Justine Elyot Read online

  ‘Perhaps we should keep you to the corridors and anterooms,’ mused the housekeeper. ‘But if I can’t use you where I see fit, then what’s the good of having you?’

  ‘Please, I promise to do better,’ pleaded Edie, close to tears.

  ‘Come on, have a heart, it’s her first day.’

  The male voice from the doorway belonged to Ted Kempe.

  ‘I’ll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself, Kempe,’ snapped Mrs Munn. ‘This matter does not relate to motor cars, or any other area to which you can be expected to contribute.’

  Ted shrugged. ‘We’ve all made mistakes, the first few days of a new place. Haven’t you, Mrs Munn?’

  ‘Yes, and I was properly corrected,’ she hissed, clearly unappreciative of the chauffeur’s attempts to pour oil on the troubled waters. ‘And thankful for it. You may go, Edie, and I will expect a substantial improvement on this performance tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Munn,’ whispered Edie, and she ran from the servants’ hall, regardless of the fact that it was almost dinnertime, and into the darkening kitchen garden where she sat herself down on a low wall and burst into tears.

  This was all a crazy, ridiculous mistake.

  She would pack her bags, go back to London, back to papa and back to her circle of friends. Service was perfectly horrid and so was Deverell Hall and so was everything.

  Except Ted Kempe. He was not horrid. He was kind and handsome, and he approached her now from the scullery door, uniform cap in hand, smile of rueful sympathy on face.

  ‘Hey, you’ll be missing your supper,’ he hailed her, coming closer and perching at her side. ‘That won’t do.’

  ‘Oh, please, leave me be. I’m not fit for company and I can’t bear to go in there and have all those eyes on me, knowing what a useless creature I am.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. They don’t think that at all. Here. Dry your eyes. I’m sure you don’t need to blow your nose, a ladylike person such as yourself but …’

  He handed her a handkerchief and she giggled woefully.

  ‘Actually, I do,’ she said. ‘But I won’t, not in front of a gentleman.’

  ‘First time I’ve been called that,’ he said, beaming brightly. ‘I’ll treasure it.’

  ‘Well, you are, you know. Thank you for standing up for me in there. You didn’t need to do it.’

  ‘Mrs Munn needs reining in a bit sometimes, that’s all. She breathes fire on everyone and everything, not realising that, half the time, it just ain’t needed. You don’t need the same amount of flames for a paper tissue as you do for a bloomin’ oak tree.’

  Edie laughed again. ‘Am I a paper tissue then?’

  ‘More like a paper rose,’ he said gallantly.

  ‘Oh, give over,’ she said, rather proud of herself for replicating one of Josie McCullen’s favourite expressions.

  ‘So, are you coming in? Get yourself some food, it’ll cheer you up. Steak and kidney pudding tonight, one of Fingall’s specials.’

  Edie tried a few moments more of token resistance but ultimately she could not resist Ted’s blend of charm and solicitude. She followed him back into the house just as the first spots of new rain fell on already sodden ground.

  * * *

  ‘I have my reservations about this.’ Mrs Munn hardly needed to voice the words; her face said them for her. ‘But Carrie really isn’t well enough to serve at table tonight. I don’t have anybody else. I’m counting on you.’

  ‘Thank you, I won’t let you down,’ Edie assured her, though she hoped she wouldn’t be asked to swear on her life.

  Dinner in the servants’ hall had been surprisingly heartening, most of the staff having secret sympathetic smiles for her for her misfortune in getting on Mrs Munn’s bad side so soon. Nobody asked any awkward questions and only a couple of the girls looked askance at her when she came out with an overly London turn of phrase.

  She had been sent on an errand after tea, a kind of test of her knowledge of the house’s geography. Unfortunately she had failed.

  The first footman, Giles, had found her wandering about in the East Wing, wringing her hands as she passed the same door for a third time.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, appearing from behind a door – one of the family bedrooms, if she wasn’t mistaken. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I don’t know where I am,’ she said helplessly. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Let me show you back to the basement. Too many stairs in this place, that’s the problem. Don’t worry. I was the same when I started here.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’ she asked, following him along yards and yards of crimson carpet patterned with gold fleurs-de-lys.

