The Housekeeper’s Secret

Chapter 26

Chapter 26

While the snow fell it was like they were under some sort of enchantment; a spell of silence, where everything was altered. Folding back the drawing room shutters on the third day Eliza saw that the flakes had stopped and there was a pink dawn spreading across the sky, making the white world blush.

She stood looking out, watching the crows rise raggedly from the wood, before briskly turning away, picking up her box of dusters, brushes, and black lead. As she passed a wide mirror, she caught sight of a figure in the glass and felt a judder of shock.

It was her. The stout woman with the pudding face and the hair scraped back under her cap was her .

The foxed glass above the washstand in the maids’ attic only showed small bits of her at any one time, so she had been spared the impact of the whole. With a soft moan, she faced her reflection fully, setting down the box and twisting left and right, checking to see if the swelling in her belly, which felt like she’d eaten a tray of underbaked currant buns, was visible.

She’d had to let out her corset laces, of course, but she couldn’t risk loosening it as much as she’d like, so the roundness she felt at night, beneath her nightgown, was concealed a bit. Miserably, she tugged at her apron. She looked like the laundrywoman who sometimes came up on Monday with a snivelling infant strapped to her back.

‘ Eliza…’

She spun round and felt her heavy stomach drop.

Mrs Furniss had come into the room and stopped short. For a moment they stared at each other, and Eliza watched the colour drain from the housekeeper’s face as her eyes moved from Eliza’s stomach to her face and back, realisation dawning like the sun rising over the snow outside.

‘I think…’ Her voice sounded like someone had her by the throat. ‘I think you’d better come to my room.’

Kate had always prided herself on her attention to detail.

At twenty-five, she had been inordinately young to take over the post of housekeeper in a house this size, and relatively inexperienced in matters pertaining to cleaning and household maintenance. However, those were things that could be learned from Cassell’s Household Guide and Mrs Beeton. The qualities that were so notably absent in Mrs Walton—understanding of the girls whose labour she relied on, awareness of their lives, their alliances, their squabbles, their worries, and their pleasures—came naturally to Kate, and she believed that these things (along with a head for figures and a methodical approach to accounts) were what made a good housekeeper.

And that’s what she had thought herself—a good housekeeper, up until that moment in the drawing room, with the low winter sun stretching its rosy rays across the faded carpet and giving Eliza an aura of gold. Kate’s first thought was that she looked like a figure from an old painting—a shepherd girl, or Demeter perhaps—womanly and voluptuous. It took her a second to understand why.

It was her fault.

Self-recrimination beat inside her as she went down to the basement, where Frederick Henderson had collared a miserable-looking Joseph in the gloom beneath the stairs. Any other time she would have stepped in to rescue him, but her head was too full of her own responsibilities—if she had kept her focus, none of this would have happened. Sending Eliza to wash her hands, Kate went into the housekeeper’s parlour and sat down at her desk. She let out a shaky exhalation.

She had never held with the idea that servants should—or could—be controlled by intimidation. Kate had tried to lead her girls by example… to show that it was possible to find satisfaction in work well done, to establish a valuable life for oneself as an independent woman.

And then Jem Arden had come to Coldwell and she had stopped trying to do those things. She had lost sight of everything but him.

Eliza came in quietly, without knocking. She stood beside the armchair, leaning against it as her eyes moved around the room, eventually fixing themselves on the window.

‘How did it happen?’ Kate asked in a low voice. She suspected she already knew and could hardly bear to hear it, but she owed Eliza the chance to share the burden of her secret.

‘I should think you know that, Mrs Furniss.’

Eliza’s tone was sardonic. Defiant almost; a sharp contrast with the shame Kate had expected. She felt herself instantly disconcerted, as if she had opened a door and found quite a different vista from the one she’d anticipated. Distress affected people differently, she reminded herself. She must be patient.

‘I mean, was it—were you—assaulted? Did he force himself on you?’ As she said it, she felt her throat close in a gag, remembering the smell of hair oil and the hardness of fingers digging into her flesh. ‘If so, you must tell me, and I will deal with it. I will see to it that the man who did this is not allowed to remain in this house and does not go unpunished…’

There was the silver lining to all this. She would never forgive herself for this happening to one of the girls in her care, but at least now she could openly confront Frederick Henderson and make sure it didn’t happen again.

‘No, Mrs Furniss.’

‘ No?’

‘I wasn’t assaulted. Or forced.’ Eliza shrugged, sounding almost bored. Her eyes slid from the window to rest on Kate, faintly challenging. ‘I suppose I wanted a bit of excitement. I reckon you’ll understand that.’

