The Housekeeper’s Secret

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Sarah Dunn stood outside the housekeeper’s room, her head tipped to one side as she listened.

It was Sunday morning; early, but the maids were already at work and she had asked the kitchen girl—the nervy one with the pale eyelashes and the litany of superstitions—for hot water to take up to Miss Addison’s room. She was sure the housekeeper would be up, but was it too early to knock?

She didn’t really have any choice.

Mrs Furniss’s voice came faintly from within. Entering, Miss Dunn found her at her desk, head bent over her ledger, dark hair escaping from a loose plait down her back. She was wearing a mauve silk housecoat, which Miss Dunn (who had been employed in the ladies’ lingerie department of Rackhams in Birmingham before taking up the position of lady’s maid) recognised as being of surprisingly superior quality. Mrs Furniss didn’t look round immediately, but when she did, the early light showed shadows beneath her eyes and a deep line between her brows. She started slightly.

‘Oh—Miss Dunn! I’m sorry—I was expecting one of the girls—’

‘It’s I who should apologise, Mrs Furniss, for disturbing you so early.’

‘Is everything all right? Is there something you need?’

‘I’m afraid so. Unfortunate timing, and rather unexpected…’ Miss Dunn lowered her gaze and trailed off unhappily, hoping the other woman wouldn’t press her to elaborate. It wasn’t the workings of the female body that made her uncomfortable but the unshakeable sense that such matters were between her and her mistress, and she was betraying a trust in disclosing such intimate information to a stranger.

Thankfully the housekeeper needed no further explanation. ‘I see.’ She got to her feet, reaching for the silver chatelaine that lay beside her on the desk in a tangle of chains. ‘I’ll get rags. Do you need clean sheets? A fresh nightdress?’

Miss Dunn shook her head. ‘Just water, for washing. I’ve asked the girl in the kitchen.’

While Mrs Furniss unlocked the linen cupboard (which appeared to be almost a small room in itself, accessed through a door in the panelling) Miss Dunn looked around her parlour. It had two windows, looking out onto the kitchen courtyard, but the sun had not yet reached them, and the low ceiling and oak-panelled walls made the room seem dark. It was furnished comfortably enough, with a little button-back armchair upholstered in pale blue velvet and a small table beside it, a threadbare rug beneath. On the mantelpiece there was a clock and two brass candlesticks, and a single china dog (a spaniel, not unlike Mr Hyde’s, though its russet was patched with white) which looked like it had once been one of a pair and had been relegated from one of the upstairs rooms when its mate had got broken.

There were no photographs, she noticed. In fact, there was nothing that gave any clue as to the housekeeper’s life beyond these walls, her history before she had come here, or where on earth Miss Dunn might have encountered her before.

Upon arrival at Coldwell, she had been struck by the sense that she had seen Mrs Furniss before. It had been a fleeting certainty that had faded into doubt when she tried to find a place or a time on which to fix it. Now, as Mrs Furniss returned with a thick wad of flannelette squares, their eyes met and recognition fluttered in Miss Dunn’s mind once more.

‘I hope that’ll be enough,’ Mrs Furniss said as she handed them over. There was a moment’s pause. ‘Was there anything else you needed?’

‘Oh, no. No, thank you.’

Miss Dunn was aware that she was staring and forced herself to look away. ‘I do apologise for disturbing you.’

‘Not at all.’

As she moved towards the door, she searched her mind for a casual conversational opening; some way of discovering—without seeming to pry—if, perchance, Mrs Furniss had ever shopped in Rackhams lingerie department? But her mind remained frustratingly blank, and she found herself back out in the corridor, no closer to working out where her path might have crossed the housekeeper’s.

Except, she was certain that she would have remembered the housecoat, if Rackhams had ever stocked such a garment. She had an eye for quality and knew style when she saw it (which was why Miss Addison—who had not and did not—had offered her employment).

No, it wasn’t the housecoat that had rekindled the ember of a memory. It was the cool beam of that blue gaze.

The vast old house felt different with so many strangers beneath its roof: its atmosphere altered, its age-old stillness shattered. Although Kate was exhausted by meeting the demands of the visitors (Miss Addison proved to be no trouble, but Lady Etchingham was as capricious and demanding as a spoiled toddler), she found it impossible to sleep. In the small hours of both Friday and Saturday night, her restless mind had wandered through corridors and paused outside bedrooms, seeking reassurance that nothing was amiss, and not quite being able to find it.

