Chapter 5
Chapter Five
OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, HAYDON AND JACK were introduced to the duties expected of them as members of their new household. Haydon gained an appreciation for the seemingly endless tasks that had previously been the exclusive domain of his servants.
Jack plotted ways to escape his chores.
When Genevieve had been forced to fend for herself and a newborn infant at the tender age of eighteen, she had been handicapped by her lack of knowledge about even the most basic of household tasks.
There had always been a cook, a housemaid, a butler, a valet, and a gardener to tend to every detail of running her father’s home, enabling Genevieve to pursue her studies and her interest in painting.
But after her father’s death and Charles’s subsequent rejection of her, she had been left entirely without an income, which meant that she could no longer afford the luxury of employing servants.
It was then that she realized how very limited her education had been.
She could well remember those exhausting early days as she struggled to look after little Jamie by herself.
The kitchen was shrouded in a perpetual smoky haze, a combination of her inability to make a decent fire and the charred remains of all the food that she had put on the stove or griddle and subsequently abandoned as she ran to soothe Jamie’s cries.
Laundry sat in great heaps around the house in various stages of soaking, washing, drying and folding; silky gray layers of dust accumulated on the carpets, furniture and artwork; and lamps were burned until their chimneys were black and the oil had run dry.
Precious food was improperly preserved and had to be thrown out, and the meals that she did manage to prepare for herself were either boiled to a pulp or burned beyond edibility.
There never seemed to be enough hours in the day to tend to Jamie and see to the hundreds of other tasks that needed to be done, and even if there had been more time, Genevieve was simply too weary to get to them.
She would fall into bed each night on the verge of tears, not knowing where she was going to find the strength to get up and face another morning.
Then she would turn toward Jamie’s cradle and study his beautiful little face as he slept, his tiny, perfect hand fisted beside the chubby softness of his cheek.
In those moments nothing seemed to matter except the steady, shallow whisper of his breath and the certainty that despite the dust and disorder around her, Jamie was clean and happy and completely loved.
She would trace her fingers down the petal velvet of his skin, resolving to be stronger and more capable the next day.
On the morning Eunice first arrived from the jail, the elderly woman had clucked her tongue sympathetically as her gaze swept over the disarray.
She immediately donned an apron and set to work organizing the kitchen, baking bread and fixing a simple but nourishing stew.
At first she had tried to banish Genevieve to the drawing room, saying she needed only to look after “the wee lamb,” as Eunice called Jamie, assuring her new mistress that she would take care of everything else herself.
While it was extremely tempting to be coddled and waited upon once more, Genevieve had refused.
Self-sufficiency, she believed, was going to be key to her survival if she was going to make a happy life for herself and Jamie.
And so she had created a little play area for her brother a safe distance from the hearth and the stove, and set about learning from dear old Eunice all she could about cooking, cleaning and otherwise managing a household.
This belief in the absolute necessity of self-sufficiency now extended to her wards, all of whom had come to her with scant knowledge of what it was to live in a household where one was clean and properly nourished.
In addition to their lessons in history, reading, writing, science, and arithmetic, her brood was required to spend part of each day performing household chores.
Although Oliver, Doreen, and Eunice would have much preferred to have the children out of the way so they could see to the tasks themselves, Genevieve was insistent that the youngsters be their apprentices.
It was her firm conviction that children should learn to appreciate the hard work and knowledge that was required for maintaining a pleasant, orderly household.
Beyond that, she knew they would need these skills when they eventually left her home.
With neither the benefit of a prestigious pedigree nor abundant funds, each child was going to have to rely upon his or her own resources to make their place in the world, and to keep their own homes clean and well-maintained.
Even if they were one day fortunate enough to employ servants, Genevieve believed they should still have a thorough understanding of and regard for the multitude of vital tasks that servants performed.
“There now,” said Oliver, watching as Grace and Annabelle fished acrid lengths of wick out of a bowl of strong vinegar.
“Now ye leave them to dry well, and ye’ll find the lamps will scarcely smoke at all the next time we burn them.
