Chapter Four
Will groaned and rested his head in his hands.
Amelie’s act of picking up his discarded drawing was presumptuous, but he had overreacted.
He found her difficult to read, which was not unusual for him.
Normally his instinct would be to pull away from any interaction, yet with Amelie he had the strange urge to engage with her.
It was this cottage, this unusual set up, that was to blame. He had known it would be difficult; that was why he had been so keen on Mrs Potter accompanying him. She would never have thought to over-step in such a manner.
Will shook his head; there was more to it than that.
Amelie was different from any woman he had known, either servant or noble.
Her manner was friendly, her personality warm and easy-going.
She actually seemed to want to speak to him, to engage him in conversation, and not just about household matters.
When he returned home from his days spent at the university, she was interested in what he had achieved.
At first he had thought it mere politeness, but now he realised it was more.
She didn’t just ask him how he fared, half-listening to the answer; she took a real interest in him and his work, remembering what he had told her the day before and building on it.
It was disconcerting to have someone so interested in him, rather than think about his power and influence.
Standing, he rolled his shoulders back a few times to try to release the tension, feeling the burn as his muscles resisted the movement.
Amelie baffled him, but they had months more living together.
He needed to make an effort to be polite, to understand that this was an unusual situation for her as well.
Making a decision, he hurried downstairs, arriving just in time to see Amelie finish serving his meal in the kitchen and picking up the plate to bring it through to the dining room.
The aroma that hit him as he walked into the room was sensational and he felt his stomach rumble as he looked at the dish.
‘That smells good,’ he murmured, sitting down as she placed the plate on the table.
‘It is chicken with a herb crust,’ Amelie said, turning to leave.
‘Amelie,’ he said, his voice catching in his throat. He did not often have to apologise and it felt hard to find the right words and tone. ‘Please forgive me for my reaction upstairs. It has been a long day, but that is no excuse for rudeness.’
Slowly she turned back to him, scrutinised his face and then nodded.
‘I understand,’ she said quietly.
He cleared his throat, feeling unsure of himself. ‘I wonder if you would care to join me for dinner?’
She balked at the suggestion, her eyes widening and her body swaying away from his.
Normally she prepared her own evening meal at the same time as his, but waited until he had finished and the plates cleared away before sitting down in the kitchen to eat.
Never before had he eaten with a servant, but these were extraordinary circumstances, and if he wanted the next few months go smoothly he was going to have to accept not everything here could be organised as if he were residing at his ancestral seat or in his London townhouse.
‘Join you?’
‘Yes, sit with me; there is plenty of room.’
‘Why?’
The question was blunt and Will found himself starting to doubt his plan.
‘We are living together in close quarters here in Grantchester and will be doing so for another few months. It is a small cottage, and we are thrown together more than I had anticipated. Is it unreasonable for me to want to know a little more about you?’
Amelie regarded him for a moment and then gave a little shrug.
‘I will fetch my plate.’
He waited in silence as she set a place for herself at the table and then brought her dinner through. Once she was seated, he took his first taste of the chicken and had to suppress a groan of pleasure.
‘This is very good,’ he said, motioning to the food. ‘Where did you learn to cook?’
‘My mother. She was a wonderful cook. She was French and told me that in France they respect meal times and their food much more than we do here in England. Every meal should be made with love, every ingredient chosen and considered carefully.’
‘She taught you to cook when you were a child?’
‘She did. We had a series of cooks who would prepare some of the meals, but often my mother would see what was served and roll her eyes, blaspheme in her native language and refuse to eat what was served. On so many occasions she stormed into the kitchen to reprimand the servants, only to find they were ready to leave because of her disdain for their food.’ Amelie allowed herself to get lost in the memory for a moment.
‘Forgive me for prying, Amelie, but you speak of cooks and servants…’ He trailed off, unsure how to phrase his question without causing offence.
A look of panic crossed her face and Will realised she had spoken without thinking.
‘You wish to know how someone who grew up with servants and cooks ended up taking a position as a housemaid in your household.’
He did not say anything. There was a sense of unease about her. She had placed her fork on the edge of her plate and wasn’t eating. Her back was straight, her shoulders held tensely and her hands were screwed up into tight fists on her lap.
‘I do not wish to cause you distress,’ he said softly. ‘If you don’t want to tell me, it will not change anything with your position, your employment. I am not so arrogant to think employing you gives me the right to every detail of your personal life and history.’
Amelie bit her lip and then picked up her fork, taking a bite of her meal as she considered.
