Chapter 3 #2
You are singular, Charlie had told her the second-to-last time she had seen him, after she had attended Eloise’s summer ball and no one had asked her to dance.
Which is better than being pretty. You are clever, and fierce, and kind.
Be glad that you don’t look like those girls, like fatted sows waiting for market day.
That had made her snort, as he knew it would, and she had taken his hand and followed him to the stable to see the cat’s new kittens.
But when he left, as he always did, when he returned to London, and Caroline wandered the hallways and parlors of Audley House with no one but the servants for company, she caught her reflection in the mirror over the fireplace and wished for peaches in her cheeks, and soft, full lips, and a body that curved and dipped and beckoned.
—
The landing outside her room was empty.
She stood still as a rabbit, ears pricked to the sounds beyond Rab’s door: the metallic splash of water in a basin, the squeal of floorboards under feet.
Caroline flushed. How shocking that they could hear each other so clearly, she thought as she crept silently to the door of the servants’ staircase. Was there no privacy to be had in this place?
Then she remembered her own plan to snoop, and her flush deepened.
—
In the cellar kitchen, Mrs. Easton was already at the marble pastry slab, her sleeves rolled up and her arms powdered white with flour.
“There you are,” the landlady said, glancing in irritation at the clock on the wall, which showed five past six. “Draw some more water and set it boiling for eggs. Then get the bacon on.”
“Good morning, Mrs. Easton,” Caroline replied. She had never begun a day without a hot cup of tea and a leisurely hour with a book. But those luxuries, like so many, were lost to her. “Where might I find the well?”
Mrs. Easton snorted. “No wells here, Miss Huxley. There’s a spigot by the back gate.” She nodded at the cellar door she had led Caroline through last night. “And the bucket’s there.”
—
The sky was gray and close, but the air in her nostrils was cool and laced with the scents of soil and green leaves.
The empty tin bucket swung on Caroline’s arm; the sounds of a city waking filled her head.
Distant voices, ringing bells. She allowed herself a heartbeat of sadness, remembering the gardens of Audley House in the early morning, the mist in the trees and the sleepy songs of birds, before turning her attention to her task.
At the back of the garden, behind the shingled shed, she found the water pump.
As she filled the bucket—which was no mean feat; her entire weight on the handle expelled only a squirt of water—she looked up at the house.
The kitchen windows lay in a row at ground level. Above them spanned another, these leaded—expensive; she had not seen their like in the borough yesterday—which she presumed looked out from the dining room. Then the bedrooms: neat squares of glass, some of them open to the morning air.
Caroline conjured the drawing from Charlie’s letter, the view she was now standing in. She considered the angle of the shed’s roof, the height of the vegetable boxes.
That room, she thought, staring at the second-to-last window on the right. That was Charlie’s.
When the bucket was finally full, she found she could not lift it.
She staggered, spilling out a quarter on her shoes, and carried it in shambling intervals until the pain in her hands and her arms was too great and she was forced to set it down again.
About halfway to the cellar door she paused, standing upright and rubbing her palms together where the handle had bitten a red line, and found she was beside a bed of flowers.
It was unseasonably late for hollyhocks, and never had she seen them in this color: a purple-blue so bright that her eyes watered.
She took a step closer. No, they were not hollyhocks.
They grew in cones like hollyhocks, but these flowers were sparser and stranger, and there was something unaccountably vulgar about their shape.
The top was bulbous, pointed like a cap, the bottom open and curving, offering a glimpse of yellow pistils, like ankles beneath the lifted hem of a skirt.
To her surprise, Caroline recognized them.
In case any of the guests were looking out over the back garden, she turned her back to the windows and pulled the ring on its chain free from her dress, turned it in the morning light until shadows threw the engraving into sharp relief.
A stalk of odd flowers: the same pointed tops, the same wide petals.
She had never seen them in the flesh before.
Carys had told her that the blooms on the Blevins family crest grew in Wales, where her mother had come from, but did not know what they were called.
Caroline ran a fingertip over the face of the ring, over its seven flowers and seven drops of blood, and made a mental note to ask Mrs. Easton for the name of the plant.
—
“What took so long?” Mrs. Easton barked when Caroline reappeared on the stairs, the now half-full bucket hanging awkwardly before her. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!”
Caroline looked down belatedly to see another wave of water splash onto her already sodden boots. Mrs. Easton stomped up the stairs and took the bucket from her.
“Lady’s maid, eh?” she grumbled to herself, carrying the bucket downstairs easily and upending its contents into a pot on the stove. “Can’t be trusted to carry anything heavier than a pot of rouge.” Then, over her shoulder to Caroline: “I’ll get the bacon on. You finish the bread.”