Clearly rattled by the dog’s loud barking and Khristos’s shrill giggles, the butler executed a smart pivot on one heel, raised his chin in the air, and marched back the way he had come. Returning his gaze to Cassandra, Luke leered down at her. “You see, my lovely little morsel, I have absolute power here. No one will come to your aid.”
“Tickle her ribs!” Khristos encouraged. “She hates it.”
“Shut up, Khristos!” Cassandra cried.
Locking both her wrists in the grip of one hand, Luke settled a palm at her waist. “Ticklish, are you?”
Breathless with laughter, she gazed up at him without a trace of apprehension in her lovely eyes, a fact that touched Luke as nothing else might have. Didn’t she realize that this kind of play was not only inappropriate, but could easily escalate into a situation beyond her control? Luke hadn’t lied. He did have absolute power in this house. If he chose, he could toss her over his shoulder, carry her upstairs, and have his way with her. No one would help her. No one would dare.
Luke settled for tickling her instead—mercilessly—until her lushly curved body went limp with exhaustion beneath him and her cheeks had gone rosy from laughter. Lycodomes, the only one who seemed to recognize a toad when he saw one, grabbed hold of Luke’s boot several times and gave it a violent shake. Luke was having too much fun to care.
“Have you learned your lesson?” he finally asked Cassandra.
“Yes,” she said weakly.
Slowly, Luke released her, then levered himself up so she might move. It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done, for God only knew when he’d have her beneath him again. While tickling her, he’d been granted the opportunity to explore the curve of her waist, the delicate framework of her ribs, the plump underside of her breast. The contact may have seemed innocent to her, but it had been a purely carnal pastime for him, one that he longed to continue behind locked doors. Only good old Lycodomes, damn his ugly hide, seemed to have sensed the danger.
As Cassandra scrambled out from under Luke and twisted onto her knees, he regarded her well-turned backside with a lascivious gleam in his eye. With his thoughts otherwise occupied, he was, therefore, caught by surprise when something cold and dripping wet slapped him full in the face. He jerked, then just sat there for a moment, blinded by the cloth that clung tight to his features like a second skin.
“Ooooh,” Khristos said with a horrified laugh. “He’s really gonna git you now, Cassie. You better run!”
Luke peeled the wet rag away from one eye and peered at his recalcitrant little mistress-who-wasn’t through a waxy, ammoniacal haze. She feinted, as though to make a frantic dive down the stairs, then changed directions to scramble upward. Tossing away the rag, Luke grabbed her by an ankle to halt her flight, then set himself to the business of wetting his hand and rubbing her face. While he was thus engaged, she groped blindly for the bucket, cupped her hand full of water, and flung it at his head.
From that moment forward, war was declared and the water fight was on, with Khristos and Lycodomes diving in and out of the fray, becoming as wet as the combatants, and Luke getting sharply pinched by damnable canine teeth more than once. Water on the stairs. Water on the walls. Water on the foyer floor. By the time exhaustion claimed its ultimate victory over both Luke and Cassandra, the entrance to Luke’s home looked as if a gigantic rain cloud had rolled in and dumped its contents.
Weak from laughing so hard. Luke collapsed against the stairs to get his breath, Cassandra a damp little lump beside him, Khristos and Lycodomes several steps below them.
Pipps chose that moment to wade back into the foyer. He paused at the banister. “Master Taggart, sir. Are you sure there isn’t a problem?”
Luke pushed up to look around. Cassandra was damp from head to toe, her sable hair hanging in wet tendrils around her flushed face. Water dripped off the oak panels above her. Glancing down at himself, Luke saw that he wasn’t in much better condition.
“Does it look as if there’s a problem, Pipps?”
The butler arched an eyebrow. “Not at all, sir.”
“We’ve just been playing,” Luke explained.
“Playing. Yes, sir.”
“Have you an objection?”
“Not at all, sir. It’s simply not your usual habit, Master Taggart, and we in the kitchen became concerned. There was a great deal of barking and screaming going on out here.”
“Well, unconcern yourselves,” Luke said crisply. “Habits can change, and as you can see, I’ve decided to change mine. We’ve just been having a bit of fun.”
