Chapter 12
Chapter 12
After the weeks of unbroken sunshine leading up to it, coronation day began with lowering clouds and a strange heaviness in the air, which was as warm and thick as porridge. For Kate, it also began with a dragging ache, low in her stomach, and a scarlet stain on the bedsheet.
Later, coming back from lighting the fire under the copper in the laundry (she knew all too well it didn’t do to let bloodstains set), she encountered Mrs Gatley, decked in her best coat and hat and bearing a cloth-covered tray. She frowned when she saw Kate, stopping suddenly, so that Mr Gatley, following in her wake, almost cannoned into her and upset the trug of strawberries he was carrying.
‘You’re not ready! Ten o’clock sharp, that’s what I was told, so’s we’d be in plenty of time to find a good spot to watch the procession. You’d better be quick.’ She seized the trug from her husband and set off purposefully again towards the kitchen door. ‘I’ll just put these in the larder and tell Johnny Farrow to wait. I’m up to my ears in strawberries up there. You’ll have to make jam tomorrow. They won’t keep beyond that.’
Kate followed her inside. ‘I’ll do it this afternoon. I’m not coming to the coronation parade.’
‘Not coming? Whyever not? I’d have thought you’d be glad of the chance to get away from this place. Change of scene.’ In the gloom of the larder Mrs Gatley peered more closely at her. ‘Not sickening for something, are you?’
‘No.’ Kate gave her a resigned smile. ‘Only the regular thing.’
Catching her meaning, Mrs Gatley’s chins wobbled in sympathy. ‘Oh, well, in that case maybe you’re best off staying put. Get your feet up. Make the most of the peace and quiet—it’s rare enough.’ She clattered dishes down on the slate shelf. ‘I made a cheese and onion flan for Mr Goddard’s tea when he gets back—I shouldn’t think he’ll want to stay once he’s done his tree planting—but there’s enough for you to have for your dinner too. I’d have brought you down a slice of my lemon cake, if I’d known. I always needed a bit of something sweet at the time of the month. That’s all well and truly in the past now, the Lord be thanked…’
Kate went out to the stable yard to see them off; Gatley, Mrs Gatley, and Mr Goddard in one wagon with Johnny Farrow at the reins, and Stanley Twigg driving the smaller cart, in which Jem had joined the grooms and the garden lads. She didn’t look at him, though somehow she still managed to be aware that the bruising on his face was much less noticeable, and he was wearing the soft-striped collarless shirt he had worn on the day he arrived. His hair was lighter than it had been then, where the sun had painted gold into it.
Johnny Farrow raised one heavy eyebrow at her. ‘Shall I wait?’
Kate shook her head. ‘Someone should stay here. In case of intruders… We shouldn’t leave the place empty.’
It was an excuse, but as the horses’ hooves echoed under the archway, she looked around uneasily.
Wrapping her arms around herself, she went back into the silent house.
The Union Jack flags along the dusty main street in Howden Bridge were motionless in the heavy air. The garland of flowers around the door to the village school, where teas were being served, wilted and dropped their petals in the heat.
Jem watched Mr Goddard perform his ceremonial tree-planting duty on the playing field behind the school. The school itself had been built with the money and patronage of the third Baronet Bradfield (who, Jem guessed, was keen to repair some of the damage his predecessor had done to the family name); and tradition apparently dictated that significant occasions were marked with the planting of a tree by someone from the Big House. Sir Randolph had been only too glad to defer the duty to Mr Goddard, who shakily shovelled soil over the roots of a spindly beech tree a stone’s throw from the fledgling ash planted by his late master nine years previously.
It was strange, seeing him outside of his kingdom at Coldwell. Alongside the sturdy villagers and farm folk he seemed older and frailer, his stature diminished amongst people over whom he had no authority, his skin like yellowed parchment alongside their outdoor ruddiness. He made a short speech, but his rusty voice didn’t carry as far as Jem, standing at the back of the small, inattentive crowd.
Jem’s gaze moved over the assembled villagers, picking out the few he recognised: one of the laundrywomen who came up to Coldwell on Mondays (impossible to miss, with her sleeves rolled back over her mighty forearms and a solid infant wedged on her hip), the wizened old man who kept the village store, and several children who’d had prominent roles in the parade that had opened the celebrations that morning and who were now impatient for the jam tarts and ices and sports that were scheduled to follow tea.
A ripple of very half-hearted applause signalled the end of Mr Goddard’s speech. Turning away, Jem saw Davy Wells from the gate lodge, looking smart but uncomfortable in a suit that appeared to have been made for someone considerably smaller. He was with a stout, harried-looking woman in a hat that looked like some ungainly bird had roosted on her head. His mother, Jem presumed, picking his way through a skirmish of children towards them.
