Chapter 17
“Miss, you should wake up,” Lucy said softly.
Caroline rolled over, frowning. Typically, Lucy didn’t wake her because she was an early riser.
By the time Lucy entered with her breakfast, she would have wiped the sleep from her eyes and shaken off all the grogginess from waking up.
She froze. There was no sunshine dancing across her face or fluffy pillow beneath her head. Her eyes snapped open.
She wasn’t in her room. This was Valeria’s room. And Lucy was there.
“Lucy, what are you doing here?”
“I’m attending to Lady Valeria, as you asked. I always see to her before going to you.”
Valeria slept beside her, which meant it was sometime after dawn, so Caroline was on her own, her brain scrambled for a decent excuse as to why she was in another woman’s bed. At least they were both clothed.
“What am I doing here?”
Lucy paused for a long while. “I’m not sure. I expect only you would know such a thing. Or Lady Valeria.”
“But she’s asleep,” Caroline said, cringing at how absolutely daft she sounded, but she couldn’t think of anything better to say.
“It was good of you to come in and visit your friend last night. I know she gets lonely being the only one awake, and you two were gossiping until late into the night when you both fell asleep.”
Oh, Lucy was good at this. She nodded, grateful for the lifeline her maid had thrown to her. “Yes, but now I can go back to my room and continue with my day as if nothing happened.”
Lucy held out her hand and helped her from the bed.
Caroline desperately wanted to look behind her to see Valeria one last time.
To see if she fell asleep facing her, or had an arm stretched out, or to touch her one final time before she started her day, but she couldn’t do any of those things with Lucy there.
Her breakfast tasted of nothing as she woodenly ate while waiting for Lucy’s questions to start, but they never came. Instead, her maid chattered on about her usual topics of town gossip and who would host the next ball and whether or not the Fosters served cheap brandy when they hosted last.
“Mrs. Thomas said she dropped some mail off last night; have you seen it?”
“No.”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “You can never tell her I said this, but she leaves things in the worst places,” she said as she went to the bedroom and plucked an envelope from the nightstand. “Really, she will just put things anywhere and expect us to understand her reasoning. Here.”
“Thank you,” she said, taking the letter from Lucy, but she still didn’t dare to look her in the eye. Even though she had proved herself to be a good, discretionary maid.
Edgar’s loopy handwriting adorned the front of the letter and—as guilty as it made her feel—she felt a stab of resentment that he was contacting her now.
He sent her another useless letter, and it made her want to scream.
He wrote of how much he missed her and how he couldn’t wait until their souls were fused after they were wed.
They were pretty words that she never expected to spill from him.
Any other woman would cherish the words on the page, but she wished her practical fiancé would return.
What she wanted to know was when he would come home. If this trip was successful enough for him to be made a partner at the firm. If he would ever have to go on a business trip like this again. As unromantic as it was, she didn’t care if he “only saw the sky when he thought of her blue eyes.”
“Is the letter that bad?”
“What?” She asked, looking up at Lucy, who looked down at her with sympathy.
“You’re glaring at the letter awfully hard. Does Mr. Andrews have bad news for you then?”
“Oh.” She unclenched her hand and smoothed out the stark white stationery she had crumpled. “It’s nothing bad; I only wished to hear when he will return, but he hasn’t included that in his letter.”
Lucy shook her head. “All this after he promised he would only be gone a few weeks at most. Really, what more can he expect from you?”
Mrs. Thomas entered her room, which meant she was saved from responding to Lucy. The housekeeper wore her usual stern expression, but her eyes were pulled a bit tighter than usual.
“Miss Blythe, I’m sorry to interrupt your breakfast, but more bricks have fallen through the hearth.”
Caroline swallowed. “Was anyone hurt?”
“No, luckily Cook had finished baking bread for the day, but he isn’t sure the hearth will be of much use for cooking.”
“Why not? Does falling bricks mean you can’t build a fire in there anymore?” Lucy asked.
“The smoke will get trapped in the house, and we could asphyxiate,” Caroline said, scrubbing her face in her hands.
This was what she feared. It’s why she had contacted Mr. Hall in her desperation even though she knew he wasn’t the most honest businessman.
“Besides, the fire won’t heat correctly with too much outside air. We were already taking chances before.”
