Chapter 29
Chapter 29
It was the least merry of Christmases at Coldwell.
Upstairs in the marble hallway the branches of the great pine tree drooped, its needles falling, its candles unlit. Lady Hyde usually had breakfast on a tray in her room, but Sir Randolph stayed in bed until past midday too, throwing the day’s routine into disarray. Mr Henderson had Susan mix up a concoction of raw eggs and Worcestershire sauce to take up to him, while Mr Goddard came down from the library carrying a tray of decanters to be refilled, several smeared glasses, and an empty port bottle.
‘I don’t know why I bother,’ Mrs Gatley grumbled, sticking a fork (with rather too much relish) into the goose that was drying out in the roasting pan. ‘All this work, and I may as well serve up pease pudding and tapioca for all anyone notices.’
The shock of Jem’s sudden departure was felt by everybody. It was like, Eliza thought, when a crow swooped down on a brood of ducklings and snatched one: the fluster of stunned confusion that followed amongst the others. For a long time, she’d felt cut off from her fellow maids, but that morning they all huddled in the scullery, where Susan and Doris were working their way through a mountain of potatoes, carrots, and parsnips, to speculate about what had happened.
A girl somewhere, Abigail reckoned; a wife, even, whom he’d sneaked off to spend Christmas with. Susan fretted that he’d taken it upon himself to go out and look for Davy Wells and met an accident—fallen through the ice on the lake or something. Thomas, slipping in from the butler’s pantry with the silver fruit plate he was polishing, put paid to that theory by announcing that Jem had taken all his things, and reported that Stanley Twigg said you could see his footsteps in the snow, cutting across the park in the direction of the road.
Eliza said nothing.
There was a time, not so long ago, that she would have been bursting to add her two penn’orth. To produce, like a conjuror drawing a rabbit from a hat, the identity of Jem’s actual romantic interest, which was far more jaw-droppingly scandalous than a common or garden spouse (even a hidden one).
But a lot had changed since that time.
She had a bit more respect for secrets now, and those who kept them. She found herself in the strange position of being more aligned with Mrs Furniss these days than with Abigail, Susan, and Drippy Doris. It occurred to her that Mrs Furniss might know more about Jem’s departure than she was letting on, and it might be part of some plan, cooked up between them, so they could get away from Coldwell and make a new start together.
It was going dark outside by the time they had cleared the barely picked-at goose from the dining room, scraped untouched sweetbreads, game chips, and cod in oyster sauce into the pigswill, and sat down to their own Christmas dinner in the servants’ hall. In spite of the room being more crowded than usual, and the space around the table a squeeze of elbows, shoulders, and knees, Jem’s absence was as noticeable as if they’d left a seat empty for him. At the end of the table, Mrs Furniss looked like she’d been turned to marble. In the low lamplight she was white as a sheet, her skin stretched tight over her cheekbones, her lips bloodless.
So there was no plan, Eliza thought. The housekeeper was as much in the dark about Jem’s departure as the rest of them.
The outdoor servants kept the conversation going, heaping praise on Mrs Gatley for the succulence of the birds she had roasted (chickens for the staff) and the crispness of her potatoes, making up for the personal slight she’d felt from upstairs. But once the pudding had been brought in, and ceremonially set alight in its pool of brandy by Mr Goddard, Henderson spoke up.
‘You’ll have noticed by now that we are one footman down. I’m sure you’re all wondering why.’
‘Didn’t like to ask,’ muttered George Twigg.
‘I see no reason why it should be a secret. Jem Arden was a habitual liar and a convicted criminal. I discovered him last night, two hours before dawn, in the housekeeper’s parlour with the key to the library. He’d attended to Sir Randolph during the evening and had seen him taking Lady Hyde’s Christmas gift—a diamond choker—out of the safe. He must have suspected Sir Randolph would leave it out to give to her this morning.’