It was tiredness that had set her nerves on edge, she told herself, trailing back downstairs after taking a tisane up to Lady Etchingham’s room on Sunday afternoon ( such terrible indigestion; your cook has a very heavy hand with sauces…) . Lack of sleep had brought back that old jittery, unsettled feeling, undermining her confidence, making her question herself. She was dogged by doubt, the feeling that she had forgotten some important duty or neglected some fundamental responsibility and was just waiting to be discovered.

For the punishment to come.

Crossing the hall, she felt the eyes of the second baronet idly following her. On impulse, instead of going downstairs, she turned into the library passage, to check that the girls hadn’t missed any stray glasses in the billiard room. Mr Hyde and Lord Etchingham had played after dinner last night, and the room was stale with cigar smoke, redolent of whisky. She raised the sash a fraction to freshen the air and was about to leave when she noticed that the library door was slightly ajar. A ripple of unease spread through her.

The library was an impressive room, with shelves from floor to ceiling and a galleried walkway running around the upper level, reached by a concealed staircase in the corner. The air of neglect and decay that pervaded other rooms at Coldwell was absent there, but Kate still felt a chill of discomfort whenever she entered it. Perhaps it was the miasma of masculinity—cigar smoke and self-assurance—which stirred buried memories. Perhaps it was the macabre collection of objects fashioned from animal parts that made her shudder—the hoof inkwell and horn candlesticks, the elephant’s foot coal scuttle and paperknife with the tiger tooth handle—or the framed illustrations on the wall behind the desk, rumoured to have been cut from a book stolen from a Mughal harem, showing naked bodies tangled together in an improbable tableaux of erotic bliss. Or the well-thumbed volumes of ‘gentlemen’s literature’ on the shelves, interspersed among respectable and unread titles, hidden in plain sight.

Heart crashing, she pushed the door open and looked in, wary that Frederick Henderson might be in there. Seeing someone standing by the desk, she was about to make a hasty retreat, before realising that it wasn’t the valet at all.

‘ Mr Arden .’ Her tone was glacial—did he not know that the servants were not allowed in the library except with express permission? ‘I’m quite sure you have good reason to be in here alone, looking through Mr Hyde’s publications, but I can’t immediately think what it might be. Perhaps you could help me?’

She had expected embarrassment; a deep blush at the very least and some expression of shame at being caught red-handed in a place where servants were not permitted alone. She wondered if Walter Cox had put him up to it. The library was usually kept locked, but gossip about pictures of concubines and naked many-handed goddesses; works of literature by ‘A Gentleman of the World’ or ‘Madame Mauvais’ inevitably circulated amongst the servantry—the men in particular. Had Walter dared the new footman to come to see for himself?

If he was uncomfortable, he showed little sign of it: only the rise and fall of his Adam’s apple, the flicker of a muscle in his cheek. His face remained expressionless.

‘I was looking for a book.’

‘A book.’ She almost laughed. At least he was honest (hadn’t his character said as much?), though she had expected a more creative excuse. ‘Was there a particular volume you were hoping to find, or was your interest more general?’

‘A particular volume.’

To her horror, he picked it up. Heat flooded her cheeks as he held it out.

‘The visitors’ book,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Lady Etchingham mentioned it when I took up the coffee after lunch—she thought it might be in here, though it hasn’t been used for years. It was wrong of me to look at it; I’m sorry.’

She swallowed and shook her head as she took the book from him, her throat too dry to respond. Instead, she opened the worn leather cover and feigned interest in the pages of illegible signatures in faded ink and scrawled messages whose meaning had been lost to time.

‘The last time it was used was in 1902,’ he said, his voice low in the velvet quiet. ‘Were you here then?’

‘No, I came the following year.’

It wasn’t one of those formal visitors’ books, where guests had to write in columns and on narrow lines. The paper was plain, to allow for more spontaneous and creative entries. Kate flicked past pen-and-ink sketches and snatches of doggerel verse amongst baffling private jokes ( Delighted to meet ‘Lady Gloria.’ What a charming young ingénue!!! ). The final entry was dated August 1902 ( Dreadful weather, decent grouse ) and the page facing it was empty, suggesting that had been the last time a house party had gathered at Coldwell. Except—looking closer—she could just make out that a leaf had been removed from the book. Cut cleanly, with a sharp knife.

