“You are so anxious to begin work again?” Audrey asked.
“It’s not work when I help you. What do you have under your arm, miss?”
“The current household ledger. I know Robert looked it over, but I would like to hear the expenditures myself.”
“I don’t have a table, miss, but come sit with me on the edge of the bed, and we’ll see what we see.”
Audrey listened as Molly slowly read through the story of the household, from grocer to butcher to oil man. As the maid read through the servants’ wages, Audrey found herself frowning.
“I could swear Mrs. Sanford’s wages are thrice the amount Mr. Drayton read aloud to me.”
“It’s not my place to say, Miss Audrey, but I did think her wages quite high for the housekeeper and cook of a small manor house.”
“But the point is, I believe Mr. Drayton misled me.”
“But … you said Lord Knightsbridge looked over these accounts just the other day.”
“He wouldn’t know a servant’s wages,” Audrey said distractedly. “He has men of business who handle all his accounts.”
Molly said nothing, as if she knew Audrey had to think through all this herself. But Audrey couldn’t think—her mind was churning with confusion. Who was trying to deceive her? Mr. Drayton? The Sanfords? What was going on?
She was standing before she even realized it.
“Miss Audrey? What do you mean to do?”
“Find out the truth,” she said coldly, then left Molly’s room.
She found Mrs. Sanford alone in the kitchen, making preparations for luncheon.
“Good mornin’, Mrs. Blake,” the woman said.
Audrey thought the housekeeper’s voice sounded cautious, but then maybe she knew something important was happening just by Audrey’s expression.
“Mrs. Sanford, we need to have a frank discussion.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
But she could still hear a rhythmic scraping, as if the woman was stirring something in a bowl, and her temper snapped. “Please stop what you’re doing at once!”
The bowl hit the wooden table. “Aye, ma’am. Please forgive me.”
“But for what shall I forgive you? I was just going over the household ledgers. Perhaps you can tell me why your wages are thrice what they should be?”
There was such total silence that Audrey could hear a distant church bell in the village though the windows were closed.
“Mrs. Blake, I assure ye that I am worth?—”
“Please do not give me assurances of your skill. And regardless of what you and your family have been doing to annoy me since I arrived, I can tell you know what you’re doing. That does not account for your wages. I demand to know the truth, right now, or I will at last be forced to terminate not just your employment, but that of your entire family. And the fact that you risk this tells me there is something serious I’m not aware of.”
And then she heard Mrs. Sanford give a suppressed sob and blow her nose in a handkerchief. Audrey felt a tinge of sympathy, but she forced herself to put it aside.
“Tell me the truth, Mrs. Sanford. We can deal with it together.”
“Nay, Mrs. Blake, I don’t think that’s possible,” she said wearily.
She heard a creak and imagined the woman slumping onto a kitchen stool.
“So you won’t confide in me?” Audrey asked, feeling just as weary.
