Brant slowly sat down, taking a few slow, deep breaths through his nose and letting them out slowly in an attempt to quell the dizziness caused by his abrupt rise to his feet. Embarrassment began to creep over him but he beat it down. He had not invited Lady Olympia Wherlocke into his home nor had she announced herself before entering the library. She could just accept him as she found him. He ignored the part of him that heartily wished she had not found him suffering from too much drink.
He looked into her blue eyes, saw a hint of pity, and bit back a curse. Disgust he could have easily tolerated. Pity from such a strong, beautiful woman made him want to curl up and hide, a weakness that deeply embarrassed him. It was quickly replaced with an urge to throw her out of his house. Curiosity worked to quell both urges. Since meeting her when his friend Ashton and her niece Penelope had gotten together, he had seen very little of Lady Wherlocke, no more than a few brief moments of polite conversation passed during a few social meetings. He could think of no reason for her to be at his home.
“Why are you here?” he asked again, not caring if he sounded somewhat rudely blunt, and then he suddenly recalled how she was now closely related to one of his oldest, dearest friends. “Has something happened to Ashton?”
“Aside from having a very fertile wife who will soon present him with yet another child? No,” she replied and moved to answer the soft rap at the library door. “We will talk about my reasons for being here in a moment.”
She opened the door to let in a small boy and a nervous maid both carrying trays, one with tea and one with food. Brant fought to recognize his own servants, to thank them by name, and failed. He murmured his appreciation as the boy handed him a tankard filled with Matt the stablemaster’s famed cure for the effects of too much drink. Ashamed that his servants were so well aware of the wretched state he was in, Brant concentrated on drinking down the potion. By the time he finished the servants had prepared him a cup of strong tea and filled a plate with food, food clearly selected with care to soothe a drink-battered stomach. Just as he felt he could speak without Matt’s potion rushing back out of him, a frowning Olympia stepped up to the boy, gently took the child’s slightly pointed chin in her hand, and touched his cheek with her other hand.
“This is new,” she murmured and gave the boy a stern look. “Who and why?”
“Cook’s helper. Molly,” the boy replied without hesitation, responding quickly to the tone of authority in Olympia’s voice. “I washed my hands.” The boy looked at Brant. “T’ain’t supposed to touch the soap since Molly thinks it is all hers, but I knew you have a liking for the ones who bring you your food to be clean and all.”
“Wait here, Thomas,” said Olympia even as she strode for the door.
A little voice told Olympia that this was none of her business. This was not her home and these were not her servants. That truth did not slow her steps at all, however, as she continued to march toward the kitchens. No child deserved a slap so hard that it marked him just because he tried to wash his hands to please his lordship.
“Which one of you is Molly?” she demanded as she strode into the kitchen and startled the three women working there.
“I be Molly,” said the woman by the stove, pausing in the stirring of something that smelled like a lamb dish. “And who be you then?”
Molly looked a little long in the tooth to be no more than an assistant to the cook. She also looked as if she sampled far too much of what she cooked. The insolent tone of the woman’s voice was a surprise for any servant would know, with just one look at Olympia, that she was quality. Either Mallam entertained a high quality of mistress or Molly was so certain of her place at Fieldgate that she did not care if or whom she might offend.
“I am Lady Wherlocke, the Baroness of Myrtledowns, and I wish to speak to you about your treatment of Master Thomas Pepper,” Olympia said as she walked over to stand by the woman.
“Filthy little brat,” muttered Molly as she wiped her hands on her dirty apron.
“So, you think him filthy yet you deny him, even punish him, when he attempts to clean the dirt away?”
“He touched my soap with them dirty hands.”
“I believe most people who touch soap do so because they have dirty hands. ’Tis often why they reach for the soap to begin with.” Olympia ignored the badly stifled laughter of the other two maids in the room as she fought to control her rising anger at Molly, but it was a losing battle. “And any soap within this domain is most certainly not yours alone. You had no right to strike the boy.”
“I had every right. He be in my charge. And just who be you to be telling me what to do? Just another one of his lordship’s trollops, I wager. Aye, ’tis why ye stand here to defend that wee bastard. He be naught but the old lord’s by-blow by the stablemaster’s daughter. No need for you to be trying to pamper him to win his lordship’s wandering eye.”