CHAPTER ONE
ELIN
Fourteen years have passed, but I can still remember the heat.
It settled over Le Champ des Fleurs before sunrise, dampening the sheets beneath my body and pressing against the small garret window as if summer itself wanted to come inside.
By six o’clock, the air beneath the roof had grown too thick to breathe.
My linen shift clung to my back, and the heavy braid hanging over my shoulder felt like a woolen rope.
Then Madame Lebon rang her bell.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The sharp notes traveled through the walls and reached the servants’ rooms above the main house. No one else answered. Everyone knew that particular impatient summons belonged to me.
“I am coming,” I muttered, although Madame could not possibly hear me two floors below.
I climbed out of bed and poured the last of yesterday’s water into the basin. It had grown warm overnight and smelled faintly of tin, but I splashed it over my face and neck. The relief lasted only a moment.
My room contained a narrow bed, a washstand, one ladder-backed chair and the little iron-bound trunk I had carried from Sweden. Madame called the room generous. She had never climbed the back staircase to see it.
Above the trunk, faint marks covered the wall beside my bed. I had scratched one into the plaster every Sunday evening since arriving in Virginia. One hundred and three marks stood in five uneven rows.
One hundred and three weeks served.
One hundred and fifty-seven remained.
I touched the newest mark with my fingertip. Two years had passed slowly, but they had passed. That was the comfort of a contract. However cruel the day might become, it would eventually be over. However long the term of service, it possessed an ending.
Madame rang again.
“I said I am coming.”
I dressed quickly in a plain gray gown and pinned my braid around my head.
A few pale strands escaped immediately and stuck to my damp temples.
There was no help for it. Virginia did not care whether a woman looked respectable or not.
The summer pulled her apart piece by piece until all appearances became lies.
The moment I opened my door, the house surrounded me.
Feet hurried along the narrow passage. Water sloshed in buckets. Somewhere below, a man shouted for more wood while another voice demanded lamp oil. The Deweys and Georges were expected before supper, bringing children, servants, trunks and appetites enough to swallow the household.
Le Champ des Fleurs had been restless for days.
The Lebons spoke the name in the French manner, softening every syllable as if the plantation were an estate outside Paris instead of a struggling property beside the James River. Most people in the county called it Lebon Place. Madame considered that an insult.
I descended the back staircase, lifting my skirts above my ankles. Heat rose from the outer kitchen and rolled through the passageway. The smell of yeast bread, frying ham and woodsmoke made my stomach tighten with hunger.
Dinah stood at the long worktable with flour covering both arms to the elbow. She had tied a blue cloth around her head and tucked her skirts up beneath a clean apron. Two girls worked beside her, one peeling apples and the other separating eggs into a large crockery bowl.
Dinah glanced at me. “She been ringing.”
“I know.”
“Whole house knows.”
The younger girl hid a smile.
I paused beside the doorway. “Has Miss Cécile eaten?”
Dinah’s hands continued shaping the dough. “Wouldn’t touch her tray.”
“Is she ill?”
“She knows who’s coming.”
That explained enough.
Dinah had raised Cécile from infancy and understood her better than anyone.
I had been assigned to Cécile only because Madame decided her daughter required a white companion now that she was old enough to enter society.
A Swedish contract girl could be dressed neatly and presented as something between a servant and a poor relation.
Dinah could love Cécile, bathe her, soothe her fevers and sit beside her through the night, but Virginia society would not permit her to accompany the daughter of étienne Lebon into a ballroom.
The unfairness of that arrangement had never required explanation. It stood between Dinah and me every morning.
“I will persuade her to eat,” I said.
Dinah kept her eyes upon the dough. “Might let her be awhile.”
Madame’s bell rang again.
Dinah glanced toward the ceiling. “That bell will bring Madame up here herself.”
I hurried away.
Madame Lebon waited in Cécile’s bedchamber, standing beside the open wardrobe with both hands planted upon her narrow hips. She wore a dark green morning dress despite the heat. Not one strand of her black hair had escaped its pins.
Cécile sat before the dressing table in her shift and stockings, staring at three gowns spread across the bed.
“There you are,” Madame said. “Where have you been?”
“Dressing, Madame.”
“You should dress before I need you.”
I lowered my eyes. There was no useful answer.
Madame pointed toward the gowns. “She refuses to choose.”
Cécile watched me through the mirror. Her light brown hair hung loose around her shoulders, falling nearly to her waist. She had her father’s dark eyes and her mother’s fine, straight nose, but the softness in her face belonged to neither of them.
“Miss Cécile?” I asked. “Would you prefer the blue?”
Her lips parted.
“B-b-b—”
Madame sighed.
Cécile closed her mouth.
“The blue,” I decided. “It brings out her eyes.”
“You always choose blue,” Madame complained.
“Then perhaps the rose.”
“The rose makes her appear flushed.”
I looked at the third gown. “The cream is very fine.”
“It is too plain.”
Cécile’s fingers tightened around the edge of the dressing table.
“Blue,” I said firmly.
Madame made an impatient sound. “Very well. The blue. See that the lace is changed. The Belgian collar, not the cheap one.”
“Yes, Madame.”
“And do something with her hair. The curls fell within an hour last time.”
“Yes, Madame.”
Madame crossed the room and lifted Cécile’s chin. Her daughter stiffened beneath her touch.
“Judge and Mrs. Dewey will arrive this afternoon. The Georges may come before them. Warren Dewey has recently returned from Richmond, and I am told he has become a very agreeable young man.”
Cécile’s eyes moved toward me.
“You will come downstairs before supper,” Madame continued. “You will smile when our guests arrive. If someone asks after your health, you will say, ‘I am very well, thank you.’ Nothing more is required.”