“Fun.” Pipps repeated the word as though he’d never heard it before and glanced around at the puddles of water. “I see. I apologize for the intrusion.”
Luke leaned closer to the banister, lifted a drippy hand, and flicked water in the humorless butler’s face. The man jerked but otherwise maintained the same expressionless countenance. “Relax a little, Pipps. If you continue to scowl like that all the time, your face will freeze that way.”
The butler pivoted on his heel again and marched rigidly away. Luke gazed after him, wondering why he’d ever hired the man. No wonder he used to dread coming home. Under Pipps’s rigid rule, no one in this house ever dared to smile, let alone laugh.
TWELVE
Lamplight played over the kitchen, bathing the brick walls and highly varnished oak cupboards with flickering, muted gold. Sitting astraddle a three-legged stool, Luke tried to ignore the stink of ammonia clinging to his shirt as he applied himself to his meal of ham, mashed potatoes, snap beans, and butter-rich yeast rolls. Somehow Cook had managed to keep the food warm and reasonably moist while Luke and Cassandra finished stripping wax.
Cook had looked appalled when she realized her master intended to eat his supper in the kitchen to protect the upholstery on the chairs in the other rooms. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea to Luke, but now, seated between Cassandra and Khristos at the simple oak worktable, he was having second thoughts. Cook and her fellow servants, Pipps and Mrs. Whitmire, didn’t know how to react to Cassandra, who seemed to have no notion of class distinction.
“Please, Cook, won’t you sit back down?” she pleaded for the second time in less than as many minutes. “I won’t be able to eat a bite if you persist in standing. Come finish your tea.”
Cook was a rotund, gray-haired woman with three impressive rolls of flesh at both chin and waistline. Shy and retiring, she seemed more at ease with her pots and pans than she was with people. But while she’d been in Luke’s employ, he’d learned the woman had a heart as big as she was and expressed her fondness for people with the food she prepared, ever eager to please, one ear always cocked for clues as to their favorite dishes. Since Khristos’s arrival, Cook had baked cookies every single day, an attempt, Luke knew, to make the boy feel welcome. Just this evening, she’d prepared pies to be taken over to the jail.
Rubbing her hands clean on her apron, the hefty woman cast Luke a nervous sideways glance, clearly uncertain of the reception she might get if she did indeed sit across from him at the worktable. Her behavior made him feel vaguely guilty. Was he such an ogre that his help felt intimidated? In truth, Luke had never given his servants’ feelings about him much thought. Until Cassandra’s entrance into his life, he hadn’t spent much time at home. He’d found all the big, empty rooms lonely. His household staff had been peripheral to his life, people he paid well and tended to ignore unless they fell down in their duties.
“Please, Cook,” Luke said, “sit down and finish your tea.”
The massive servant waddled over to the stool she had vacated earlier. With a surprisingly agile twist, she planted one half of her broad backside on the seat. The stool groaned and creaked under her considerable weight. Luke sneaked a glance at Khristos, on his left. The boy was eyeing Cook with the same fascinated horror he might afford a boulder balanced atop a hill, poised to come crashing down on his head.
“There now,” Cassandra said cheerfully, “isn’t that bett
er?” She glanced up at Pipps, who stood at rigid attention across the room, then at Mrs. Whitmire, who seemed to have taken root near the stove. “There’s plenty of room for you two to join us as well.”
“Thank you, but no, miss,” Pipps replied, looking down the bridge of his nose at Cook’s back with almost palpable disapproval.
“Oh, please.” Popping a piece of ham into her mouth, Cassandra leaned across the butcher block and patted a spot beside Cook. “All three of you were sitting down when we came in. I feel as though we’ve run you off!”
Luke made a mental note to take steps in future toward being on more friendly terms with his servants. For the moment, however, he could do little but shoot the butler an eloquent glare. “Pipps?”
His usually pallid cheeks flagged with pink, Pipps stepped off the distance to the worktable and maneuvered himself onto a stool without seeming to bend at the middle. Hands folded on the butcher block before him, gaze fixed to a spot on the wall behind Luke, the man sat in rigidly silent disapproval.