In the meantime, let’s see ye take those funnels and fill the founts with oil, and mind ye dinna spill any. ”
“This smells horrid,” complained Annabelle, laying a vinegar-drenched wick down upon a sheet of yellowed newspaper.
“It can’t be as bad as this awful stuff.” Simon wrinkled his nose as he poked at a creamy paste in a pot over the stove.
“What is it?” asked Grace.
“’Tis a mixture for removing scorches from linen,” Doreen said, pouring a half pint of vinegar into the pot. “And if ye’d been mindin’ yer business instead of blatherin’ on to Charlotte while ye was ironing that tablecloth, we’d be havin’ no need of it.”
Simon sneezed as the acidic fumes tickled his nose. “I think this smell is dissolving my brain.”
Jamie looked up from rubbing a blackened flatiron with a gritty polish of bees wax, salt, and powdered bath brick. His face, hands, shirt, and hair were completely covered with greasy soot, making him look like a chimney sweep. “What’s in it?”
“The juice of two onions, a half ounce of white soap, two ounces of fuller’s earth, and a half pint of vinegar,” replied Doreen. “We’ll boil it well, then let it cool before we spread it over the scorch mark on the cloth, and it should take it out nicely.”
“Either that or it will burn a hole right through the cloth,” Haydon predicted dryly. “All right, Charlotte, you hold the teapot steady while I fix this handle on it.”
Charlotte obligingly pinned the heavy china piece firmly against the table. “Like this?”
“Perfect.” His brow creased with concentration, Haydon carefully placed the final fragment of the broken pot into position.
“There now, I think that’s done it,” he said, feeling enormously satisfied with himself.
“You may go back to using this handsome teapot, Eunice, confident in the knowledge that it has been expertly repaired by both Charlotte and myself.” He lifted it up to show her.
The handle slipped off and the delicate pot smashed to pieces on the floor, leaving Haydon staring in bewilderment at the scattered remnants of his work.
The children burst into laughter.
“Oh my,” said Charlotte, trying to contain her smile in light of Haydon’s evident disappointment. “I’m so sorry, Lord Redmond. I don’t think it was quite ready to be lifted.”
“Well, lad, ’twas a fine job ye did, make no mistake,” Oliver assured him, shaking his head with amusement. “Next time, ye might consider lettin’ the paste cure a wee bit afore ye start waving things about.”
Haydon frowned. “It had to cure?” He gave Eunice a sheepish look. “I’m sorry, Eunice.”
“Now, don’t be fretting over it,” soothed Eunice.
“Bad mistakes provide a man wi’ quick experience,” she declared philosophically, handing him a broom and a dustpan.
“If we cried over every wee thing that got broken in this house, we’d be sailin’ a ship up the stairs!
Since ye’re finished with that now, Charlotte, would ye mind creamin’ that butter over there?
” She pointed a floury finger at a bowl.
“Not at all.” Charlotte gave Haydon a gentle smile of encouragement before limping to the other side of the table and seating herself in front of the bowl.
Jack emerged from the cellar bearing a pitcher of milk and a bowl of eggs. He set them on the table, then surreptitiously tried to slink out of the crowded kitchen.
“Ye can take them over to Charlotte, Jack,” directed Eunice, not bothering to glance at him as she mixed some marmalade and lemon juice together.
“Crack two eggs into the bowl, then after Charlotte has beaten them in, ye can add the flour and some milk—not too much, mind, just enough to make the pudding nice and soft.”
Jack scowled. Earlier that morning Oliver had set him to work chopping wood, which was the one task he had performed so far that he actually enjoyed.
He liked the solid weight of the ax in his hands, the hard flex of his muscles as he swung it in a silvery arc over his head, and the satisfying crack a log made as it split open, filling the air with the loamy fragrance of woods and earth.
The day before he had even helped Oliver clean and grease the carriage, and that had been a decent enough job, except for the fact that Genevieve had sent him to scrub his hands three times afterward before she deemed his fingernails acceptable.
But preparing food was woman’s work, to his way of thinking, and he certainly was not about to stand around and crack goddamn eggs into any bloody bowl.
His body rigid with defiance and his hands clenched into fists, he opened his mouth to set Eunice straight on that.