laden table, determined not to look overwhelmed. “You never told me what kind of meal the family prefers for the midday.”
“None of us has been in service to them for that long,” Prunella said. “But the first cook brought a big book of recipes with her, and she left it behind when she quit.”
“And why did she quit?”
“Didn’t like the countryside,” Maude volunteered. “She had family back in Surrey.”
“Ah,” Sophie said, hoping to sound wise. “And where is this miraculous book of recipes?”