“Oh,” Lucy said. “I could ask my brother to come take a look at it. I’m sure he could fix it.”
“He’s a stonemason; he can’t fix our chimney.”
“I’m sure that’s not terribly different than working with brick,” Mrs. Thomas said.
Caroline sighed. If she said yes to Lucy, she would drag him away from work that paid well.
Undoubtedly better than she could pay. He was a nice man who had done work for her family before and would likely say yes to this job even if Lucy didn’t browbeat him into it.
He likely knew how dire her family’s finances were and would undercharge her, both because he knew what she was good for and because she was Lucy’s employer and he would think she expected such a discount.
He would have to buy tools and supplies he would never have to use on another job, all while wasting so many other days where he could be getting paid his full rate.
Not only did he have a young family to support, but he also helped with Lucy and her mother so they didn’t lose their home.
She couldn’t let him sacrifice for her.
“No, we’ll find someone else.”
“Really, I’m sure—”
“I said no, Lucy.”
Her voice was hard enough that her maid flinched and she felt bad, but didn’t back down. She would find a way out of this mess. She always did.
* * *
“You wouldn’t know how to fix this, would you?”
Cook raised an eyebrow at Caroline, and she snorted. It had been a silly question, but she always found desperation incited the best creativity.
“I don’t care for him, but you could call Mr. Hall back. Between all of us, we could scrounge up enough money to pay him,” Cook rumbled.
“Mr. Hall is dead.”
She had never once wanted anyone dead, but she was grateful she didn’t have to live through her servants helping her to pay for house repairs.
Cook huffed before turning his attention back to the hearth.
Mrs. Thomas had undersold the situation.
So many bricks were strewn about she suspected the entire chimney crumbled.
The bread that had been cooling on the lip of the hearth was covered in soot and rubble.
There would be no more bread for the foreseeable future.
“We can use the range for cooking. It will be inconvenient, and we won’t be able to have bread, but it will be fine until we find another bricklayer.”
“We’re out of coal.”
Once they were out of the dead of winter, it was one of the unnecessary expenses she had cut.
“Wood works just fine.”
Caroline sighed. It would take a lot of wood for cooking, and now they would also need to be burning more wood to heat the house.
It was far more money than she had budgeted to last until she married Edgar; she needed to sit down at her desk to work out the sums. It was more than her head and fingers could handle.
“It’ll be fine, Miss Blythe,” Cook said. “Keep your chin up. I’ve sent the stable boys out to chop wood, and when they’re finished, we’ll clean up this mess. Your parents will be back soon.”
She wanted to snap that she would still be the one dealing with this, but he didn’t deserve her anger.
She needed to write Edgar for money. It was humiliating that he was writing her nonsensical love letters and she was resorting to begging for scraps, but her need to take care of her home outweighed her pride.
It didn’t take long for the day to get away from her. She had letters to write, books to balance, and lace that wasn’t going to weave itself.
“Cara, what did I tell you about smelling like that?”
She popped her head up to see Valeria standing before her with a hand covering her mouth.
“If my smell bothers you so much, go elsewhere.” She was not in the mood to play one of Valeria’s games.
“I could smell your distress before I even woke up. Tell me what has you so vexed?”
She wanted to dismiss Valeria so she could stew alone in her misery, but she could tell by the hard expression on her face that she wouldn’t accept being sent away, so she placed her lace aside and sighed.
“Everything’s wrong! I have no money, and my house is falling apart, and it feels like if I don’t do it, then it won’t get done and I’m so, so tired. ”
It was more than she ever meant to reveal, but it felt good to unload even a fraction of what she carried. To Valeria’s credit, she looked amused as she sat in the chair across from her. At least she no longer complained about her smell.
“That seems to be very difficult, my little Atlas. What in your house failed today?”
“The chimney in the kitchen hearth crumbled, so we can’t use it anymore.
So no more bread, and that was the primary way the house was being heated.
It was going to be difficult enough to get a bricklayer out here to do repairs, but now that it’s fully collapsed, I fear it will be so much more expensive. ”
“Can’t you find another bricklayer? I’m sure the craft didn’t die with Mr. Hall.”
Caroline glared. “Not one that I can afford! Lucy told me her brother could do it, but I had to stop her before it got too far because it was an awful idea.”
Valeria frowned. “Why? It sounds to me that your problem is solved.”