“Mrs. Whitmire?” Luke glanced around Cassandra at the housekeeper. “Please, won’t you join us?”
Mrs. Whitmire lowered herself onto the stool next to Pipps, her expression equally humorless. Regarding the pair as he chewed a mouthful of succulent ham, Luke decided they reminded him of two mismatched bookends. It was almost as if they were afraid to let on that they were human and not automatons, the blame for which Luke laid directly on his own doorstep. The potatoes in his mouth suddenly tasted like paste, and he had difficulty swallowing. It wasn’t as if he were royalty, for God’s sake, yet he’d taken their deference for granted. They weren’t convenient fixtures, he realized now, but individuals with thoughts and feelings.
“Now, isn’t this far more pleasant?” Cassandra suddenly bounced off her stool and stepped over to the stove to fetch the teapot from the warmer. After returning to the table, she refilled Cook’s teacup, a kindness that made the hefty woman look as if she’d accidentally swallowed a very large bug and was even now feeling the wiggle in her throat. “Where is your cup, Pipps?” Cassandra asked.
The butler shot Luke an imploring glance, which he ignored. “On the counter next to the sink, miss,” Pipps grated in stiff tones.
Cassandra stepped over to get the cup, which she placed, filled to the brim, before Pipps’s folded hands. “And yours, Mrs. Whitmire?”
“I don’t take tea in the evenings,” Mrs. Whitmire replied. “It makes me restless.”
“Some milk, then?” Cassandra offered.
“No, thank you, miss,” the housekeeper declined regally.
Cassandra put the teapot back on the warmer and returned to her seat. “It’s so nice, isn’t it? Getting an opportunity to chat like this, I mean.”
As far as Luke could discern, no one but Cassandra seemed to be talking. He smiled slightly to himself as he cut another bite of ham, marveling that someone so artless and naive had so very much to teach him. Not about the world as he knew it, but as she saw it—a rosy, happy place where people were inherently good, and one had only to dream to make wishes come true. If given a choice, Luke decided, he’d take Cassandra’s version of reality any day and cast his own to the wind.
Glancing at her sweet profile, Luke felt as if a hand was squeezing his heart. Sometimes he felt as if he were drowning in blackness, and she was a bright little candle flame that might be snuffed out at any moment. The thought made him feel vaguely frantic.
“So, Pipps,” she said. “In what way, exactly, are you related to Mr. Taggart?”
“Pardon me, miss?”
Cassandra munched on a mouthful of green beans and swallowed politely before she spoke again. “Are you an uncle, a cousin?”
Pipps put up his chin. “I am a butler, miss.”
“Yes, I know.” Cassandra glanced inquiringly at Luke, her blue eyes warm and sparkling. “Are the Butlers on your mother’s side?”
Pipps sniffed. “I am in charge of the household staff. The butler, miss. An employee of Mr. Taggart’s. We are not related.”
An odd expression crossed Cassandra’s features. “Do you mean to say that Mr. Taggart pays you to stand in the foyer?”
Luke gulped back a startled laugh as he swallowed a mouthful of ham. Pipps, however, didn’t seem to see the humor. “I don’t just stand in the foyer,” he corrected. “I manage the household.” With that haughty proclamation, Pipps listed some of his duties.
“Imagine that, Khristos,” Cassandra said with a wide-eyed glance at her brother. “Mr. Pipps does all of that and still manages to stand in the foyer all day to open and close the door.” Cassandra smiled very sweetly. “That’s amazing, Pipps. It’s rather like managing to be two people at once.”
For the first time in Luke’s recollection, the butler looked totally nonplussed. “I don’t stand in the foyer all day, miss. It only seems that way because it is my responsibility to be on hand should Mr. Taggart need me.”
“In the foyer?”
Pipps cleared his throat. “Well, yes, miss. For instance, if he should require the carriage to be brought around, or need his coat, or happen to bring in guests. It is my job to see that all is taken care of by the staff as expeditiously and efficiently as possible.”
“Hmm. So it’s your job to see that everyone else does theirs?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Well, little wonder you always seem to be glowering,” Cassandra observed sympathetically. “It’s not easy to be well-liked when it’s your primary function to boss everyone else around.” She reached out to pat the butler’s hand. “If you should ever feel lonely, Pipps, I always enjoy a good chat.”
