Filed To Story: Alessia Mistaken as Mistress Book PDF Free
The tears Alessia had mistaken for tears of grief were tears of self-pity. All Celia cared about was where her next bottle came from. Maybe somewhere inside was a lovable person, for Claire had loved her, but her lifetime relationship with the bottle had destroyed that woman somewhere.
Celia was exactly what Nicholas believed Alessia herself was. And Alessia was going to help hide it from him.
“Well,” she said, finally knowing how to reach her. “I can take care of you as long as I’m here.”
Celia blinked up at her.
“As long as they think I’m Claire, they’ll think it’s normal for me take care of you.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah?”
Alessia hated herself for adding more deception to the already staggering amount she’d amassed. But what were a few more weeks added on?
“You mean I could stay here?” Bleary-eyed, she glanced around the room.
It had to be the grandest place the woman had ever seen-not to mention the food was excellent and the liquor free. “For a while, anyway,” Alessia replied. “As long as they think I’m Claire.”
“That’ll be a stretch, for sure,” Celia said, looking her over.
Alessia held her ground and met her eyes.
“But not impossible.”
“You’ll stay up here when you’re drinking,” she said, laying out the conditions. “Which will obviously be the greater percentage of your time.”
Celia snorted.
“You very nearly killed one of the servants down there, you humiliated the Hallidays in front of important business clients and you made a fool of yourself. You will stay in this room unless I say you can go downstairs or out If you stop drinking, however, that’s a different story.”
Celia leaned her head back and looked at Alessia through half-slitted eyes. “You know, maybe it won’t be so hard to pretend you’re Claire, after all.”
After saying that, her chin quivered. “That girl loved me, she did.”
“Do we have an understanding, then?”
“You’re Claire. I stay right here until you let me out, sweetie.”
Could she trust her to stay put? “You go out there,” she said, pointing to the door, “and let it slip, and we’ll both be kicked out of here. Maybe you can go back to where you came from, but I can’t. It doesn’t appear to me you could hold a job, so you’d just better stay put.”
“I’m a drunk, sweetie, not an idiot. I’ll stay here and have my own private party. I do like to read the newspaper. Could I get papers, do ya think?”
“I’ll see that the papers are sent up each day after Mr. Halliday reads them. I believe he receives several. They should keep you busy.”
“What about-you know-them?
“
“The Hallidays?” Alessia’s heart skipped a beat at the thought of facing them. “I’ll talk to them. I’ll apologize.”
“Act real ashamed of me. That always gets ’em.”
Alessia turned away. As if Claire had ever had to act! What the poor girl must have gone through she could only imagine. Alessia had always felt robbed of a mother, especially after learning to know and love Leda, but having a mother like Celia would be…exceedingly difficult, to say the least. “I left biscuits and jam here for you. Eat them and drink the coffee. I’ll have fresh tea sent up.”
“See what kinda booze the rich people stock, will ya? I might as well drink in style, too.”
Alessia eyeballed her with disgust and left the room.
Gruver was sweeping dirt and rock from the foyer floor when she descended the stairs. He’d already hauled away the pieces of the broken crock. He looked up, and an expression of empathy crossed his features.
Alessia stepped closer and studied the cracked and broken floor tiles with a sick feeling in her stomach. “How many of them are ruined?”
“Looks like five. Mrs. Pratt said these were imported from Italy back when the old Mr. Halliday had the house built.”
She caught herself biting her lip. “I wonder if they’ll be replaceable?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“What about the pot?”
“That was something Mrs. Halliday brought back from a trip to India.”
“Oh, great.” She wrung her hands. “Gruver?”
He looked up.
“I’m going to need your help.”
“Anything, ma’am.”
“Celia-don’t call her Mrs. Patrick by the way-mustn’t be allowed out of her room unless I’m with her. I can’t take the chance of anything like this happening again-or something worse next time.”
“I’ll alert the staff,” he said in understanding. “We’ll take turns seeing that she’s kept out of the way.”
“Thank you. Has tea been served to the guests?”
He affirmed that it had.
“All right. See to it the new help knows the procedure for preparing the guests’ rooms for night, and that it’s taken care of before they retire.”
“Yes, ma’am. Ma’am?”
“Yes, Gruver?”
“His bark is worse than his bite, Mr. Halliday’s, and just you keep in mind he’s an honorable man. He always does the right thing.”
The right thing in this case would be to toss her out on her ear, and her baby with her. That drunken woman upstairs had more right to be here than she did; she was Claire’s real mother, after all. “I’ll remember that. Thank you.”
Somehow, she had to save Nicholas’s reputation with his friends and clients. She smoothed her skirts and paused in the servants’ hall to check her hair in the mirror. Her curly mop was hopeless as usual, a few tresses wilder than normal, but nothing she could fix without going to her room and starting over. Her cheeks didn’t need pinching. She looked as though she’d stood in the sun all day.
Resigned, Alessia straightened her shoulders, ignored the throbbing at her temples and in her leg and headed for the formal parlor.
Nicholas refilled the men’s brandy snifters and motioned for Mrs. Pratt to freshen the ladies’ tea. Jane Marie McCaul had accepted a glass of sherry, but declined a refill.
The conversation had been stilted since the fiasco in the foyer. He burned with ire at the scene Claire’s mother had created in front of his guests, and hadn’t done much himself to improve the atmosphere. Mother, bless her, had valiantly apologized and moved them into the parlor.
Kathryn and Jane Marie discussed a play they’d seen in London the season before. Nicholas observed his guests moodily, wishing he could charge up those stairs, jerk those women from whatever they were doing and set them straight.
He’d expected nothing better from someone who came from Slay Street. But he’d expected Claire to keep her seedy background and her lush of a mother from his guests. She’d known what could happen, and she should have been prepared. If she’d alerted him or the servants, they could have prevented the calamity.