Read True Story (The Deverells, Book One) for Free Online Page B

out of
trouble and write, not to let herself be distracted by her temper,
or her wayward imagination with its tendency to lean on the dark
and naughty side.
    With this in mind, she swallowed her
anger and said as calmly as she could, "Yes, Mr. Jameson, I am
indeed a woman, as you shrewdly pointed out. But oddly enough, I am
not here to warm anybody's bed but my own. I hope that's not too
confusing a concept for you."
    The handyman scratched his rumpled
head. "I don't know what the master will make o' that. He says
there's only one thing women are any use for."
    "Perhaps I'd better go to my bed now
then, before I feel the urge to find your master and give him a
piece of my mind. I am rather tired and unfortunately that makes me
short of temper and long of tongue."
    His lips twitched, then disappeared
from view as he rubbed his nose with the back of one large hand.
"What piece of your dainty little mind did you think to give the
master? Women don't generally have much to spare."
    There went the ability to hold back
her anger. "The piece that objects to being left on the mainland as
the tide comes in, to manage my own trunk across the causeway and
up some steep steps. And don't be misled by my size, I'm far from
dainty, but even I struggled." She paused, drew a quick breath and
stole a sullen glance at his exposed forearms. "I'm sure the
cumbersome burden of my trunk would have been nothing to you, but
perhaps it amuses your master to see a woman almost tip off balance
and into the sea."
    "If he knew you were coming, he would
have sent someone out to help."
    "Oh, he knew I was
coming."
    The handyman rubbed his
nose again and his eyes narrowed. Olivia got the sense he was
hiding a chuckle. "I don't think he knew you were coming."
    "What, pray tell, does that
mean?"
    Jameson grabbed a chair and dropped
heavily to the seat facing her, hands slammed down so hard on the
table they made the lamps shake. "Don't get your drawers all
twisted up, woman. I know who you are and why you're here. I was
just rattlin' your cage."
    "If you knew that, why—"
    "You're a widow, so they tell
me."
    She eyed him warily, beginning to
understand how a mouse felt when trapped in the paws of a playful
tomcat. "I am."
    He'd stretched his legs out under the
table, so she was obliged to slide her feet away beneath her chair.
The riding crop now rested on the table between them, a boundary
line she was glad to observe.
    "Thought you'd be older," he
snapped.
    She moved her hands into her lap,
pressing the palms together.
    "You were supposed to be a great deal
older," he added, scowling at her across the width of the
table.
    "Oh?"
    "I pictured a stout-boned lady with
white hair, spectacles and seven chins."
    Olivia's desire to remain stoic was
now challenged by her sense of humor. "Well, I do have spectacles
for reading and I keep my spare chins with the luggage. About the
white hair there's not much I can do. However, if everything I hear
of your master is true, perhaps that will be amended before my
residency here is complete."
    Jameson's gaze searched her
thoroughly, taking it all in. Although still now, his presence felt
restless, impatient, overflowing with too much vigor. He seemed to
fill the kitchen, his dark shadow a great bulk that stretched up
the wall and across the ceiling, but she refused to be intimidated.
He might be large, pounce about like a tiger, and have a habit of
staring rudely, but if this "handyman" also meant to scare her off,
he'd be just as disappointed as the butler.
    "Think you can manage the master, do
you?"
    "I am certain of it."
    "I hope you're not
squeamish."
    She laughed acerbically at that.
"Squeamish? Mr. Jameson, I see you have a low opinion of women in
general. But you may rest assured, there is nothing that frightens
me, nothing to which I cannot turn my hand, and no beast too
contrary for me to handle."
    This was not hollow boasting. When her
last husband, William Monday, had decided to keep pigs, she had not
raised a