Intrigued, she touched the edge with the tip of her finger and was about to remark on it when a noise from the billiard room made her jerk her hand away sharply: the rapid scutter of claws, followed by the creak of a door opening. Randolph Hyde’s booming voice reached them, and she remembered that Miss Dunn had said something at lunch about Miss Addison being interested in art and hoping for a tour of the paintings.

‘Fairly dismal daubs in here, I’m afraid.’ Hyde sounded bored. ‘Italian ruins. Some forbear or other bought the lot for a knock-down price in Italy—souvenirs of the Grand Tour. Put me off bothering with the place, frankly. You’d think Italy would be sunny but look at that for a pea-souper. Give me India any day. Still, this room’s only used as a chaps’ mess, so anything better would be wasted. Shall we—?’

‘But isn’t that another room?’ Miss Addison asked. ‘May I—?’

Kate’s eyes flew up to meet Jem Arden’s. Her heart was beating so hard that she thought he must hear it. Clasping the visitors’ book against her chest, she nodded to the staircase in the corner.

He understood her meaning immediately, moving swiftly to open the narrow door in the panelling and letting her go ahead of him into the small space. It was a standard rule in most houses that servants should avoid being seen upstairs by the family at all costs, though as housekeeper Kate had a little more licence. But not when it came to the library, with its collection of explicit gentlemen’s material.

The staircase was narrower than she’d recalled. Light filtered dimly down from above, and the air smelled of old paper and dust. As Jem pulled the door shut, she climbed the first two steps of the spiral staircase, wincing at the creak they made, not daring to go further. They were just in time. From outside came the frantic patter of the spaniel’s feet, the excited snuffle of his nose in the gap beneath the door.

Hyde’s laugh followed, abrupt and uneasy. ‘Aha, you’ve discovered my bachelor den. Coldwell’s own little gentlemen’s club.’

‘Oh, gosh, what a simply marvellous room! All these books… such treasures! I didn’t know you were a reader, Mr Hyde.’

‘Yes, well—matter of fact, I’m not, terribly,’ Hyde drawled. ‘No time for all that out in India, y’know, but one has to admit books look the part in an English country house. The second baronet created this room, dear Great-uncle Aubrey.’

‘He’s the one in the painting in the hallway? The tiger hunter?’

‘That’s the chap. Family scoundrel. Quite a character—we still have all his papers here, of course. As a matter of fact, I started going through them, years ago, writing a sort of biography thing. Fascinating chap. Must pick it up again when I have more time. Now, why don’t we—’

Praying for them to leave, Kate scarcely dared breathe. Jem Arden stood below her, very still, his back against the wall and his head bent. She couldn’t see his face, only the hollow at the nape of his neck where the hair grew to a soft point. Close up, she noticed that it was the tawny brown of old tortoiseshell, which looked black until you held it up to the light and saw that it was shot through with gold. He would have been blond as a boy, she found herself thinking.

‘Oh—that’s the tower on the hill, isn’t it?’ The tap of Miss Addison’s feet came closer, and Kate pictured her going over to the fireplace to look at the painting that hung over it. ‘The one I saw when we arrived. What did you say it was called?’

‘The temple. Another of Great-uncle Aubrey’s projects. It’s the gatehouse of the old hunting lodge that was demolished to make the present house; dates back to the sixteenth century. They kept it as a sort of folly, but Aubrey kitted it out with carved panels from a temple in Pondicherry and used it as a gambling den.’ He gave a snort of laughter. ‘He used to invite chums to Coldwell to worship in the temple.’

‘A scoundrel indeed,’ Miss Addison said dryly. ‘But how perfectly thrilling to find an Indian temple in darkest Derbyshire. I should love to see inside.’

‘Oh—place has been locked up for years. Supposed to be a curse on it, because of the Indian loot. Poppycock of course. It’s just a dashed inconvenience—too far from the house to be worth bothering with. Right then—if you’re ready, shall we—?’

‘What charming prints!’ Miss Addison’s footsteps advanced, until her voice was only a few feet away, on the other side of the panelling. ‘They’re Indian too, aren’t they? They look terribly old—oh! Goodness me…’

‘My dear Miss Addison, I did try to warn you.’ Hyde’s tone was blustering and defensive rather than apologetic. ‘A gentlemen’s club, you see. Not for ladies’ eyes.’

