Never Trust a Pirate by Anne Stuart Page A

sex. At all.” There wassomething meaningful in her voice, but Maddy had no idea what she was hinting at. “You ask too many questions, and you have too many suggestions. You need to learn your place. You may have been an upstairs maid at your previous employer’s mansion but here you’re just a slavey, and you need to remember that.”
    “Yes, Mrs. Crozier.” Eventually she was going to get her revenge on this old witch. When Tarkington returned… no, she didn’t want him to return. And she’d forgotten, she wanted money and a title, and she’d make someone like Lord Eastham buy this house and toss Mrs. Crozier onto the street before whisking her off to his country estate.
    Except she liked this house more than the thought of some mansion. And she didn’t want Lord Eastham, who had liver spots and smelled of camphor. She wanted someone like that outrageous stranger who’d kissed her in the alleyway after paying off her attackers, the swine. She couldn’t afford to let herself fantasize about him—he was rude and not what she wanted at all. Except for his kisses…
    “I assume you know how to set a table after all your superior positions?”
    That was one thing that had been drilled into her at the Swiss finishing school her father had insisted on sending her to. Not the setting so much as the proper order in which to use things, but it worked for the job at hand. “Of course. What’s on the menu?”
    Mrs. Crozier’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you care?”
    “Because I need to know whether we need spoons for a cream soup or a broth, if seafood forks are necessary, teaspoons or demi-tasse spoons…” Her words came to an abrupt halt at the expression on Mrs. Crozier’s thin face.
    “Jayzus, girl, do you think this is Buckingham Palace? Two forks, one knife, two spoons, one small, one for soup, and who cares if it’s a cream soup or a broth? I’ve told you, the captain doesn’t care for folderol. Besides, Wilf has the key to the silver—you don’t think I’m about to entrust it to you, do you? He’ll get the cutlery out for you.”
    “But what does Miss Haviland think about all this?”
    Mrs. Crozier snorted. “It’ll be up to her to train the captain, not me, thank God. He’d be a right handful, the captain would.”
    Old men were always difficult and set in their ways, Maddy thought.
    “Go on, then. Wilf will serve when he gets his uniform on, but you’d best put on a clean apron and tidy that ridiculous hair in case you’re seen by any of them.”
    Maddy put a hand to her hair and felt it drifting out of its tight knot and floating down around her face, escaping the cap entirely. “Yes, Mrs. Crozier.”
    “There’s a mirror in the back hallway, and fresh aprons are piled in the cupboard just beyond it. Make yourself presentable. You look like a slattern.”
    Mrs. Crozier wasn’t far off. Maddy’s dark hair was falling in loose waves from the tidy white hat that looked just a bit like a nightcap, and she was flushed from toiling over the hot sink. Of course her arms were red up to her elbows, and she quickly rolled down the sleeves of her dress, thankful she wouldn’t have to pull those blasted sleeve covers over it. That was for heavy work, and with luck her heavy work for the night was done.
    Exchanging her wet apron, she scurried back up to the dining room. The linen tablecloth had already been set out, as well as the cutlery, and she went to work, ignoring the pain in her feet as she set six places with a shocking minimum of flatware. The tablecloth was excellent quality, the glassware all crystal from Ireland, the china a politically questionable Limoges. Exquisite, all of it, she thought, looking around her.
    The disgruntled Wilf had appeared, uniformed this time, though the livery was ill-fitting. “Watcher looking for?” he demanded, surveying the table with a reluctant sniff of approval.
    She turned. “A centerpiece of some kind. An epergne, perhaps?”
    “What’s an