Eliza felt the babe inside her lurch, as if it too felt the shock. A gasp went around the table. One of the Twiggs swore quietly, without reprimand. Mrs Gatley shook her head, chins wobbling, and Miss Dunn’s fingers flew to the temperance badge on her chest, touching it like a talisman. Joseph half stood, his eyes like holes in the snow outside, mouth opening as if to argue.
Eliza looked at Mrs Furniss. In that moment, she reminded her of a stone angel in the churchyard back home, head bent, face carved into an expression of exquisite suffering. Her eyes flickered closed, and Eliza, seeing what it cost her to bear the news of this betrayal in silence, looked away.
Around the table, the initial impact of Henderson’s bombshell was wearing off. Spoons were taken up and the clatter of cutlery resumed.
‘I always thought there was something shifty about him,’ Stanley Twigg said. ‘His face never quite fit, if you ask me.’
‘Which no one did,’ snapped Thomas.
‘Well, I never saw it,’ Susan said tearfully. ‘I’ve got an instinct when it comes to reading a person’s character, and I never suspected a thing.’
‘I’m afraid that says more about your instinct than Mr Arden’s character,’ Henderson drawled. ‘I imagine the judge who sentenced him to six months in Norwich Gaol with hard labour was going on his instinct too… and the evidence of four silver serving spoons, stolen from Ward Abbey and found in Arden’s room. Of course, the young housemaid who let him into the house and fell for his charm and that handsome face probably felt she had an instinct for character too. Who can blame her? He was a very plausible fellow.’
Mrs Furniss pressed her napkin to her mouth and kept it there.
‘I had my suspicions about him too,’ Henderson went on. ‘Which was why I did a little research… asked a few questions. Ward Abbey may be a long way from Coldwell, but it’s one of Lord Halewood’s properties. Sir Randolph is a good friend of Viscount Frensham, Lord Halewood’s eldest son, so I am well acquainted with his valet. Arden would have perhaps been wise to change his name on his release from prison.’
‘How?’
Everyone looked round in surprise. You tended to forget Miss Dunn was there, since she hardly ever troubled herself to speak. Her tone was almost accusing, and she was staring at Henderson with a mixture of challenge and dislike.
‘How did he get the key to the library?’
Henderson, who was about to lift a spoonful of plum pudding to his mouth, paused. ‘My dear Miss Dunn, a fellow like that’—his eyes slid along the table, towards Mrs Furniss—‘will always find a way.’
Returning his gaze to the bowl in front of him, he frowned, then carefully extracted something from his pudding. ‘Ah, the sixpence…’ He held it aloft. ‘It seems I’m the one fortune has favoured.’
As bloody always, thought Eliza bitterly.
The bothy was in an advanced state of dereliction, its doorway a gaping hole of tumbled stone beneath a tilting lintel, its roof a tattered patchwork of slipped slates and broken rafters. Through a hole above the gable, Jem could see a torn scrap of indigo sky, pinned with a single star.
The moors were dotted with structures like this, built at intervals along the ancient packhorse trails, their crumbling ruins used these days by sheep to shelter in. This one had the remnants of a fireplace, in which Jem had been able to get a small blaze going, using one of his precious matches and dried leaves from the floor, along with an old bird’s nest. A person could easily perish out on the exposed moorland in weather like this (perhaps that was what Henderson had hoped), so he was glad of the meagre fire and the sheltering walls, despite the reek of sheep.
He had managed to sleep for a few hours, once dawn had unfurled its pink streamers across the sky. Huddled into his jacket, wearing all the clothes he had, it seemed he had slept the short day away and woke to the sky drained of light, the star hovering above the broken-down barn. The symbolism wasn’t lost on him on that Christmas night, though he had never been able to muster much in the way of faith. If anything, his current predicament—frozen, aching, hungry—made him less inclined to believe. Surely no labouring woman or her newborn would survive conditions like this? Maybe it was a good deal warmer in Bethlehem.
