Page 51 of One More Christmas at the Castle
She broke off suddenly, spotting me standing on the far side of the room, still brandishing the feather duster like the Cleaning Fairy’s wand, and stared.
‘Dido? What areyoudoing here?’ she demanded.
‘Henry got me these pasting tables in Hexham earlier and Dido’s kindly been helping me empty the contents of the first cupboards on to them,’ Xan explained, before I could say anything.
‘Indeed?’ Her bright, light blue eyes examined me coldly. ‘I assumed you would realize, Xan, that I preferred that only you were privy to Asa’s papers and certainlynotthe staff.’
I’m not sure Xan had ever seen her in a cold rage, because he blinked in a surprised kind of way, before saying, soothingly,‘Of course, Sabine – that goes without saying! Dido’s simply been doing the donkey work, to speed things up.’
‘Yes, just carrying and cleaning, that’s all,’ I agreed. ‘Anything else was none of my business. But I’m sorry I didn’t ask you first if that was all right, Mrs Powys.’
‘Or me,’ Xan said ruefully. ‘But I can see now that I’ve been insensitive and I’m very sorry.’
She turned those glacial blue eyes on him instead, which was a relief. ‘I suppose, if that is all she has been doing, and not prying, it doesn’t matter … but it was a shock to see her here.’
Then she looked back at me. ‘I’m sure you meant well, but surely you have other things you should be doing? I didn’t hire you and Henry at huge expense to do this kind of thing.’
‘No, but it was my free time.’
‘It may have been, but isn’t it almost time for tea?’ she said coldly.
‘Not quite, but I was about to go and wash and change before getting it ready,’ I agreed calmly. I’ve had much more volatile employers than Mrs Powys in the past, sometimes flying into a rage because Henry and I refused to do all kinds of extra things we hadn’t bargained for. It was certainly a change to have an employer who was angry because I’d voluntarily done extra work!
I lowered my feathery wand, which I realized I was still brandishing aloft, and turned for the door. Plum got up to follow me; he’d probably picked up on the icy atmosphere.
‘Thank you for your help, Dido,’ said Xan quietly, before I closed the door to the passage.
I felt dusty, dishevelled and distinctly disgruntled as I reached the servants’ wing. There was no sign of Henry and I went straight to wash and tidy up. Plum waited for me in the kitchen, sittingby his empty bowl as if expecting it to magically fill up with his favourite food.
I could hear Henry singing something operatic when I returned and tracked him down to the boot room.
He looked up and smiled. ‘I’ve ordered everything on your list, so that’ll be here in the morning. And I’m about to make a start on cleaning the diving helmets.’
‘So I see,’ I said, looking at the row of them on the bench.
‘Lucy’s been back a while and I heard Mrs Powys’s car when I went to fetch the second lot of helmets.’
‘I know Mrs Powys is back, because she came into the study while I was helping Xan.’
He looked at me more closely ‘What’s up?’ he asked. There’s no hiding anything from him; he knows me too well.
I described how angry she’d been to find me helping Xan. ‘And I mean, we’d already agreed I was just doing the fetching and carrying and cleaning, and had nothing to do with the actual sorting out.’
‘Since the room’s been shut up since her husband died and she’s only just opened it to Xan, I suppose she feels touchy about it, and youarea stranger, after all,’ he said.
‘Yes, we realized that too late, and that Xan should have asked her if she minded before we started. I have apologized and I hope she’s accepted that I wasn’t doing it out of sheer nosiness! But I expect that’s the end of my helping Xan, which is a pity, because we were getting on well and I’d already cleaned out the first two cupboards.’
I sighed. ‘Oh, well, I’d better go and make tea.’
‘I’ll get ready now to take it through. I didn’t want to start polishing until afterwards because of the smell of Brasso. I’ll probably need a quick shower later to get rid of it, but at least all these will be gleaming by then.’
‘Polishing brass and copper isn’t something we’re contracted to do,’ I said, ‘but I shouldn’t think Mrs Powys is going to complain about your extracurricular activities!’
After taking tea through, Henry reported that things seemed amicable enough in the sitting room and he’d heard Mrs Powys tell Xan that she wasn’t too tired to record another short session with him as soon as she had finished tea.
Then he added, ‘Lucy appears to have stopped trying to flirt with Xan, which is good … except that she seems to be turning her attention tome.’
‘Oh, no!’ I said, bursting out laughing. ‘Though, of course, you’re just as good-looking as Xan in your own way.’
