Chapter 6
As they headed down the corridor, Etta could see Bessie shooting her quick, curious looks. As hungry as she was, there was no chance at all she was going to breakfast without getting Bessie to spill the tea.
‘Bessie, we need to talk. Where can we talk?’
Bessie looked behind them apprehensively, then back at Etta. ‘Not now, miss. You’re expected at breakfast – Nanny sent a maid to tell them. But yesterday evening you bade me give you this today.’
Furtively, Bessie handed Etta a piece of tightly folded paper. Unsure of what to do with it – and to Bessie’s evident dismay – she quickly tucked it into the bosom of her dress.
‘Bessie, Nanny mentioned you trained in London. Do you come from there?’
‘Yes, miss.’
Etta smiled. ‘Bit too quiet for you here, I imagine. I think we might go back to London, don’t you?’
‘Depends on your mama, miss.’
‘I suppose it does, doesn’t it? Ugh. Bloody 1817. Anyway, call me Etta.’
‘Not on your life, miss,’ said Bessie, casting her a disapproving look.
They had passed through several corridors, down some fairly ordinary-looking stairs and then through wider, more lavishly decorated corridors. It was like visiting a stately home, but everything was … new.
Etta smelled beeswax as they stepped into a corridor, the walls lined with colourful portraits of what were presumably Hetty’s relatives. Hers, even? Although surely Hetty had hundreds of relatives in the intervening two hundred years.
She took in the portraits as they passed by, blinking at the freshness of the paint, then at the panelling below it.
It was wood – not the dark wood of the stately homes she’d visited on school trips, but bright, polished wood that reflected light across the room.
It hadn’t been painted, either. It had never occurred to her that wood panelling might not have started off dark and forbidding.
The more you knew, Etta mused, and hurried after Bessie who led her to a huge, wide staircase, looking up to high ceilings.
There was marble everywhere, and even though summer light streamed in through large windows, Etta found herself gathering the shawl Nanny had put around her shoulders and pulling it tighter.
She was in a full-length pale blue dress, just like the ones in her favourite period dramas, but with even less stretch than she had imagined.
Mercifully, it was short around her ankles by a good few inches.
Nanny had muttered about that, but Etta was glad of it as she carefully picked her way down the stairs in Hetty’s leather boots. Her mother’s dainty shoes had not fit.
As she navigated the stairs, Etta noticed a passing footman stumble with a silver salver of letters. Openly staring at her, he stood to one side of an open door and briefly bowed his head.
Etta realised he was making room for her to enter and looked back at Bessie. Bessie nodded encouragingly towards the door and said, ‘The breakfast room, miss.’ It was clear Etta was now on her own.
Thankfully there were only two people sitting at the mahogany table in the elegant room and both were already known to her. She nodded at them as they stood up. ‘Max, Charlie. Good morning.’
At this her brother Charlie gasped. ‘Oh no, Hetty! You can’t call him that! Lord Stanhope – or at least my lord!’
Etta looked over at Max. ‘Does that mean you have to call me “my lady” then?’
Her brother looked vaguely appalled. ‘Hetty! You aren’t a lady! Not yet, at any rate,’ he reflected. ‘Maybe you’ll pull it off, if Mother finds you some new clothes.’
Etta rolled her eyes. ‘I suppose you mean I need to get married to a lord to be a lady. So I must be Miss – oh, what is it again?’
‘Bainbridge. Miss Bainbridge. May I help you to some breakfast?’ Max moved to a sideboard loaded with hot chafing dishes, their contents kept warm by lit candles.
Etta strode over for a look. It was an eclectic mix, but all good stuff. ‘What have we got here? Ooh, bacon! And sausages, and all sorts. One of everything, I think.’
Max looked at her speculatively. ‘One of everything?’
‘Except the fish, yes.’
As he placed her plate at an empty place setting, Charlie looked over and rolled his eyes. ‘Hungry, are we, Hetty?’
She glared at him. ‘Why yes, Charles. Must be all of those experiments you’ve been doing on me. Good thing Lord Stanhope was around last night, wasn’t it?’ She turned to Max. ‘And don’t think you’re escaping from this one, my lord. You’re practically his co-conspirator.’
‘Me? I was the one who rescued you, Miss Bainbridge!’
‘Perhaps, but you’re still a close ally of my tormentor.’
Max seemed to relax slightly when he saw the twinkle in Etta’s eyes. Charlie, however, was oblivious.
‘Tormentor? By god, Hetty, taking it a bit far there. For heaven’s sake, don’t say that to Mama.’
This last sentence came out in a rushed undervoice, as movement could be heard in the hallway.
Within moments a middle-aged woman quietly entered the room.
She was short, gaunt and delicately featured, wearing what Etta thought was the most elegant and expensive-looking dress she had ever seen; trotting at her heels was a tiny, extremely fluffy white dog.
Etta didn’t have to guess for even a second what Hetty’s relationship was to this woman – what she’d seen in the glass windows she’d passed earlier was a close reflection of the lady standing in front of her.
As Etta and her companions rose up to greet her mother, she saw golden hair, a straight and neat little nose, a plush rosebud mouth and wide, innocent blue eyes.
‘Oh, Maximillian, I see you stayed overnight? I’m glad to …’
She stopped, her eyes having registered Etta, and looked at her in complete bewilderment.