‘Nonsense.’ Miss Addison recovered her composure admirably fast. ‘You forget I’m a country girl, Mr Hyde, from farming stock; I’m not easily shocked. They weren’t what I was expecting, that’s all, but they’re rather beautiful… It’s our modern way to make a fuss about propriety and modesty and so forth, isn’t it? I’m not saying it’s wrong, but these are a reminder that the love between a man and a woman is very natural and as old as time, don’t you think?’

‘Indeed I do, Miss Addison, though of course one must be careful not to frighten the horses.’ Hyde gave a bray of uneasy laughter. ‘A time and a place for everything, I say.’

The silence that followed felt endless. Kate couldn’t imagine what was going on a mere few feet from where they were concealed, but she was aware of the warm scent of Jem Arden’s skin; its clean masculinity. His head was still bowed, and her eyes traced the curve of his cheekbone, the thickness of his eyelashes. She was close enough to see the faint stippling of stubble on his jaw, though he must have shaved that morning, and a small scar, faded and well healed, just above the edge of his eyebrow. She imagined lifting her hand to touch it… And then Hyde spoke again, his voice gruff and awkward.

‘Talking of which… well, the thing is—I’m a bit long in the tooth for turtledoves and all that “language of flowers” business, but… Well, there comes a time when one thinks of settling down. Don’t get me wrong—I’m an infernal old bachelor, too set in my ways and too damned happy in them to change much. But time is ticking on, and a man in my position has certain responsibilities…’

Slowly, Jem Arden raised his head and his eyes found Kate’s. Breaths held, they gazed at each other, silently acknowledging that they were about to become accidental witnesses to a proposal.

‘So you see, I need a wife and Coldwell needs a mistress. The last thing I want is some delicate slip of a girl who can’t look out for herself, and it seems to me that you’ve got a bit of backbone and a sensible head on your shoulders. No silly notions. An arrangement that suits us both. What about it, Leonora? Reckon you could take on this old duffer and his crumbling old pile?’

Jem’s eyes were grey. Darker at the edges, like the pools of silvered water you came across on the moors. He shook his head a fraction at the crassness of the proposal, its utter absence of romance or sensitivity, and Kate had to bite the inside of her cheeks to stifle a sudden smile. On the other side of the door. Miss Addison stammered, ‘Oh, heavens… gosh… thank you! I mean, yes. Please,’ and Kate remembered Henderson’s words. She’s hardly in a position to say no… The smile died again.

There was another beat of silence. Her gaze was still locked with Jem’s when they heard the unmistakable sound of a kiss, and for a moment she forgot that it came from Randolph Hyde’s damp lips. A meteor shower of stars shimmered through the darkness inside her. Suddenly light-headed, she put her free hand out to lean against the wall, but found herself gripping his shoulder instead.

‘Good show, old girl, good show.’

Randolph Hyde’s voice was loud, hearty with relief and self-congratulation at this tricky piece of business concluded so easily. ‘Now that’s settled I rather think it calls for champagne, don’t you?’

Clicking his fingers, he gave a sharp whistle and the spaniel’s claws skittered on the polished floor. As the dog passed the staircase, his wet nose appeared beneath the door again, sniffing frantically. Kate’s hand tightened on Jem’s shoulder.

‘ Boy! ’

The shout was more distant now, Hyde’s voice echoing back as he bore his newly acquired fiancée off like one of his hunting trophies. Kate’s head swam with relief and she exhaled heavily at the same time as Jem, so she felt the tension leave his body. Hastily she withdrew her hand from his shoulder, smoothing her skirt, untwisting the chains of her chatelaine, preparing to step out of this tiny space and rejoin the everyday business of the house.

They didn’t move.

She felt shaky. Unready. Slowly she held out the visitors’ book and he took it from her, not meeting her eye now. She had intended to find out whether he was telling the truth about being asked to find it by Lady Etchingham, but she knew that she would say nothing. Just as he would say nothing about what had just happened. About them hiding together in the cramped space of the staircase while the future of Coldwell was forged only a few feet away.

It would be impossible to explain to anyone else; awkward and improbable, and faintly incriminating for them both. And so they were bound together in an unspoken conspiracy of silence.

Keepers of the same secret.