Kate moved her leather-bound ledger a fraction, lining it up precisely with the inkstand. Words swirled in her head, but it would be a mistake to snatch at the first ones that came to her. It was important to hang on to her temper. She inhaled, then paused for a beat.

‘Eliza, do you know what you’re saying?’ It was the tone of voice she used to talk to Davy Wells. ‘Are you protecting this man because you’re afraid of him? Has he threatened you? Because I can promise—’

Eliza gave a tut of impatience and shifted her weight to the other hip, so the swell of her belly seemed more obvious. ‘He hasn’t threatened me, and if he did, I’d take no notice—Walter Cox is full of big talk that comes to nowt. He doesn’t know anything about it, and I daresay he never will. There’s nowt to be done about it now.’

Walter Cox?

Dear God. Eliza had spoiled her chances for Walter Cox ?

Kate rubbed her fingers across her forehead, as if that would help assimilate this unexpected information.

‘Well… I’m afraid something will have to be done. You can’t leave immediately because of the weather, and Christmas… But you can’t stay here—you know that, don’t you? I’d let you if I could, but Mr Goddard and Mr Fortescue simply wouldn’t countenance it. Have you made any plans?’

‘Not as such. I had hopes, but they came to nothing.’ The words were edged with steel, sharpened with blame. ‘I don’t know where I’ll go for the… Well, anyway, I’m not keeping it. I can’t. Afterwards I’ll get back to work as soon as I can.’

Eliza’s tone was offhand, as if she’d barely given it a second thought. As if bearing an illegitimate child and handing it over to the parish was a mild inconvenience, and finding another position afterwards would be a simple matter. Kate saw behind the bravado and understood that Eliza hadn’t thought about it because it didn’t bear thinking about. She hadn’t decided what to do because she had little choice.

She sighed. ‘I’ll do what I can to help. You won’t be alone in this, Eliza. I’ll give you a good character reference. The truth will no doubt come out sooner or later, but for now your secret is safe.’

Eliza nodded and turned her head away. Her mask of nonchalant defiance had slipped, and her throat worked against tears. When she looked back at Kate, it was with swimming eyes and a grudging smile.

‘In that case, so is yours.’

In spite of everything, Christmas still had to be got through, somehow. Neither the weather nor the tension that crackled through the house could alter the fact of it. Instead of the days of amusement and diversion Lady Hyde had envisaged, it now felt more like a series of trials to be endured.

For two days, while the snow fell, Miss Dunn had hurried up and downstairs with trays for Lady Hyde, who had taken the disappointment of the cancelled visits very badly. But by Christmas Eve the sense of being suspended in the glass dome of a snow globe was shattered and brisk purpose returned. The outdoor staff shovelled paths through the snow and scattered soil to make them safer underfoot. Mrs Gatley swung into action in the kitchen, ordering Susan and Doris (who was more tearful than ever at the prospect of Christmas cut off from her family) to make bread sauce and scrub the mud off parsnips. The monster Christmas tree was brought into the entrance hall and it took Gatley and five men to hoist it into place, while the second baronet smirked at their exertions.

Jem too felt galvanised, although reluctantly. Those stopped days, when leaving was impossible, had made him realise it was what he had to do. When he’d stood with Joseph at the edge of the wood, disjointed fragments of information had slotted themselves together in his brain; Mrs Gatley’s words— even as a little ’un he’d let himself out at night and wander —merging with what Mrs Wells had said about Davy being a regular little chatterbox at the time of the last coronation, a few months before Jack came to Coldwell. It suddenly struck Jem that he had been looking for answers in the wrong places, asking the wrong people, when the one person who could have helped him had been there in plain sight.

Until he wasn’t.

And so, he decided. He would wait until after Boxing Day, when their wages had been paid and the servants’ ball was over, and then he would go to Goddard and ask for a character. He would leave as soon as he could and find Davy.

In the meantime, he would try to speak to Kate one more time. She had said it was over, but he couldn’t leave without being sure. He had to tell her that he loved her, and once he’d heard her say she didn’t feel the same, he would move on.

After lunch on Christmas Eve, he and Thomas were sent up to the storage attics to find the box of glass decorations Sir Randolph’s mother had collected from Germany, to hang on the tree. Following his afternoon in the woods serving Sir Randolph’s shooting picnic, Thomas had started a head cold, and plodded disconsolately up the stairs ahead of Jem, trailing self-pity.

‘Mrs Furniss said they should be in the first room on the left’—he paused to blow his nose extravagantly—‘in a packing crate.’

The storage attics were on the other side of the house to the ones the servants slept in, though the layout was the same: a corridor with doors leading off both sides and one at the end. In the glory days of Coldwell there must have been enough servants to fill this half of the attics too. Curious, Jem walked to the end of the corridor and tried the door. It was unlocked, and led to another landing, disconcertingly similar to the one he was standing in, so it was like looking in a dingy mirror.