‘H-Hetty …?’
Etta quickly searched for the right title to use for her mother. ‘Mum’ felt too modern. Mama. That’s what Charlie had just said.
‘Yes, Mama?’
‘So, it is true! Hetty, have you truly come back to me?’
Before she had any time to answer this question, Etta found herself being almost crushed by the older woman. She didn’t think she’d ever been so earnestly hugged.
A sweet, fragrant smell of rosewater washed over her and suddenly she realised she was clinging back. She had never been hugged by a mother before. For so long it had just been her and Dad, and he’d not really been one for outward displays of affection.
As Lady Bainbridge pulled back to examine her, Etta noticed that both of them had tears in their eyes. As she became aware of her surroundings again, she noticed the ridiculously fluffy dog yapping at her ankles.
‘Hush, Hercules! It is only Hetty.’ Lady Bainbridge grasped Etta by the shoulders. ‘Hetty! Oh, Hetty. Look at you. Speak to me! Are you truly yourself again?’
Charlie interrupted. ‘Mama, she has never been herself.’
Etta glared at him, then turned back to her mother and racked her brain for a suitably banal, non-giveaway phrase. ‘Mama, I am perfectly well. Will you have some breakfast? The sausages … um, the sausages are very good.’
Etta quickly realised that she could have said pretty much anything at all and the woman still would have been delighted.
‘Oh, Henrietta. It is as though all my dreams have come true! To see you here, offering me breakfast as though it were just an ordinary day!’
Etta wasn’t sure how to respond to this.
Luckily it seemed she wouldn’t have to. Catching and visibly suppressing her tears with a beautifully delicate, lacy handkerchief, Lady Bainbridge drew herself together.
Her face sealed itself back up into the very picture of mild good-humour, almost as though she were pressing the lid back onto her own personal Tupperware box of emotions. The transformation was remarkable.
‘And … and in time for the Season!’
If it were possible, Charlie looked even more startled.
‘Mama, surely not! You can’t … You can’t possibly mean to parade Hetty around as though she weren’t utterly dicked in the nob! Why, she’s – she’s a complete imbecile!’
Etta wasn’t having any of it. ‘No, Charlie, you’re an imbecile. Mama, he had me strapped into a chair in the cellar!’
Lady Bainbridge sank onto a seat at the end of the table, looking faint. ‘I— I must think. It is all too much.’
Etta racked her brain for more romance-novel info-gems. ‘Should I fetch you some smelling salts?’
‘Oh no, Hetty, how could you? Not that disgusting stuff. Even Great Aunt Matilda won’t touch them. No, but do pour me some tea, please.’
They went back to quietly eating their breakfast, all watching Lady Bainbridge carefully as she added sugar and milk to her tea and then sat thoughtfully at the other end of the long table, stroking her little dog.
Charlie eyed his mother impatiently and whispered, ‘I do wish she’d get rid of that awful bloody dog. I still can’t believe she called the little beast “Hercules”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a ridiculous animal.’
Max looked over at Etta with mischief in his eyes. ‘I don’t think he likes Hetty all that much. Is the feeling mutual, Hetty?’
Charlie interrupted. ‘Oh, they love one another to the ends of the earth. Always prancing around Hetty, he is. Probably because Nanny feeds him scraps up in the nursery. Not sure why he’s acting so off today. Stupid creature, I suppose.’
‘Etta,’ Etta said. ‘I’m not Hetty. I’m Etta.’
She saw Max watching her carefully, but Charlie pulled a bizarre face that simultaneously made him look stupid while indicating that he found her stance to be hoity toity. Together, they smiled at him, and Etta realised she was going to have trouble holding a grudge against Charlie.
‘Is that the face you plan to make when you present me in Society, Charles?’
He groaned. ‘Oh no. I can imagine it now. Escorting you around the park in front of the Ton. I’ll believe that when I see it.’
‘Oh, you’ll see it,’ Etta whispered under her breath. She had finished her breakfast by this point and was trying to work out where she should take her plate.
Before she could decide, her mother finally spoke.
‘Henrietta, dear, you must wait for me in the Yellow Room. I must think.’
‘Yes, Mama. Remind me where it is, again?’
Her mother jolted. ‘Oh yes. I suppose you’re not accustomed to the lower rooms of the house. Oh dear, how mortifying! Charles! Accompany your sister to the Yellow Room.’
As they began to leave, her mother seemed to have another thought. ‘And, Charles, you mustn’t call her Hetty any more. Hetty is a name for servants. We should never have started calling you that, Henrietta. I am so sorry.’
‘No, Mama. I understand. I wasn’t myself, was I? Anyway, it’s quite a sweet nickname in the overall scheme of things.’
Lady Bainbridge’s face took on a stubborn look. ‘No, Henrietta. It is not appropriate. You are yourself again. You must not be known by that name any more.’
As vague and as polite as her new mother seemed to be, Etta saw she could also be stern. She filed that thought away for later.
She stared at Charlie’s arm, stuck out like he was expecting a bird to land on it, before realising she was meant to grab it. They went back out into the hall and she tried to calculate how many times her studio flat would fit into the cavernous, gilded entrance to the Bainbridge’s mansion.
How on earth was Hetty going to cope in 2023? She hoped the two old ladies had something lined up because, man oh man, she was most certainly not missing that flat right now.