Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran Page B

discovered this scene of butchery in the morning room: Polly, brushing a rose-and-cream carpet with tea leaves. The carpet already bore several telltale streaks. “Henceforth,” Olivia told her, “you will use salt.”
    “Salt!”
    Olivia was no domestic, and even she knew this. “For pale carpets, one uses salt.”
    With a sullen shrug, Polly retrieved her brush and started to sweep again.
    “Stop! You mustn’t brush the leaves in. Don’t you see? They’re leaving stains.”
    Polly hurled down the broom. “Then may I go?”
    With leaves strewn everywhere? “Certainly not. You will pick up the leaves, then apply the salt and finish brushing the carpet.”
    “Pick them up by hand ?”
    “Yes, by hand. Otherwise the stain will spread.”
    Polly folded her arms and glared. Too late, Olivia realized she had done the same. They locked eyes, Olivia battling a creeping awareness of how absurd this scene would look to any passerby: a maid and housekeeper so close in age that the only way they might be told apart was by the key ring at Olivia’s waist.
    Polly’s fine upper lip twitched into a sneer. She was a pretty girl, with large brown eyes and burnished hair—and why was she not wearing her cap properly? Those curls should have been covered.
    “Are you Irish?” Polly asked.
    That was meant to be an insult, of course. It never failed to amaze Olivia how narrowly the world was designed: if you had no legitimate origins, you were scorned. If you had legitimate origins in the wrong place, you were scorned as well.
    Luckily for her, she put no stock in conventional virtues; their main supporters, in her experience, were hypocrites. She lifted her chin, knowing if she gave so much as inch, she would never regain it. “Salt,” she said tersely, “catches the dust just as well. And it does not stain the carpet.”
    Polly rolled her eyes.
    I am going to have to sack her. The knowledge formed like a ball of ice in Olivia’s gut. It seemed very wrongto destroy the livelihood of somebody—no matter how mean their behavior—to safeguard a position Olivia did not mean to keep.
    A thud came from above. Polly looked up, and Olivia sent a prayer of thanks for this timely interruption.
    The thud sounded again—and intensified. The crystal beading on a nearby lamp began to shiver.
    Had a herd of elephants invaded the house?
    Olivia turned on her heel and marched into the hallway, where she discovered the other maids, along with the valet and the cook’s assistant—what was she doing up here?—gaping at the ceiling. “What is that?” she asked.
    A strangled laugh came from behind her. Polly had followed. “It’s His Grace!”
    A fine joke. Olivia’s remonstrance was cut off by one of the other maids. “That’s his rooms right above,” said Doris. She was a lanky, rabbit-faced girl who had endeared herself to Olivia by inclining more to daydreaming than to mutiny.
    Muriel crossed herself. “Perhaps it’s the final stages.”
    “Final stages of what?” Olivia asked.
    “Muriel’s convinced he has the pox,” Polly said.
    “Polly!”
    “Well, ’tisn’t me who said it!” Polly put her hands on her hips. “Though if there’s a more likely explanation for such behavior, I’d like to hear it. First he was grievin’ his heart out, and goin’ up and down the town to make arrangements for the grandest funeral you seen since the pope. Next you know, he breaks all the mirrors, rips down the crepe, and refuses t’set foot outside. Goes the summer, and now he won’t stir from his rooms—not even should the house catch fire,I expect. And if that’s not the pox-brain, you tell me what is!”
    Olivia took a long breath. It now sounded as if Marwick was banging things against the walls. Not his head, she hoped? Or perhaps she did. No, she couldn’t wish harm to his brain. It might yet heal, and it had once been very fine.
    More of his servants, another footman and the porter, drifted into the corridor to gawp.