‘Back in them days this must have been the men’s side of the house and ours was the lasses, or t’other way round.’ Thomas sniffed. ‘So few of us now we can fit in one wing, with room to spare.’

Logically, Jem had known how close the female quarters were to theirs, but it was another thing seeing it like that. After Kate had removed her personal things from the room off the housekeeper’s parlour, it had felt like she was miles away from him, as far beyond his reach as the moon. It was a surprise to see the opposite was true. Only a few feet separated them.

A locked door.

‘Come on—it’s bloody freezing up here. Let’s find these blooming decorations and get downstairs.’

Thomas’s cold had made him tetchy. ‘Bloody hell,’ he grumbled, going into the first room at the top of the stairs. ‘There are loads of crates. They could be anywhere. Old Sir Henry never bothered with Christmas after his missis died so they’ll likely be buried at the back somewhere.’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll find them,’ Jem said absently, stopping to look out of the window on the landing.

The sun was already sinking, staining the sky pink and casting long blue shadows on the snow-covered park. Jem’s eyes raked the trees. He had taken every opportunity he could to look for Davy and had found no trace, but the new keeper had come to the kitchen door yesterday to report that the best part of a loaf and a wedge of cheese had gone missing from his cottage. Mrs Gatley took this as hard evidence that Davy had, as she predicted, found somewhere safe and warm and was fending for himself just fine.

Jem wished he shared her confidence.

‘Are you going to help or not?’ Thomas grumbled, sticking his head round the door. ‘What are you playing at?’

Jem turned away from the window. ‘Just looking. It’s been three days since Davy Wells went missing. No one seems bothered.’

Thomas shrugged irritably. ‘It’s not that. It’s just you’re the only one who thinks he’s missing. A law unto ’imself, is Davy. Now it’s stopped snowing he can make his way back to the village if he hasn’t already, or come to the kitchen door if he needs owt.’ He blew his nose, shoulders sagging. ‘God, I feel rotten. I ache all over. Never slept a wink last night.’

Jem, who had lain awake listening to his snoring, didn’t argue. He was glad to be swapping places with Joseph tonight and taking his turn in the silver cupboard. He nodded at a lumpy old chaise longue shoved against the wall, its faded upholstery nibbled by mice and spewing stuffing. ‘Sit down for a bit if you like. I’ll find the decorations.’

It didn’t take long, for all the fuss Thomas had made. They carried the wooden crate down to the entrance hall, where the fire had been lit in a futile attempt to warm the frozen air, and Lady Hyde was overseeing the arrangement of trailing ivy and branches of holly on the great marble mantelpiece and the console tables on either side of the door. The stepladders from the garden had been brought in, so the top section of the tree could be reached. While Lady Hyde busied herself unearthing delicate glass baubles from their nest of packing straw (making exclamations of delight over each one), she ordered Thomas up the ladders to hang them on the branches, apparently oblivious to his ostentatious suffering.

‘Dear God,’ Sir Randolph drawled, passing through on his way to the library.

‘I didn’t realise quite how large it was.’ Lady Hyde gave a shaky laugh. ‘But still, it’s here now and rather splendid, don’t you think?’

‘Splendid? It’s damned ridiculous. This is a country house, not some provincial ruddy town hall. What the hell d’you mean by getting Gatley to hack down a fine specimen tree from the park and bring it in here for some vulgar foreign decoration fad?’

Lady Hyde’s smile slipped, like a broken paper chain. Reaching up to pass Thomas a pink glass bauble she withdrew her hand too soon, and it fell to the floor, shattering in a silvery explosion of shards.

‘Oh!’

‘There,’ Sir Randolph said harshly. ‘A bloody fool’s mission to prettify a tree like that.’ He glared at Jem. ‘Well, go on then—fetch a brush! Quick about it!’

Jem went, hatred curdling in his stomach like something spoiled.

He was determined not to hurry. Downstairs it was the quiet hour of the afternoon when the maids were in the stillroom preparing the tea trays and Susan and the new girl had gone upstairs to snatch a few moments’ peace before starting on dinner. In the scullery he found the brush and pan, and—making sure no one was approaching—took out a torn square of paper from his pocket and the pencil stub they kept in the dresser drawer.

This was his only chance. He weighed the words carefully before writing them down, then dropped the paper into the Chinese vase. He was so preoccupied with the task that he didn’t notice Joseph standing in the doorway until he turned to leave.

Jem’s first reaction was one of irritation, but it was quickly replaced by guilt. In all his plans, he’d only considered Kate’s feelings, but his leaving would hit Joseph hard too. Jem ruffled Joseph’s hair (not so easy now he’d grown two inches) and said, as cheerfully as he could, ‘What’s up, Joe? Did you want me?’