Cécile swallowed.
“Go on,” her mother commanded.
“I—I am v-v-very—”
“Slowly.”
Cécile tried again. “I am v-v-v—”
“Do not force the word.”
Tears shone in Cécile’s eyes.
Madame released her chin. “This is precisely why we must rehearse. You allow nervousness to defeat you before anyone has said a word.”
“She has only just awakened,” I said. “Perhaps after breakfast—”
“I did not ask you, Elin.”
“No, Madame.”
Madame returned her attention to Cécile. “Again.”
Cécile looked down at her hands. A long silence filled the room.
“Very well,” Madame said coldly. “Elin will answer for you if it becomes necessary. But you must make some effort, Cécile. People cannot be expected to accommodate this deficit of yours forever.”
She swept from the room. Her skirts brushed the doorframe, leaving behind the faint scent of rosewater.
Neither of us moved until her footsteps disappeared.
Cécile snatched the silver-backed hairbrush from the dressing table and hurled it across the room. It struck the wall and fell behind a chair.
“That was your mother’s,” I said.
“I h-h-hope it b-b-broke. I h-h-hate her!”
The words emerged painfully, but the anger behind them was perfectly clear.
I retrieved the brush. One side had been dented, although the mirror remained intact.
“It survived.”
“P-p-pity.”
I placed it on the table.
Cécile stood and marched toward the bed. She picked up the blue dress, threw it to the floor and kicked it beneath the bed.
“I suppose we are wearing cream,” I said.
She glared at me.
“Rose?”
Her expression weakened. She covered her face with both hands and began to cry.
I crossed the room and sat beside her. Cécile leaned against me, resting her forehead upon my shoulder.
“I am sorry,” I whispered. She shook her head. “I should not have answered for you.”
Another shake.
“What, then?”
She pulled away and walked to the small writing desk near the window. A slate rested upon it, but she ignored it, choosing instead a piece of good paper her mother would accuse her of wasting. She dipped her pen and wrote quickly.
I cannot bear them all looking at me.
“They will look at everyone.”
She added another line.
Not as they look at me.
There was no comfort I could offer that would not become a lie.
The county knew about Cécile’s difficulty, although Madame behaved as if vigilance might preserve the secret. Some called the girl shy. Others said she was simple-minded or willful. A few imitated her behind their fans.
Cruelty required very little imagination.
“You do not have to speak to Warren Dewey,” I said. “I will remain beside you.”
Cécile wrote again.
That is worse.
I frowned. “My company is so terrible?”
She shook her head and continued writing.
They see that I need someone. They know why you are there. Everyone knows. Why must I pretend?
I read the words twice.
Until that moment, I had believed my presence protected her. I had never considered that I might also be the sign announcing her weakness.
“I did not know,” I said.
Her anger disappeared. She reached for my hand and squeezed it.
From the gardens below came the sound of a workman calling to another.
Carts rolled along the rear drive, carrying chairs and tables from one outbuilding to the next.
The whole estate prepared for society while Cécile sat in her shift and I in my plain gray dress, holding hands like frightened children.
After a while, she released me and walked to the window.
The gardenias were blooming beneath it, filling the morning air with their rich perfume. Cécile leaned against the frame and looked down into the garden. Her lips moved, but no sound emerged. I wondered whether she was speaking to herself in the private place where words obeyed her.
Then she crossed to her writing table and took up a pencil.
Do you have these flowers in Sweden?
I read the question twice. Some English words still required time before they gave up their meaning.
“No,” I said at last. “Not these.”
She wrote another question.
What flowers grow there?
“I do not know all the English names.” I felt foolish admitting it. “There are small blue ones in spring. They grow in the forest when snow goes away.”
Cécile waited for more.
I searched for its English name, but found only the Swedish word my mother had taught me.
“Bl?sippa.”
“That is what we call them,” I explained. “Blue flowers. Very small.”
Cécile wrote the unfamiliar word beneath her question, carefully copying each letter as I spelled it. When she finished, she turned the page toward me.
“Bl?sippa.”
The sight of that Swedish word in her hand nearly undid me. It was the first piece of home I had seen in another person’s hand since leaving Sweden.
A shadow crossed the doorway.
Dinah stood there holding a breakfast tray. Her eyes moved from Cécile’s writing table to my face, but she asked no questions.
“Best eat while you’ve got the chance,” she said. “Once those people arrive, Madame Lebon will have this house spinning like a top.”
I understood most of the sentence, although the final image confused me.
“Who will spin the house?”
Dinah stared at me for half a second before her expression softened.
“Nobody. It only means she’ll have everyone running.”
“Oh.”
Cécile smiled.
I smiled too, though heat rose into my face. English was full of words that claimed to mean one thing while secretly meaning another. Wealthy people seemed to speak in much the same way.
A bell sounded outside, followed by the rumble of wheels upon the front drive.
“They’re early,” I said.
Dinah listened.
“That ain’t the Dewey carriage.”
“How can you tell?”
“I know their wheels.”
We went to the window. A single black carriage traveled slowly between the rows of oaks. There was no family crest upon its door and no baggage secured behind it.
The driver stopped beneath the front portico.
A man stepped down, carrying a leather dispatch case.
Even from the upper window, I could see the dust upon his coat and the urgency in his movements. Monsieur Lebon appeared below and hurried down the steps to meet him.
The stranger removed a letter from his case.
Monsieur took one look at the seal and went pale.
Beside me, Cécile made a small, wounded sound.
Her fingers closed around the curtain.
Then she hurried to the writing table, seized the pencil and wrote a name beneath the Swedish word she had copied only moments before.
Nathaniel Vale