  ‘Couple of years,’ he said vaguely. ‘Straight after I demobbed.’

  ‘Gosh, were you in the trenches?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s a bit different to that here.’

  He turned around and gave her a very odd smile.

  ‘Yes. In some ways,’ he said.

  No more was spoken until they reached the kitchen.

  But now Edie was in best black-and-whites, listening to Mrs Munn’s pep talk on how to behave when serving dinner guests.

  She felt like breaking in and telling the woman that she’d been to enough dinners to know what was done and not done, but she had to endure the sermon without interruption.

  In the background, Ted was eating a chicken leg and grinning at her.

  It was too bad of him – Edie was flustered enough already and when he winked at her she had to look away and block him from her mind.

  She was already a little feverish at the prospect of being in the same room as Sir Charles again. What was this peculiar fascination he held for her? She had never been drawn to such characters before. The thought that Jenny might be accurate in her surmise that he would notice her and try to seduce her made her feel alternately hot and cold all over.

  By the time Mrs Munn’s talk was through, Edie felt an uncomfortable band of sweat beneath the elastic of her cap. All she could think of was the way he had looked up at her from the forecourt below, a blend of curiosity and something else, something she had never thought much about because it frightened her.

  The trap. The thing that caught so many good women and took them out of the world, where they could have forged a path of their own.

  She thought about this all the time she helped to lay the table, placing forks within forks and spoons below spoons. Jenny showed her how to fold the napkins ‘the Deverell way’ but she was clumsy and could not manage to pleat them properly, so she was sent to set out the glasses instead.

  Cars had been pulling up outside the house all evening. Ted Kempe had made several journeys to and from the station as well.

  She could hear the muffled voices from the reception room beyond and she tried to make out what people might be saying, but it was too hard. Now and again she heard the fruity, theatrical tones of Lady Deverell, followed always by laughter. This made her knees weaken. Sir Charles’s voice was distinctive too, but he didn’t seem to amuse quite as much.

  Stanhope, the butler, sailed into the room just as the last piece of crystal was set in place.

  ‘Take your positions,’ he muttered.

  Like frilled centurions, Edie and Jenny stood guard by the table, with four other servants, while Stanhope threw wide the large double doors on the far side of the room to announce dinner.

  There were twenty-four at table and Edie found a vicarious interest in looking at the gowns and jewels as they shimmered past, adorning pale aristocratic flesh.

  She did not know the woman on Sir Charles Deverell’s arm, but she saw him cast the quickest little dart of a glance in Edie’s direction before pulling out his companion’s chair.

  Lady Mary was gorgeous in royal-blue satin overlaid with net, beaded and jewelled at the neckline and on the sleeves. She was transparently a female version of her brother, his dark looks softened and made sleek on her smaller canvas.

&n
bsp; The man who limped in behind her must be the other brother, Sir Thomas. He had a thin moustache that did not look as if it had much more growth in it and his eyes were tired and hooded.

  And then – yes, it could only be Lady Deverell, in sweeping floor-length emerald silk that swished about her and was overlaid with a cloud of black tulle. The emeralds at her throat and in her tiara set off the deep red of her hair, while swirls of black beads decorated her bodice and the hem of her skirts. She was like a creature from another world, and yet she was so familiar that Edie’s throat tightened and ached.

  Lord Deverell, at her side, was a grizzled, faded nobody.

  Edie felt a blush of transferred shame, as if all the gossip that must inevitably be attached to their marriage had infected her. But she was nothing to do with it.

  The guests were mainly elderly, it seemed, with a sprinkling of younger people, perhaps their children. Everybody was talking about the grouse and salmon seasons, so perhaps they were fellow landowners from the local area.