“Thank you, miss. I shall bear that in mind.”
Luke thought he glimpsed a fleeting smile on Pipps’s mouth, but before he could tell for sure, the butler raised his teacup to his lips. After buttering a roll and reaching around Luke to place it on Khristos’s plate, Cassandra turned her attention to Cook. “And what about you? Have you any duties here besides cooking?”
“No, miss. I supervise the kitchen help, of course, but only as it pertains to meal preparation. Mrs. Whitmire plans the meals and does the grocery orders.”
Mrs. Whitmire added, “I also oversee the running of the household. Even Deirdre, who manages the upstairs maids, takes her direction from me.”
“I see.” Cassandra dimpled a cheek. “My goodness, I never realized how very complicated it all was. Which explains why it’s such a pleasant place to be.”
“You’ve enjoyed your stay thus far, then?” Cook asked.
“Oh, yes!” Cassandra replied, her face fairly beaming. She turned an adoring gaze on Luke. “Mr. Taggart has been so wonderful to me and my family. If not for his offering me this position, I don’t know what might have become of me and Khristos.” She glanced down at the dog, who napped before the stove. “Or Lycodomes, either, for that matter. We’ll be forever in his debt.”
Trying to conceal the disapproving twist of his mouth behind his teacup, Pipps raised one eyebrow and glanced uneasily at Luke. “Without doubt.”
“Now,” Cassandra said cheerfully, “if I can only just get the specifics of my job mastered.”
The butler choked. Tea came up his nostrils and, judging by his strangled cough, went down his windpipe as well. Cassandra leaped off her stool and raced around the table to whack him on the back. “Oh, dear, are you all right?”
Tears streaming, his face tomato-red, Pipps nodded and fought for breath. “Yes, miss,” he finally wheezed. “Right as rain. A bit of tea just went down the wrong way.”
“Either that, or it had a bone in it,” she said gaily, still patting him on the back. “Better?”
“Yes, miss, much better.”
Luke hid a smile as Cassandra, who evidently had no clue that she had caused the poor man to strangle, came back around to her seat. “Now, then, where were we?”
Mrs. Whitmire shot Luke a glare. “I believe you were saying something about the specifics of your job
.”
“Oh, yes.” Finished with her meal, Cassandra pushed her plate aside and cradled her teacup in her hands, both elbows propped on the butcher block. “I’m having a smidgen of difficulty understanding exactly what sorts of things Mr. Taggart wants me to do. But, otherwise, our arrangement is working out very well so far. We had a great deal of fun playing games in my bedchamber last night, at any rate, and—”
Pipps choked again. This time, Luke feared the poor man was going to fall clear off his stool before the thumps Mrs. Whitmire dealt to his back helped him to catch his breath.
“Oh, my…I do hope you’re not coming down with something,” Cassandra said.
“I’m fine, miss. Really.”
“I hope so, not just for your sake, but for the sake of the children at the orphanage. I have to be very cautious about colds and things like that, you know, visiting there as frequently as I do. If one child gets the sniffles, they all do, and it’s incredibly hard on the good sisters trying to get them all well again.”
“I didn’t know you went often to the orphanage,” Cook said.
“Well, I haven’t been since coming here,” Cassandra replied. “But if Luke continues not to require my services during the day, I’ll probably start going again.”
Luke felt three disapproving gazes shift his way. Cassandra seemed oblivious.
“What do you do at the orphanage?” Cook asked her.
“Anything that needs doing. I especially enjoy telling the children stories, but mostly I just work. Cleaning, usually. Or helping with the laundry. With so many children, there’s a virtual mountain of it to do on any given day.” Cassandra shrugged. “It’s good practice for me. When Khristos turns twelve, I hope to become a nun, you see.”
This revelation earned Luke startled looks from his servants, which quickly turned accusing. Luke could only marvel at how quickly Cassandra had managed to win over his servants, particularly Pipps. To his knowledge, the butler had never bent an inch or exhibited affection of any kind for anyone. Now, the man had a look on his face that put Luke very much in mind of an outraged father’s.