‘Hello, Davy.’
Davy flinched away from the greeting, turning his head as forcefully as if Jem had slapped him.
Mrs Wells tutted. ‘That’s not very nice, Davy.’ She gave Jem an apologetic smile. ‘I don’t know what’s got into him today. The heat I expect.’ Sweat beaded her hairline beneath the hat, and she fanned herself with her gloves. ‘Wasn’t the parade lovely? I do like to see the little ones in their costumes. You were in it last time, weren’t you, Davy? Pride of place, at the front.’
Davy looked down, scuffing at the dust with the toe of his boot. On the triangle of grass between the White Hart and the school, the brass band launched into a jaunty tune, at odds with the lassitude of the day.
‘Did you dress up?’ Jem asked. He knew not to expect a reply from Davy himself but didn’t want to talk about him as if he wasn’t there.
‘He did,’ Mrs Wells said proudly. ‘You were the Grand Old Duke of York, weren’t you, Davy? I dug out his father’s old coachman’s livery and trimmed it up with a bit of braid and he led the parade right out of the church door, smiling all over his face. Twelve, he was—always tall for his age. Oh, it was a smashing day, that was!’ The memory lit up her lined face. ‘You weren’t so shy then, were you, Davy? He was a regular little chatterbox back in those days.’
Jem was surprised; he’d assumed Davy had always been mute. Davy’s head was bent, but Jem could make out the scowl on his face. He wanted to ask Mrs Wells what had happened to silence that smiling, chattering boy, but she was hitching her basket up her arm and looking past him. ‘Oh—there’s Mrs Crawford. I must go and have a word… Come along, Davy; say goodbye to—’
‘Jem.’
She nodded, already pulling Davy away with her. He turned to look at Jem with dark, mistrustful eyes.
The band was playing a military march now. Jem began to walk, following the general direction everyone else was taking. In the schoolyard, the children were being marshalled into lines by a short-tempered schoolmaster, while a photographer assembled his equipment and the vicar took coronation mugs out of a tea chest full of packing straw. A table had been set up by the door, with cups and saucers laid out in rows. Without meaning to, Jem found himself in the queue for refreshments, and only realised how thirsty he was when the purposeful woman serving asked what he wanted. She reached beneath the table and pulled a bottle of lemonade from a bucket of water and handed it to him.
‘You’re another one not from round here, aren’t you?’
She was hatless, with faded red hair piled up on top of her head, coming loose a little at the sides. Her eyes, pale green like the marble stopper on the lemonade bottle, moved over him with quick curiosity. ‘We were just saying—there’s a lot of new faces around today. City folk, here for the celebrations. Are you Manchester or Sheffield?’
‘Neither.’ He pushed the marble into the bottle. ‘I work at the hall.’
‘Coldwell?’ Her expression changed and she gave a short, harsh laugh. ‘Hear that, Mrs Mullins? Definitely not from round here, then.’
He took a mouthful of lemonade. ‘What makes you say that?’
Her green glass eyes were almost scornful. ‘Think about it. No one local works there, do they?’
She looked past him, greeting the man behind by name, asking what she could get for him, leaving Jem little choice but to move aside. He looked at the other woman behind the table, but she was pouring tea from a vast, dented metal pot, listening to the woman for whom it was intended telling her about her husband’s toothache.
He walked away, taking another long draught of lemonade. The heat made a pulse beat in his neck: heat and anger. With every step he thought about going back, demanding to know what she meant.
Because she was right, he realised. Apart from the laundrywomen and the girls who provided extra help in the kitchen occasionally, no one from the neighbouring villages worked at the house. Johnny Farrow’s thick Geordie accent marked him out as being a long way from home, and he’d heard the Twigg lads speak about their sprawling family in Warwickshire, and their Gypsy roots. Jem had grown up on an estate where families could trace their service back for generations; garden lads marrying housemaids, dairymaids settling in tied cottages with herdsmen from the home farm, each union tightening the warp and weft of the community, providing the estate’s future labour.
What had happened at Coldwell to disrupt that natural order?
He walked on, sweat soaking the back of his shirt, despair thickening in his throat, weighting his limbs. He was weary. Tired of watching his words and always being on guard. Tired of being an outsider. Tired of being alone with his demons and the corrosive hatred that coloured everything. Tired of scrabbling around for the most meagre crumbs of evidence to lead him to a truth that everyone seemed determined to obscure and erase. He had come to Coldwell for answers but found himself surrounded by walls of secrets and suspicion and silence. The harder he tried to break them down, the more he felt them close in on him.