He crouched by the smouldering fire and blew on his hands. It was only for a few more hours. Just before first light he would head back to Coldwell and find shelter in the park, close to the church. With any luck, they would think he was far away by now, and not coming back, and the snow would have melted enough for his footsteps to be lost.
He wondered if Kate had got his note. If, in all the commotion around his departure (and he could only begin to imagine that ), she had thought to look in the Chinese vase, and knew that whatever Henderson said, he hadn’t abandoned her; that he would be waiting for her in the church at three o’clock on Boxing Day. Only a few more hours . By this time tomorrow, he would have had a chance to see her and explain and—please God—persuade her to go with him. Or have arranged for her to join him very soon.
Please God.
Staring up at the distant star he mouthed the words, so that they formed themselves into wisps of white breath against the deepening blue.
It was funny how the most cynical nonbeliever could muster a flicker of faith if he was desperate enough.
I will get through this.
Kate repeated the words inside her head as she went through the motions of overseeing the clearing up after Christmas dinner.
It won’t always feel this bad.
But on that dark afternoon in the dying of the year, it was hard to imagine a time when she would be happy again, or even anything approaching content. The future seemed as dreary as the December day. A restless despair pulsed inside her. She wanted to go upstairs to the foot men’s attic and search Jem’s room for a clue, or any trace of him left behind. She wanted to leave the oppressive house and go out into the fading light to follow his footsteps for as far as they would lead her. She wanted to stand on the top of the hill and scream out her rage until her lungs were scoured out, or fling herself onto her bed, burying her face in sheets that might yet bear some faint scent of his skin.
But she could do none of those things. And so, she moved mechanically through the familiar tasks, like a tinplate automaton.
When she was collecting the red ironstone serving dishes from the scullery to put away for another year, she remembered the Chinese vase.
She didn’t care that Susan and Doris were standing at the sink, elbows-deep in greasy water, or that Eliza and Abigail were whisking in and out, still bringing in dirty dishes from the servants’ hall. Now that she had thought of it, she couldn’t wait until the scullery was empty to see if Jem had left a message—some word of reassurance that Henderson was lying.
Seizing the vase, she thrust her hand into it, turning it upside down and shaking it.
There was nothing there.
‘Something wrong, Mrs Furniss?’
Susan’s abrupt question made her jump. The vase slipped through her fingers and shattered on the tiled floor.
Joseph was coming out of the housekeeper’s parlour as she took the ironstone china back. He held the door open for her but kept his head down and didn’t meet her eye as she muttered a thank-you. She was unsurprised to find Henderson in there (in fact, she should really stop thinking of it as the housekeeper’s parlour, since it clearly wasn’t her territory at all anymore). Breathing in the smell of hair oil, she had to force herself not to recoil and retreat.
She had to face him sometime.
Except, facing him was something she couldn’t bring herself to do. If she had to look at him directly, she wasn’t sure that she could keep it in—the loathing and contempt, the blame —and she was afraid of what she might say. But even without looking, she was aware of him, reclining in the velvet armchair where she used to drink tea in the quiet afternoons, his feet up on the coal box, his newspaper raised. Without thinking, her hand went to the chains at her waist, reaching for her keys. She remembered that they weren’t there as his laconic voice came from behind the newspaper.
‘You’ll be needing these, I daresay.’
The newspaper was lowered. He held out his hand, the ring containing her keys suspended from a soft white finger.
Hatred burned in her gullet, like something hot, swallowed too quickly. Reluctantly she went towards him, half expecting him to snatch the keys away as she reached for them. The fact that he didn’t was somehow unsettling.
‘You didn’t know, did you?’ Uncrossing his legs, he set the newspaper aside. ‘That he had form for this sort of thing? That he’d spent time in prison?’
She was glad to turn away from him and busy herself with unlocking the china cupboard, lifting out the Rockingham serving plates to put the servants’ hall ironstone beneath it.
