No Place for a Dame by Connie Brockway Page B

bedroom was beautiful and cool, elegantly appointed with gilt furniture clad in gold satin and damask, the walls tinted icy blue. She had never slept in a room like it before. When she’d boarded with the astronomers with whom the old marquess had arranged for her to study, she’d lived apart from their families, often in what was meant to have been the governess’s room. No one ever allowed her to mistake herself for a guest.
    Her stomach growled. The ton, Travers had informed her, never rose before nine o’clock, but she was famished now. Bracing herself, Avery clutched the blanket around her shoulders and gasped as her feet searched the cold floor for her slippers. Shivering, she trudged to the ornately carved marble hearth and stirred the embers. She tossed in a few chunks of coal and squinted at the mantle clock. It had stopped. Her stomach growled again. It had to be close to breakfast time.
    She wrestled herself into the padded corset, donned one of the three shirts she’d unpacked, pulled on a pair of trousers, and shrugged into her coat. The cravat, as usual, proved her undoing. After a quarter hour of trying unsuccessfully to get the wretched thing to look like Giles’s, she gave up and called it good enough. She then went in search of sustenance.
    The breakfast room, too, was bitingly cold, a fire only recently having been laid. The dining table sat empty and the curtains were still drawn. It reminded her of a theater stage minutes before the audience arrived. The whole house felt like that, as though no one truly lived here. It was too perfect, containing none of the detritus of an individual’s history, those little misjudgments in taste that lent personality and originality to a home. It was nothing like Killylea. It had nothing of Strand to it.
    As she hesitated over what to do, a maid bustled in carrying a whisk and dustbin. Upon seeing Avery, she gave a start. “Oh! Sorry, sir. I’ll fetch Burke at once!” Before Avery could reply, she’d bolted back out the door.
    A few seconds later Burke appeared, hastily smoothing a nonexistent rumple from his spotless livery. She eyed his cravat appreciatively.
    “Sir.” Hastily, he pulled a chair out from the table for her. “I’m sorry for the delay, Mr. Quinn. We’ll have things right as rain in a moment.”
    “There’s no hurry. I can wait.”
    “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Quinn. There won’t be but a few minutes delay.”
    As if on cue, the maid returned with a single table setting and delivered it to Burke. Hard on her heels came a ruddy faced, middle-aged woman with an old-fashioned lace cap sitting squarely atop a coiled loop of dun brown hair, clucking like an alarmed pullet.
    “Beggin’ pardon, sir. We haven’t been introduced yet due to what oversight I am sure I do not know, nor do I judge. But I am the housekeeper, Mrs. Silcock. Allow me to tender my apologies that the room has not yet been readied.” She speared sharp glances at both the maid and Burke.
    “Thank you, Mrs. Silcock, but it really isn’t necessary,” Avery said, growing more self-conscious by the minute.
    At Killylea, she’d always had her first meal sitting at Mrs. Turcotte’s kitchen table. When she’d been boarded in the homes of her tutors, most of her meals had been delivered to her room. No one ever made a to-do over when she ate. Or even if. It all seemed rather silly. “I have no wish to turn the household on its ears.”
    The housekeeper’s mien froze. She drew herself up, her expression oozing affront. “ Mr. Quinn ,” she said with carefully mustered dignity, “it will be a sorry day indeed, when the Marquess of Strand’s household is ‘set on its ears’ by the simple prospect of serving breakfast at a guest’s preferred time.”
    Avery should have known better. Even at Killylea a servant’s pride was inexorably aligned with his master’s.
    Avery hurried to soothe Mrs. Silcock’s ruffled feathers. “I didn’t mean to imply a deficiency,