The music of the brass band faded as he left the festivities behind and made his way back to Coldwell alone.
It was not a good day for making jam.
Kate had stoked up the stove in the stillroom, but the thick walls held in the heat and made stirring the simmering pan unbearably uncomfortable. She broke off frequently to run cold water over her wrists and hold a damp cloth to her cheeks, but her back ached from standing, her belly ached from cramping, and every inch of her felt sticky with sugar and sweat.
The silence was as thick and sticky as the jam. A wasp ricocheted around the walls, maddened by the sweetness, its buzzing loud in the empty basement. Kate’s thoughts bounced around inside her head, as jerky and agitated as the wasp, rebounding between the celebrations currently underway in London and Howden Bridge, the present coronation and the last one.
For all these years she had trained herself not to think of that time, but over the past couple of weeks, the mounting excitement, both below stairs at Coldwell and in the wider world, had stirred the embers of memory.
In Bristol, King Edward’s coronation had been marked by a parade during the day and a grand dinner at the Merchant Venturers’ Hall in the evening. Alec had been invited, of course; he always managed to insinuate himself into the right places, to rub shoulders with the right people (often by paying wedges of cash to very much the wrong people) in his perpetual quest to secure his reputation amongst the city’s respectable businessmen. He expected— required —her to be at his side, to squash any unsavoury rumours and banish any lingering suspicions about his past. As the daughter of the Haven Master of Bristol Docks, she had been the decorative seal of respectability on his new-minted good character.
She had been a gullible little fool.
And on that occasion, she had not been able to fulfil her obligation, because she had not been pretty or pleasing or an object of pride. With her black eye and his finger marks on her neck, she had been a blemish on his reputation. A walking reproach.
He hadn’t even been sorry that time. She had crossed a line, and for a moment, when his hand had closed around her throat, she thought he meant to kill her. Afterwards, there had been a new coldness in the way he’d looked at her, even as he was reminding her that he loved her.
Too much to ever let her go.
She poured jam into the jars, her aching back protesting at the weight of the pan. Her hands were shaky, and it slipped in her grasp, knocking over one of the jars, so jam spread in a dark, glistening puddle over the table.
She gritted her teeth and swiped damp hair back from her face. The swooning silence of the house carried an echo of that day: the brass-band, flag-fluttering clamour of it, muted and muffled by the closed blinds and thick carpets in her luxurious prison. That day, the seconds had been marked by the throb of pain in the side of her head where his fist had struck her, all of them leading up to the moment in the evening when he had come downstairs, dressed for the dinner, and paused in the hallway to check his reflection and straighten his white tie.
Don’t do anything foolish like try to leave, will you? I’d find you, and it would be difficult to forgive such… disloyalty.
A wave of nausea broke over her at the memory.
He had gripped her chin as he’d bent to kiss her goodbye, his fingers hard on her bruised jaw.
For better, for worse, remember? Till death do us part.
By the time she had cleared up the spilled jam she was hotter than ever, and the stickiness seemed to have coated every inch of her skin. She had set water to boil for washing the pans, but she had a sudden urge to be clean—to sluice away the sweat and cloying sugar; the memories that crept and seeped and stained her mind like the strawberry juice on her fingers.
In her parlour she rolled back the rug and dragged the slipper bath out from beneath the table in the corner. Fetching water was heavy work, usually done by Joseph or one of the girls; and by the time she had hauled two cans from the scullery and a kettle of hot water from the kitchen she almost groaned out loud with the relief of finally unbuttoning her blouse, unhooking her corset, letting her skirt and petticoat fall to the floor. She unclipped her stockings and slipped out of her chemise, peeling back layers of decency, constraint, and bloodstained femininity until she was naked.
And then, from the kitchen passage, the jarring jangle of a bell.
Alarm crackled through her. She recognised the sound immediately as the front doorbell, though couldn’t think why anyone should be ringing in the late afternoon when no one was at home. It was coronation day—surely any visitors would know that the servants would be at the celebrations in the village?
For a second she couldn’t move. Then, stumbling through to the bedroom, she grasped the housecoat hanging on the back of the door and thrust her arms into it. Her fingers tangled in ribbon and caught on a lace cuff as she went out into the passageway. The bell had stopped ringing, but the sound still bounced around her head, making it impossible to hear anything else. She waited, feeling the knock of her heart against her hand as she clutched the front of the housecoat together.
Another jolt of panic as the bell was pulled a second time.