  She could not take her eyes off Lady Deverell, who smiled as brightly as the electric lamps at the theatre, dazzling the candlelight into a dim second place. But her smile was strange, not quite natural. At times it almost looked as if it wavered at the edges of her lips and then it found renewed purpose and flashed again in its full glory. Her eyes wandered, frequently settling on Sir Charles, who seemed to know a lot about their baffling topic of conversation and held the floor with effortless authority. She leant towards him when he cut across or contradicted his father and gave him an extra gleam of her teeth. She was amazingly beautiful.

  Lady Deverell looked towards her, sharply, as if she had noticed Edie’s unbroken gaze. Edie dropped her eyes and looked instead at Jenny, who signalled that they were to serve the soup which had been brought up from the kitchen.

  When she reached the table, Lady Deverell was still looking at her, but not hostilely now. She had a distant, dreamy kind of look upon her face, but it disappeared when somebody asked her about her jewels, whisking her back into the social slipstream.

  Edie had been consigned to the end of the table, serving six of the elderly guests, but even at this distance Lady Deverell’s radiance reached out to her. Her hand shook and she could barely breathe.

  ‘Be careful, girl,’ snapped a dowager in pink and black lace.

  A splash of soup had escaped the ladle and spotted the cloth.

  ‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ blurted Edie, desperate not to draw attention to herself.

  The tiny contretemps had reached the notice of Sir Charles, however, for Edie became hotly conscious of his eye upon her. If only he would look away.

  She avoided his gaze as studiously as she could, attending to her other guests, but when she glanced back up, he still watched her.

  Her grip on the ladle slipped and it fell with a clatter back into the tureen.

  Lord Deverell frowned and several ladies tutted, their jewels flashing as they turned to grimace at each other.

  Edie apologised again, on the verge of tears. This was all a terrible mistake. She would catch the mail train back to London and tell papa she was sorry, she had been wrong and he had been right, could she now take back her old life, please?

  ‘Leave her be.’

  The voice was rich and commanding and it belonged to Sir Charles.

  ‘She is new, I think. Isn’t that so?’

  Edie nodded, wanting to be anywhere but this place, with all these eyes upon her.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, then. First-night nerves. You know all about them, don’t you, mama?’ The way he said this, with a sneer, to Lady Deverell made Edie gasp, and she was not alone.

  ‘Charles!’ Lord Deverell reproved his son.

  ‘Sorry, did I speak out of turn?’ He sat back, dabbing his napkin at his lips with an insolent air.

  Lady Deverell was flushed but it only made her more beautiful. She levelled a combative stare at Sir Charles and shook her head.

  For a moment there was silence while stepmother and stepson locked everybody else in the room out of their mutual tension, then somebody complimented the soup and everybody rushed to agree.

  Edie, for the moment, was forgotten, and she melted back into her place with gratitude, waiting for the first course to be finished.

  The fever that had affected her on her first sighting of Lady Deverell eventually wore off and Edie was a better mistress of herself when called upon to serve the other courses. She was thankful to be at the end of the table furthest from the family, able to watch them without having to get too near.

  Lady Mary sulked about coming back from the London season too early and missing the best closing balls, while Lord Deverell heavy-handedly reminded her that there was a good reason for that, which made her sulk all the more.

  Edie exchanged a look with Jenny that asked, ‘What reason?’ Jenny responded with a tiny shrug.

  Conversation was far from lively. Sir Charles occasionally attempted to stir things up with a sly barb or two, but nobody seemed to be in sufficient spirits to react in the way he wanted. Sir Thomas barely spoke at all, glaring down at his plate as if he saw the face of a mortal enemy in it.

  Edie was lulled by the low murmurs, the scraping of knives and forks on fine china, the low light and the ambient warmth into a kind of daze. Her legs and feet ached and her head was so fuzzy now. She had been awake since five o’clock in the morning and she had walked as many miles inside the house as she had outside it.

  Could they not just finish their meal quickly and let her go to bed?

  Through half-shut eyes, she saw the red-gold glow of Lady Deverell and the gleam of Sir Charles’s teeth, dangerously bared. Points of light from various gems danced across the walls and ceilings behind them. The wallpaper pattern was a repetitive curl of red and gold, a curiously soothing thing to look at. She fixed her attention on it, lulled, comforted. She leant back against the door jamb, feeling her legs twitch a little and then …

  A kick on her shin.

