Emily Baker

Emily Baker by Luck Of The Devil Page B

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fuss over eating this here tray.” Teresa interrupted Maura’s protest.
    She stifled the urge to giggle over the exaggerated roll of the little maid’s eyes or the way she wagged her eyebrows as she related the housekeeper’s dire warning. If this was anything like the last, there could very well be a slight . . . delay in the timing of Mrs. Kelly’s shopping trips, just to remind the greengrocer just who shopped from whom and paid for what.
    “She did get a little carried away with her umbrage last time,” Maura admitted when her inner mirth subsided.
    The pounding in her head had not subsided in the hour since she’d fled her office at the draper’s shop. Despite letting her hair down, shedding her shoes, and changing out of her stays and work clothes into a soft blue Indian muslin day dress, she found the headache made doing anything else, including resting, impossible. “Perhaps a little something to nibble with my tea would be in order.”
    “Good thinking, missus.” Teresa nodded her endorsement. “I would not wish ta be the next one in Mrs. Kelly’s sights when she’s through with him.”
    Maura sighed. “Well, there is no way I will be able to finish an entire plate of sandwiches, crème horns, and biscuits with preserves by myself. Could you be persuaded to join me? I could use some company, and an extra mouth, if I’m to dissuade Mrs. Kelly from the need to reform me.”
    “Oh, I shouldn’t.” Teresa looked longingly at the crème horns, her favorite treat. “Ye spoil me as it is, missus. And I still have linens ta fold. Mrs. Kelly will have me in her sights if I don’t finish stacking the laundry in the upstairs service chests.”
    “But if you take a small break from your duties to distract me with one of your stories, I am sure she will relent. After all, they might prove just the thing to perk up my appetite, although I will never be able to finish all this bounty.”
    Teresa had a wonderfully expressive voice and face. Everything she felt or thought showed when she talked. Maura had done more than enough talking herself for one day. Perhaps listening to someone else would distract her from her troubled contemplations for a few minutes and allow her some peace. “Please help me by eating at least one of those horns.”
    “If ye insist.” Teresa’s broad grin belied the reluctance she voiced. “I do have one tale I heared taday when I went ta the baker’s.”
    Teresa poured a piping cup of Bohea for Maura and then passed her the plate of sandwiches before helping herself to the sweets and settling onto the edge of a brocaded chair opposite the settee Maura occupied.
    “More adventures in derring-do for your Green Dragon?”
    Teresa nodded. She never failed to report the latest adventures from her hero, always with breathless belief that each detail was true. Maura settled herself comfortably against the cushions anticipating just the sort of distraction she had hoped for when she’d invited her maid to join her.
    Legends recounting the exploits of the Green Dragon had been around for generations. To accomplish all that was attributed to him, he’d have to be well into his second or even third century, but that did not stop Teresa. She attributed his feats to ancient magic like tales of the Fian of Old or the even more ancient Tuatha de Danan, the first people to settle in Ireland.
    “Sheila, the baker’s shopgirl, her uncle works on the mail coach. He’s a driver fer the Belfast route. And he saw the whole thing whilst on a layover at The Red Lion just outside Bardsgate.”
    Teresa stopped to nibble her treat. Maura knew from past experience not to try and rush her in the telling of her tales. There was a rhythm and order to the recounting; questions only threw her maid off the flow.
    “Do ye remember me telling ye of the young man I saw standing on the bridge the other week when I had my day ta go and visit my mam?” Teresa wiped a smear of crème from the corner of her mouth

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