Her legs were shaking as she went up the steps to the hall, her bare feet soundless on the stone. She slipped through the green baize door and edged forwards, shrinking into the shadows of the staircase as she peered through the ornate banisters. Terror tore through her as a face suddenly loomed at the window, hands cupped against the glass, and she darted backwards, pressing herself against the wall.
Her heartbeat echoed through the stillness. Panic swelled and shrank with every rasping breath. From beyond the heavy front door, she heard the scuffle of movement, and then—after what seemed like an eternity—footsteps retreating. Over the drumming of her own blood, she could just make out voices on the gravel below.
She slid down the wall until she was crouching on the cold floor. The tiger stared down at her from behind his bared teeth, but for the first time she saw the terror of the prey in his glassy gaze, not the aggression of the predator.
This is what it’s like to be hunted , she thought. The second baronet’s heavy-lidded eyes gleamed dully in the afternoon light, his red lips parted in that secretive smirk, as if he was enjoying her fear. Excited by it.
Tucking her knees up against her chest, she tried to recall the face at the window. It wasn’t familiar, but that was scant comfort. Her husband didn’t need to dirty his own hands with the more unsavoury aspects of his business, as she’d discovered. He knew people who would do anything and keep quiet about it if you paid them enough.
She pushed the heels of her palms into her eyes until patterns danced in the blackness. The grandfather clock ticked away the seconds. She waited, trying to steady her breathing to its rhythm, and then—when she was sure the man wasn’t returning—got unsteadily to her feet. Going back downstairs slowly, she clung to the stair rail, like an invalid out of bed for the first time after a long illness, and was almost at the bottom when a noise made her freeze.
The back door.
The servants’ entrance from the kitchen yard, left unbolted and opening, then closing. She felt light-headed with horror. Whoever had rung the bell hadn’t gone away but had come round and let himself in. In a moment, he would take the few paces along the passage, and see her, pressed against the wall on the staircase. Hiding. Helpless.
She heard him exhale. Closing her eyes, she clamped her lips together, biting back the whimper that almost escaped her as his footsteps advanced.
‘ Jesus —’
Jem’s voice. She opened her eyes as the breath she had been holding escaped her in a rush.
A sob.
In a second, he had crossed the little space between them and taken hold of her upper arms, gentle but firm. ‘What’s wrong? Did something happen?’
She couldn’t speak. She wanted to laugh and say no, that the ring of the doorbell had just caught her by surprise, but the words were stuck in her throat and she could only shake her head as tears brimmed and coursed down her cheeks.
He held her then. Slowly, carefully, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, he folded her into his arms, so she was cradled against his chest as she shuddered and gasped and her tears soaked his shirt. All the pent-up fear and fury of the last nine years came spilling out, and he rested his cheek against her hair and told her that she was safe.
Bit by painful bit, the panic ebbed and reality reasserted itself. She couldn’t look at him as she pulled away, scrubbing her cheeks with the flat of her hand, clutching her flimsy gown around herself, horrified at her state of undress. Not only her clothes but her mask. The professional carapace she had created, stripped away and shattered.
‘Oh God, I’m so sorry,’ she croaked. ‘I was just going to bathe, and then the door—’
He stood back, turning tactfully away so he wasn’t looking at her.
‘You don’t have to explain. As long as you’re all right.’
‘Someone rang the bell. I thought—’
‘It was tourists, on bicycles. I met them on the drive. They wanted to see round the house.’ He smiled wryly. ‘The housekeeper of Chatsworth was most obliging in giving them a tour there the other day, apparently.’
‘Tourists? You’re sure?’ Doubt lingered. If it was one of Alec’s men looking for her, would he ask for her directly? Or would he spin a story to gain access to the house?
Jem shrugged. ‘I sent them up to look at the church. Told them about the tiger’s grave. Come on—I’ll show you.’
She should go back to her room and get dressed, but if she didn’t see for herself the seed of disquiet would remain and grow. He didn’t look round as she followed him up the back stairs, and she took advantage of the gloom to fasten the ties of her gown securely, as if that could make up for her lack of corset, her unstockinged legs and bare feet. On the second floor he led her along the ladies’ corridor, where the rooms looked out towards the church on the hill. Going into the Jaipur Suite he crossed to the window.
‘See. There they are.’
She could just make out bicycles propped by the gate and the figure of a woman moving amongst the gravestones. A moment later, in the shade of the yew tree, she spotted the man she had seen at the window. He looked harmless. Not frightening at all.
Just tourists.
She let out a breath. Jem had moved away, and she leaned her forehead on the cool glass, closing her eyes, wondering how she was ever going to come back from this.
