Chapter Twenty #3
In St Peter’s Church, the Castle servants always sat in the gallery, from which one could see down into the nave, and in particular that part of the nave where the estate workers and tenants had their pews.
Rose always checked that Michael Woodrow was there, without admitting it to herself.
He always was – until the Sunday came when he wasn’t, and she felt a tug of…
Was it anxiety? Or just curiosity? A man might have many reasons for not attending service, but when he was so regular, she wanted at least to know why.
She pushed her way out ahead of the slow-shuffling crowd to clatter down the wooden stairs and catch the Hundon’s cowman, Higgins, before he could disappear.
Higgins looked alarmed as Rose caught his arm, and she realised she was wearing one of her most fearsome scowls.
She smoothed it away and said, ‘I see Mr Woodrow wasn’t there this morning. Is he all right?’
‘I don’t rightly know, miss,’ Higgins said. ‘I reckon he might’ve took ill. He look pr’t poorly yesterday when he come out to give me my orders. I ent seen him since. Reckon he’s indoors with a cold or some-such.’
‘Why didn’t you knock and see if he was all right?’
Higgins looked as though he might cry. ‘Not my business, miss. Is he poorly, then?’
‘You just said he was, you idiot! You said he looked poorly.’
Higgins struggled to articulate his vague thoughts.
‘His eyes and nose was all red and he was, like, sniffing, miss.’ He tried to pull away from Rose’s iron fingers.
He was scared of her, scared especially of questions, which required such unusual brain activity from him.
Cows were so much easier. You always knew where you were with a cow.
‘I best get on, miss. My wife’s expecting me. Sorry an’ everything.’
Rose let him go. The brake was waiting to take the servants back to the Castle. She told Frederick – Barnes, as he was now known, now he was butler – that she would walk up and that she might not be in to dinner.
He frowned. ‘You can’t take time off without permission. Where are you going?’
‘Private business,’ she said. ‘I’m only missing dinner and I can if I want. No law says I have to eat it.’ She swung away in case he argued further, walking quickly, mingling with the dispersing crowd.
The Hundon’s yard was quiet. The weather still being mild, the cows were out until Higgins fetched them in for afternoon milking.
Fly and Jess were lying across the door stone, enjoying a little slice of pale winter sunshine, and got up politely to greet her, swinging their tails, bright amber eyes on her face.
‘Good dogs. Lie down, then,’ she said. She knocked at the door, got no answer, turned the knob and went in.
If he was sick, she thought, someone must look after him, and that fool Molly Gale who did for him would probably not have thought of setting up food for him.
If he was in bed, she’d call up the stairs…
But he was sitting at the kitchen table, his arms resting on it, looking utterly dejected. His eyes and nose were red, she saw at once, because he’d been crying. He looked at her blearily and said, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Higgins said you were ill.’ She crossed the room and sat down opposite him before he could either ask her in or tell her to get out. ‘What’s happened?’
She thought for a moment he might deny, but his lips trembled, and after a moment it burst out of him: ‘It’s my sister. She’s dead!’
‘How did you hear?’ she asked.
‘A letter came yesterday from the asylum,’ he said. ‘It was pneumonia. She was ill for four days and I never knew. If they’d told me I could have been there.’
Rose was not good at sympathy. She always reached for the practical. ‘You couldn’t have helped her.’
‘But she shouldn’t have died alone.’
‘You said last time you saw her she didn’t know who you were.’
He stared miserably, as if he hadn’t heard her last words.
‘She was my only kin!’ he cried. He put his head down on his arms and sobbed, and it gave her an uncomfortable pang in her stomach.
Men shouldn’t cry, it hurt too much – them and you.
She got up and went round the table, sat in the chair next to him, put a tentative arm across his shoulders.
‘Maybe it’s for the best,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t much of a life for her.’
‘She was all I had.’ He sat up, wiped his wet face with his palms like a child. ‘There was just the two of us. Now I’m all alone.’
She found her handkerchief and gave it to him, watched as he dried his face and blew his nose. He turned to look at her. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Worried about you,’ she said.
Faint hope came into his face. ‘Were you?’
‘I could see you weren’t at service. Then Higgins said you were ill.’ She looked around the kitchen to avoid his insistent gaze. ‘This place could do with a good bottoming. That Molly Gale doesn’t clean into the corners. She doesn’t keep it like your sister did.’
‘Martha was a good housekeeper,’ he said.
