“This is exactly why you don’t give the cleaning staff too much leeway,” he murmured.

“They start thinking they own the place.”

And Clara’s eyes snapped up to meet his.

She had absorbed their contempt for herself in silence, for Lily’s sake, all night.

But this was different.

This was Karl, having just watched a housekeeper show more grace than he possessed in his entire body, responding to that grace not with shame but with a fresh sneer aimed at the very person who had redeemed the interaction, the woman who had helped a grieving mother when he would not.

It was contempt piled upon contempt, the cruelty of a small man who, confronted with someone better than himself, chooses to belittle her rather than learn from her.