“He’ll ask you to do things he could so obviously do for himself that it’s strange he doesn’t. Things like asking you to pour his coffee when the coffeepot is sitting right in front of him. And he’ll expect you to do it quickly. He comments on it if you’re not grateful and demure. Mostly, he wants you to do as you’re told, and if you don’t, he expresses displeasure, first mildly, then with increasing severity. He is frightening.”

“You’re not going up there.” Wyatt had somehow gotten up and come to her side. He spoke in a whisper, but that didn’t disguise his anger. “You’re not going into his room in the middle of the night in your nightclothes.”

“No, I am most certainly not.” She considered what it might mean to defy Mr. Hawkins. “I’ll take it and set it on the table that’s just outside his door. I’ll knock, tell him it’s out there, and leave.”

She said it all, outraged at Hawkins’s nerve, as she stood there beside Wyatt in her nightclothes in her bedroom.

“You go on. I’ll tell you what—”

“I’m not leaving until you’re safely back here. And while you brew tea, I’m going to go back and search that safe.”

He slipped past her and was gone. She couldn’t exactly yell after him.

“Molly, I asked you to bring the tea to my room last night.” Mr. Hawkins had a chiding way about him.

Shallow charm and the chiding always sounded like he was so sad, so disappointed.

“He wants you to do as you’re told, and if you don’t, he expresses displeasure, first mildly . . .”

“As I did, Mr. Hawkins.” Molly had gone up, set the tray on the table, knocked, and left.

“But you left it outside my room. I find it helps my sleep much more if I’m settled in bed, and the tea is poured and handed to me. I expect my housekeeper to provide such a small service for me.”

“Mr. Hawkins, I was glad to make the tea, but it would be the height of impropriety for me to enter your room at night.” Molly did her best to sound like a scandalized maiden lady, when she wanted to whack him over the head with the teapot. “If going into your room while it is occupied by you is a requirement of this job, then I will have to leave your employ immediately.”

He was eating a cinnamon roll she’d just pulled hot out of the oven. And she’d hit him with her special custard with the crispy caramel topping last night. She had cherry cobbler baking for the noon meal, and the smell filled the kitchen, along with the yeasty, cinnamon scent of his roll.