Joseph ducked away, scowling.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ he muttered.

Christmas Eve was supposed to have been the start of Lady Hyde’s programme of festivities. If the snow hadn’t spoiled everything, the house would have been glowing with lamplight, fires burning in its guest rooms, the basement busy with visiting servants and everyone already fed up with hearing from Lady Etchingham’s maid how things were done at Whittam Park. There should have been carolers crossing the park at twilight to sing on the front steps as the family and guests gathered in the drawing room. But the crisp snow remained unspoiled, and the frozen landscape was blue and silent in the moonlight.

They pressed ahead half-heartedly, preparing to convey salmon vol-au-vents, lemon sorbet, stuffed roast partridge, and potatoes dauphinois up to the echoing dining room. Gatley had appeared with a bunch of mistletoe earlier, to hang in the servants’ hall ‘for a bit of festivity, like,’ but Susan had shrieked that it was unlucky to bring mistletoe in before New Year’s Eve and Eliza had snapped that it would take more than a bit of greenery to tempt her to kiss any of the Coldwell lads, thank you very much. (Looking at Thomas, with his red nose and streaming eyes, that was understandable.) Mrs Gatley, hurling parsley sprigs in the general direction of the soup, complained that the youth of today were a miserable lot and wouldn’t know fun if it stood in front of them waving a flag.

Peace and goodwill were in very short supply.

Kate would have liked to retreat to the housekeeper’s parlour, but Henderson, having dressed Sir Randolph for dinner, had ensconced himself in there with a bottle of claret, so she hovered listlessly in the kitchen. Jem appeared from the footmen’s wardrobe, dressed in his formal livery, which Lady Hyde had specifically requested ( scarlet cuffs and gold braid are simply made for Christmas…) . His hair was freshly slicked back and, catching the scent of lime shaving soap, Kate had to grip the edge of the table to steady herself against an avalanche of longing.

‘Excuse me, Mrs Furniss, but here’s the clothes brush you asked for.’

She looked at it, confused. She found it hard to remember things these days, but surely she would recall asking for a—

And then she realised; the code they had devised in the summer. She lifted her gaze to meet his and her heart stuttered as she took the brush from him.

‘Of course. Thank you.’

‘What d’you want a clothes brush for?’ Mrs Gatley demanded, sloshing juices over the crisped partridges in their roasting tin.

It was a good question.

‘Oh—my best coat, for church. I noticed some dried mud on the hem.’

‘I thought church was cancelled tomorrow, on account of Reverend Moore not being able to get through on the trap?’ Mrs Gatley bent to shove the birds into the oven, slamming the door shut with a clang. ‘He’d be daft to try it, with it being so icy. Or am I the last to be told what’s going on, as always?’

‘No. I mean, yes, it has been cancelled…’ Kate said blandly, not looking at Jem. ‘My coat needs cleaning, that’s all.’

Distraction came, mercifully, in the form of a volley of violent sneezes, echoing along the passage, followed by Mr Goddard’s outraged voice.

‘For pity’s sake, Thomas—what’s the matter with you?’

‘A cold, Mr Goddard, sir. A real stinker.’

‘You’re not fit to be seen. You’ll have to manage as best you can in the dining room—we can’t be a man down, but Jem will take over upstairs as soon as dinner is over. I won’t have you snivelling into Sir Randolph’s evening brandy.’

Jem’s eyes met Kate’s and skimmed upwards in silent exasperation. She moved swiftly past him, taking the clothes brush with her, and went straight to the scullery, where she took the Chinese vase down from the shelf, tucking the little fold of paper she found inside into her sleeve.

She couldn’t wait to read it, and she couldn’t risk being seen, so she went up the back stairs to her room and lit a candle with a shaking hand. His handwriting leapt off the page in the flickering flame.

I know I have no right to ask anything of you but there are things I need to say. If you unlock the dividing door between the attics, I’ll come to you tonight.

If the door is locked, I’ll know it’s too late, and I’ll understand.

If I’d known then what would happen, I would have put so much more in that note. I would have written it there—I love you—so at least through everything that came after you would know that was true. I would have left the present I’d bought you, and I wouldn’t still have it with me now—a reminder of everything that remained unfinished between us.

There’s a saying, isn’t there—ignorance is bliss. Perhaps it’s better not to know what lies ahead. There’s no blissful ignorance here. I’m so aware of last times—last sunrise, last mug of tea, last glimpse of the moon—in a way I wasn’t then. Even over the noise of the guns I can hear the sand running through the glass.

That’s why I have to write this. It’s now or never. There won’t be another chance.