‘And a good cook,’ Rose managed to say, though her lips were stiff with reluctance. The woman had tried to poison her, for goodness’ sake!
His eyes were scanning her, knowing her thoughts, honouring her intentions. ‘Rose,’ he said, ‘why won’t you marry me?’
She recoiled a little. Her face shut down. ‘Not that again,’ she said.
‘Please. I want to understand. You know I love you—’
‘You just want a wife to cook and clean for you,’ she interrupted.
‘You also know that’s not true. If that’s all I wanted I could look elsewhere.
Not to be boastful, but there’s plenty of girls would take me.
But I don’t want any other girl. It’s you I want.
We’re good together, aren’t we? And I believe you care for me.
You wouldn’t be here now if you didn’t care for me. ’
Suddenly, shockingly, her thorns were gone, and he was looking into a yawning loneliness that put his own into the shade. He saw a younger, desperately hurt Rose, which for some reason brought the image to his mind of a hare he had once seen, torn and limping, fleeing the hounds.
‘Oh, Rose,’ he said breathlessly, ‘what is it?’
‘There’s things you don’t know about me,’ she said.
‘Tell me, then.’
‘If you knew, you’d hate me. And if we wed, you’d find out.’
‘I could never hate you. It can’t be so bad. You can tell me.’
There was a pause, like the world holding its breath, as she searched his face.
‘I’m not a virgin,’ she said. ‘Now you know.’
‘Oh,’ he said.
She waited one heartbeat, but he said nothing more. The pain was like a blow. She had to get out. She pushed back her chair so hard it fell with a crash. ‘You see? I told you so.’
She was across the room so fast that he hadn’t even drawn breath. It was only as she closed the door behind her that she heard him say, ‘Don’t go!’
Too late, she thought, as she almost ran from the yard. Anything he said now would be second thoughts. The first reaction was the true one. And he’d said, ‘Oh.’
She’d been right not to tell, stupid to have given in.
It was years since she had cried, but she cried that night, in her narrow iron bed. She cried because for a moment she had hoped.
You should never hope.
‘How is Frederick doing below stairs?’ Giles asked, as Afton received his tweed knickerbockers from him. The men of the house had all been out shooting. ‘Barnes, I should say.’
‘Very well, my lord,’ said Afton. ‘He seems to have slipped into the role seamlessly, if I might put it so.’
‘He seems very confident upstairs,’ Giles said. ‘So everything is harmonious in the servants’ hall, is it?’
‘Changes always take time to get used to. But we are for the most part a happy family.’ He glanced through the open door to the dressing-room and saw the boy with the cans of hot water. ‘That’s your bath water, my lord. Will you require to be shaved?’
Giles felt his chin. ‘I don’t think so. I can manage now, if you want to go and see to Mr Richard.’
‘Mr Crooks is looking after him, my lord.’
Richard was down early, having left little for Crooks to do when he pottered along from Uncle Sebastian’s room.
Richard was accustomed to dressing himself, and only let Crooks do his studs and links so as not to hurt the old boy’s feelings.
He was almost first in the great hall, where they assembled over the Christmas season, with the enormous Christmas tree at the end, too big for the drawing-room.
Only Alice was there, sitting on a settle by the fire and talking to the dogs, who were staring at her so adoringly it looked as though they might at any moment climb onto her lap.
‘Don’t let them dribble on you,’ he said, to announce himself, and saw from her start that she had been far away.
‘It would be a shame to spoil that dress. It suits you.’ He passed her to stand in front of the fire so that he could see her face.
She gave a little quirk of the mouth that said, I don’t care if it suits me or not.
What do I care for clothes? He sought for an opening.
‘You’ll be twenty-one next year,’ he said.
‘I don’t see that it will make any difference,’ she said.
‘It did to Rachel.’ She shrugged, stroking the dogs’ heads two-handed. ‘Is there nothing you want to do?’
‘Nothing that being a year older will make possible,’ she said.
There was too much sadness there. He thought of the look he had intercepted in the light of the bonfire.
This was not just some schoolgirl crush on the handsome former blacksmith.
It was more like his own passion for Molly, and he knew how hard it had been to get over that.
And it was easier for men, who went out into the world and had things to do.
Alice had nothing to distract her. But he could do something about that, at least.
‘I have some news for you,’ he said. ‘You remember I borrowed some of your drawings?’
‘You’ve lost them,’ she said, but not as if she cared.
‘I didn’t lose them, but thank you for the judgement on my character.’
‘I don’t want them back. I told you you could keep them.’