Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 128742 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 644(@200wpm)___ 515(@250wpm)___ 429(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128742 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 644(@200wpm)___ 515(@250wpm)___ 429(@300wpm)
“Gentlemen,” I say in greeting. “Save me some?”
“Make room, you lot.” Jack shoves biceps to clear the way for me at the counter. “All right, Abbs?”
“Yeah, good. Thanks.”
His smile still does me in. The glint in his eye that I swear is just for me. In other words, that thing he prefers to ignore but can’t deny when we kiss. Call it inherent chemistry, I guess.
It’s infuriating.
“They were about to start chewing on the doorjambs.” Lee flits about the kitchen in his apron. Mixing bowls, cutting boards, and spice jars cover every inch of surface space. “I swear I saw one of them with a paper towel roll between his teeth.”
“They were this close to cooking that damn cat.” Jack laughs.
“What do you say, dollface?” One of Jack’s teammates with a nasty red welt under his eye sidles up beside me. “Make us a sandwich while we’re waiting. Some roast beef on rye? Or sourdough if you’ve got it.”
The guys get a good chuckle at my expense.
“You ever find a girl that works on, marry her,” I advise him.
“He tried,” another one says. “But his mum’s already married to his dad.”
They go on like that until Lee fixes me a plate of food that I take into the living room to get a little elbow room and wait for my package.
I’ve just finished eating when the doorbell rings. I waste no time jumping off the couch to answer the door. The young man on the stoop asks me to sign for the heavy cardboard box, which I drag inside and then force Lee to carry upstairs for me.
In my room, we find Hugh snuggled up on my bed against my pillows.
Lee barely glances at his cat. “Let me know if you need anything else, babe,” he says absently. “I’ll be in the loo getting ready for my date with Eric.”
“Sorry, bud,” I tell Hugh, who’s staring at the empty doorway. “You’re simply not a priority for him.”
Lee’s entirely lost interest in the cat after barely a week. If the Lord of Cats asks, however, Hugh is the light of Lee’s life. The reason for being.
Poor thing.
I grab a pair of scissors from my desk drawer to crack into this box. Inside is a lidded file box containing loose pages, folders, and yellow envelopes. At first, it’s all nonsense. Fragments of stuff I don’t understand. I pull everything out and start making piles based on names and dates, trying to apply some order to it all.
A bound ledger is the last thing at the bottom of the box. It appears to be an accounting of household expenses for the year, dated 1951. Something the head of the Tulleys’ house staff would have kept, containing weekly entries for the butcher and florist, that sort of thing. I skim the rows until I find the names of staff with their weekly salaries.
And there, on line nineteen, is Josephine.
I’m in utter disbelief to see her there on the page.
“Lee!” I holler at the doorway. “Lee, get in here!”
He comes barreling in a few seconds later, a green hydration mask slathered on his face and worry flickering in his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” He glances around my bedroom until his betrayed gaze lands on Hugh. “What did you do to her, you bloody demon!”
I can’t help but laugh. “I’m good. Hugh only likes to assault you. But check this out!” I thrust out the ledger. “I found her! Her name is Josephine Farnham! She was a maid to the duchess.”
“Brilliant.” He looks genuinely pleased. Everyone in the house has been invested in this mystery from the start. “And what of her fate?”
“Well, I haven’t figured that part out yet. But at least we have confirmation that she was connected to the Tulleys.”
“The young maid who caught the eye of two young lords,” Lee says dramatically. “I adore it. I’ll be telling Eric all about this on our date tonight. Speaking of which…this mask won’t be removing itself.”
With that, he bounds off.
I spend the next several hours meticulously combing through every scrap of paper in the box. And it’s a veritable treasure trove. I feel like one of those people who open abandoned storage lockers and find gold pirate coins and furniture that belonged to Marie Antoinette.
There’s a letter from the duchess to Robert, which in not so subtle language tells him to get his shit together. He’s supposed to marry a princess, and she isn’t interested in his objections or preoccupations with the maid. If it becomes necessary, she threatens to fire Josephine and send her to work elsewhere.
Deeper in the stacks, I locate a black-and-white photograph of the household staff posed in front of the estate in Surrey. It’s grainy and worn with the years, but a close examination finds the tall thin woman with dark hair and fragile cheekbones at the end of the second row. And either I’m imagining it, or she’s sporting a tiny smirk of mischief.