‘My mother was the daughter of a French aristocrat. She was sent to England in the midst of the troubles in France to live with some distant relatives. Soon after arriving in England, she met my father. He was a member of the minor gentry, set to inherit a pretty manor house in Kent and live a comfortable existence.’
Will kept silent, aware if he made any comment, interrupted her flow at all, then she might stop entirely.
He had known there was something a little different about his housekeeper’s substitute.
She spoke with a refined accent, her grammar always perfectly on point.
Her posture could be the envy of all the debutantes in London and she found it hard to bite her tongue if she thought something needed saying.
Yet she worked just as hard as any of the other servants in his service and not once had he heard her grumble about the intensity of the physical labour.
‘My father was never very good with money, but we always seemed to muddle by. Every so often my mother sold one of her exquisite jewels and it provided for us for another year.’
Amelie glanced at him and he saw the sadness in her eyes. She might be willing to give him this much of her story, but he could see there was so much more being left unsaid.
‘They had many flaws, but my parents undeniably loved each other with a burning intensity. Then my mother died and my father fell apart.’ She took in a shuddering breath and he thought she might end the story there, but after a moment she continued.
‘Never the most sensible person, my father made a few bad decisions in the wake of my mother’s death and suddenly there were no more jewels to sell.
Our furniture went first, then the land around the house, but even with selling everything there was not enough to cover the debt. ’
‘You lost your home.’
‘Yes. I lost my home, my father…all my plans for the future.’ She closed her eyes and breathed deeply for a moment. ‘It was not a good time, but at least I am an adult. I have two sisters and a brother, young enough that they do not remember the good times, only the uncertainty and the worry.’
‘The children lodged with the widow in London.’
‘Yes.’ She sighed, giving a self-deprecating smile.
‘For all the skills society wants young ladies to master, not many of them are useful in the real world. I can play piano and paint beautiful watercolours, but none of that provides me with an income that would allow me to support my brother and sisters.’
‘So you found a position as a housemaid.’
‘I am not afraid of a little hard work,’ she said, sitting a little straighter.
Will regarded her for a moment, astonished by what he had learned. Amelie was not a young lady of the aristocracy, but it was not unfeasible to think that their lives might have crossed one day in very different circumstances.
‘I am sorry this has happened to you.’
She gave a forced smile. ‘My mother was a great believer in fate. She said that sometimes we have to endure the bad times so that we have the opportunity to walk along the path that will lead us to the good. I am trying to share her philosophy, and much of the time it works. When we lost everything, I was engaged to be married to a man from the next village. As soon as our troubles became apparent, he vanished, determined not to be tarnished by our poor fortune. I thank my guardian angel every day that I did not end up married to such a man.’
‘This is a very different life to the one you expected.’ Will was not sure if he would have had the same pragmatic approach as Amelie and he felt the admiration bloom inside him.
He worked hard, but his was not manual labour.
What was more, it was for the life he had been raised to lead.
Ever since he’d been a small child he had been raised to step into the role of Duke of Ashmead; he had known since he was very young exactly what his responsibilities would be.
He wasn’t sure how well he would have coped if his current life had been pulled away from him entirely and he’d been forced to forge another path.
‘It is.’ She looked down, focussing on her meal for a moment as he considered everything she had said.
‘Did you not have other relatives to help you? To at least give your family a home?’
‘My mother’s family were killed or scattered in the unrest in France years ago.
My father did not have brothers or sisters and his parents are long dead.
There are a few distant second cousins dotted around the country, but my father had wheedled and cajoled money out of them one too many times to allow any generosity at our time of greatest need. ’
‘What happened to your father?’
Amelie froze, her fork halfway to her mouth. After a moment she set the cutlery down and dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. ‘I should see to pudding. I do not want the crumble to burn.’
There was the invisible line—the part of the story she could not or would not divulge.
Perhaps her father had died from the shame of destroying his family or, even worse, had felt the urge to take his own life.
It was not his business and he did not wish to upset Amelie, even though his curiosity was thoroughly piqued when it came to her.
He silently finished his meal, breathing in the delicious scent wafting from the kitchen as Amelie took a crumble from the oven and placed it on the side to cool.
When she returned, she looked much more composed, but dived in with a question about his work, signalling her time for sharing stories about her past was over.
Will was happy to talk about the book he was writing, the project that had been vying for his attention since his undergraduate days at Cambridge.
Perhaps one day Amelie might tell him a little more of her life, but until that time he would respect her desire for privacy.