‘None of us did.’
Her throat felt like it was filled with gravel. Behind her, she heard him sigh.
‘My dear Mrs Furniss… you don’t have to pretend with me. It’s rather pointless trying to maintain the fiction that there was nothing between you. I assumed he would have told you about his criminal past—if only to paint himself as an innocent man, wrongly convicted. When I began to suspect he wasn’t quite the model servant he claimed to be, I feared he might have charmed you into joining his little deception… I even wondered if you’d given your keys into his hand yourself. But I see now that he tricked you, along with everyone else.’ Another little sigh. ‘I’m sorry.’
Kate’s eyes were hot with the tears she couldn’t shed. This… kindness was disorientating and disturbing. A trick, she guessed, to compromise her, or trap her into some sort of confession.
‘Save your sympathy,’ she said coldly. ‘I don’t need it.’
She shut the cupboard and locked it. As she turned towards the door, Henderson stood up, making her stiffen with alarm. However, he made no move to block her way. His movements were slow and deliberately casual as he slid his hands into his pockets and stood in front of the fire’s glow.
‘My offer still stands, you know, in spite of this… unfortunate lapse of judgement.’
‘Offer?’
‘I know what it is to be given a second chance. I understand—perhaps more than you realise. A servant’s life can be a lonely one, especially for those of us above the rabble of the lower ranks, but it doesn’t have to be like that. An alliance could benefit us both. I could offer you protection, respectability, and you could—’
Oh God, was he talking about marriage? Was that the offer ?
She’d had an uneasy suspicion of what he was hinting at when he’d spoken of an alliance back in the summer. Now he was talking about a united front… a powerful team … though his words sounded distorted, as if she had slipped underwater. The room tilted a little, as if she were in the cabin of an old galleon, pitching on rough seas. She groped behind her and found the handle of the linen cupboard to hold on to.
‘I think we could come to an arrangement that would suit us both, don’t you, Mrs Furniss?’ The silkiness of his tone filled her with queasy dread, and he started to advance towards her, with the predatory menace of a cat closing in on a bird. ‘Especially if—’
The door opened, stopping him quite literally in his tracks.
Miss Dunn came in, looking dismissively at Henderson before turning her attention to Kate.
‘I’ve made Lady Hyde some chamomile tea and there’s some left over, if you want it. I know you weren’t feeling too well, and I always find it works wonders for a headache.’
Kate hadn’t said anything of the sort, though she certainly wasn’t going to argue. The thank-you she mumbled as she walked stiffly to the door was wholly inadequate to convey her gratitude.
She didn’t look at Henderson. She didn’t have to. She could just imagine the flinty fury on his face at being thwarted like that—and by Miss Dunn, of all people: mousy, colourless, female . Of course, it wasn’t over. As she wearily went up the back stairs to her room, she knew she would have to deal with him sometime, and make it quite clear that hell would freeze over before she would make any kind of alliance with him. Though she supposed she ought to say it more neutrally than that.
But she was glad not to have to think about it now, when it felt like something inside her was about to snap and the grief and bewilderment and rage were rising in her chest, threatening to choke her. Inside her room she sat on the edge of the bed and unclipped her chatelaine, letting it slither to the floor. Then she lay down, tucking her feet—shoes still on—under her, clutching at the sheet that still smelled of their mingled bodies, laying her cheek on the pillow where Jem’s head had rested only a few hours earlier and a whole lifetime ago.
And she cried.
I know he must have told you that I used you. That it was all a pretence and I never felt anything for you. I wish I’d done enough to make you certain that wasn’t true.
I didn’t use you, Kate, you have to believe that. I fell in love with you, and though the time we had together only amounts to a few snatched, secret hours, they were the best of my life. They made me believe that happiness was a possibility. They gave me hope. I never pretended any of it—every moment was real.
I don’t know if that makes any difference though, because what I did in the end was even worse.