‘So…’ His voice came from somewhere behind her. ‘Did you get a chance to bathe?’
She gave an awkward laugh. ‘No.’
A second later, she heard the sound of cascading water and spun round, her mouth falling open. He had gone into the dressing room and turned on the taps in the cast-iron bath. The soon-to-be Lady Hyde’s brand-new, never-used cast-iron bath.
‘What are you doing?’
‘It makes sense to try it out, don’t you think?’
He had to raise his voice over the splash of water. There was something exhilarating about it—the instant, effortless achievement of something that had previously required such arduous labour—and it was as if he had conjured it himself, through some power of his own.
She gave a gasp of incredulous laughter. ‘You can’t…! I can’t. These are Lady Hyde’s rooms—’
‘Not yet.’ He shrugged. ‘There is no Lady Hyde yet. There isn’t even anyone else here. This huge house is all yours. No one will disturb you. No one will know.’
The water flowing into the bath took on a golden hue as it deepened against the pristine white. In the oppressive heat, it looked irresistibly enticing. She was suddenly aware of the musky scent of her skin; the damp heat coming off it. He turned the taps off and the surface of the water shivered and glittered. The room suddenly seemed very quiet.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said softly. With his eyes downcast, he walked past her to the door, but paused with his hand on it. ‘If you’ll allow me, I’ll bring up a towel and leave it outside. If it’s all right for me to go into your room…?’
Their eyes met.
‘Jem…’
It wasn’t too late to stop this madness. To assert her authority and take back control.
‘If you’d rather I didn’t, I understand,’ he said. ‘But you looked after me when I needed it, and I’d like to do the same for you.’
She wanted to say that she didn’t need looking after. That’s what Mrs Furniss would have said, had she been standing there in her black silk, with her keys at her waist. But there was only Kate, unlaced, unlocked, undone, her eyes still hot from crying.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
Her room smelled of roses.
The chipped enamel slipper bath stood in front of the fireplace, the few inches of water it contained looking cold and unappealing compared to the crystal depths he’d run for her upstairs. Her discarded clothes were laid over the back of the chair by her desk, along with the towel she had set out, ready to use.
His heart stuttered in his chest.
He tried not to look at them. Tried not to notice the lace-trimmed straps of her chemise, the delicately boned satin corset, or to remember how it had felt to hold her against him. The delicate bones of her. The satin hair.
He’d failed before he’d started.
The girls he had known—had been with—were mostly servants like himself and the corsets he unhooked were made of rough cotton canvas. There had occasionally been women upstairs who had sought to alleviate the boredom of their privileged lives, or subvert the rules by instigating a dalliance with a footman. Those women had corsets like this: satin-smooth and shell pink, like the flesh they contained.
He wondered again who she was, the woman beneath the austere housekeeper’s black. She’d been shaking as he’d held her, all her armour fallen away. Where had she come from? What was she so afraid of?
In front of him stood the desk, with its little locked drawer at the back, where all the household keys were kept. Her housekeeper’s ledger lay on the blotter and beside it, in a puddle of silver, her chatelaine. He picked it up and let it trickle between his hands, so the key to the drawer swung like a stage hypnotist’s watch on its chain.
It would be the work of a second to unlock the drawer and find the library key. To find any key he wanted—they were all labelled. It was the kind of opportunity he had dreamed of: the whole house silent and empty above him… his to explore. He would never get another chance like this.
In his mind he pictured the chessboard, the carved figure of the queen.
There was a mirror on the wall between the room’s two windows. The man who stared back at him from its murky depths was hollow-cheeked and remote, his face shadowed by fading bruises. For a long moment he held his own gaze, regarding his image as if it were a stranger’s and finding it was one he didn’t warm to.
He’d used that face like the key on the chain, to open doors and gain access to privileges (and pleasures) unavailable to others. He’d used it to get work and women. He’d used it to turn Annie Harris’s head and steal her from under the nose of the stable lad who’d been patiently courting her for months. He’d used it to attract Kate Furniss’s attention and to win her trust.
He looked down at the chatelaine in his hand and felt a flash of self-disgust. Opening his fingers, he tipped it back onto the desk.
The stranger in the glass looked at him with a mixture of pity and disdain. You idiot , he sneered silently. If she’s the queen, you’re a pawn. You’ll never be worthy of her anyway.
Abruptly he turned away and set about emptying the bath.
He did it for no other reason than to save her the trouble, throwing himself into the laborious task with a sort of perverse satisfaction. When he’d finished, he took the towel from the back of the chair and carried it up to the Jaipur Suite, where he left it outside the bathroom door and retreated.