  ‘Keep upright,’ hissed Jenny.

  She had been on the point of falling asleep where she stood, like a horse. How did anyone live this life without doing so all the time? And this was only her first day.

  Somehow she dragged her body through pudding, but it was still another half-hour before the ladies retired to the drawing room.

  She swooped forwards to take the dishes downstairs for the last time. Gathering the last of them up, she made the mistake of looking again at Sir Charles, who was smiling at her as he poured himself a brandy. The smile struck Edie as predatory and she made a hasty escape to the kitchen, feeling like one of the grouse they had spoken of shooting at.

  ‘Told you,’ said Jenny at the bottom of the staircase. ‘He’s got an eye for you already. Watch yourself, girl.’

  ‘I don’t want to watch anything,’ said Edie, stacking the dishes up by the sink, thanking her lucky stars that she wouldn’t be washing them. ‘I want to shut my eyes and fall into my bed.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming for a game of cards in the kitchen?’

  ‘I simply can’t. I’m half asleep already.’

  ‘Fair enough. Sweet dreams, then. I hope they won’t be of him. I don’t want to see you go Susie’s way.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  * * *

  Edie’s dreams were of nothing, or, if they had substance, it soon melted from her memory. Her first consciousness was of a foreign place, a bed too hard, a pillow too flat, and a peculiar smell of other bodies and their exhalations.

  She was the only one abed. The other three girls were dressing already, yawning and tying each other’s apron laces.

  The rain still beat dully against the little square-paned window and somebody had thought to light a candle, even though the summer dawn had broken half an hour since.

  Edie had never risen this early, save on a handful of special occasions, and she bitterly resented having to leave the warmth of her bed to engage in a day of more hard
and mystifying work.

  The girls seemed disinclined to talk, going about their morning ablutions in pale-faced trances. The memory of Charles and Lady Deverell at last night’s dinner hit Edie once more – a big, nauseating blow. Why had she been so stupid as to get herself noticed? All she had had to do was serve some soup, for heaven’s sake.

  ‘How was the bed? Could you sleep in it?’ asked Jenny, coming up behind Edie as she brushed her hair, having waited patiently for the use of the room’s only mirror.

  ‘Oh, it was a little narrow, but comfortable enough,’ she said vaguely.

  ‘I was so pleased to have a bed to meself, I never worried about its being narrow,’ confided Jenny. ‘Had to share with two sisters back at home. Have you got brothers or sisters?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘You won’t be missing them, then. Is your ma and pa alive?’

  ‘I live with my father. Lived,’ she corrected.

  ‘He’ll feel your absence, then. Only child gone away from home.’

  She pursed her lips sympathetically. Edie, feeling underhanded and low for garnering the girl’s simple compassion, merely smiled tightly and put the brush down.

  ‘Could you arrange my hair? I have no skill for it myself.’

  ‘You’ll have to get it,’ said Jenny with a laugh. ‘Heavens, you need to be able to do these things. You’ll never rise to lady’s maid if you can’t fix hair.’

  ‘You’re quite right. I wonder, Jenny, would you let me practise on you sometimes?’

  ‘If you like.’

  There was a silence while Jenny’s fingers worked deftly on Edie’s heavy auburn hair.

  ‘You’ve got such a lovely lot of it,’ she said, fixing the cap on top with a quantity of pins. ‘It’s just like Lady Deverell’s – that glorious colour too. I’ve always longed to be her maid and get my hands on those locks. I can play with yours instead now.’

  Edie laughed. ‘I’ve been told I have a look of her sometimes. Do you think so?’

  Jenny narrowed her eyes, looking over Edie’s shoulder into the mirror.

  ‘The hair, yes. The eyes, no. Hers are blue, yours are brown. And your nose is completely different … but I think in the shape of the face … Well, let’s say I wouldn’t get you mixed up from the front, but I might from behind, if your hair was down.’