Chapter 7 #2
Her hands trembled on the armoire. Something bubbled beneath the surface of her skin. She recognized the flavor of the emotion but had never tasted it this strong, this acidic.
It was rage. So powerful it was dragging her under, tearing at her seams.
But she was still not safe. She could not fall apart. Not here, not now.
Later, she told her white reflection. Later, there will be time. When you find Charlie. When you find Charlie.
She swallowed two of Dr. Hoffman’s pills, closed her eyes at the gentle numbness that washed over her cheeks, her throat, her chest. She slid the tin into the pocket of her dress. Better to have them at hand, should she need them.
She curled her fingers into fists. Took a final, shaking breath.
Mrs. Easton was still abed, so in the cellar kitchen she sliced cold chicken for sandwiches, squeezed lemons for lemonade, arranged olives and pickled onions in serving bowls painted with blue roses.
Her head ached. Her ribs ached. Her throat felt blistered from screaming. But she held away the memory of the attack with metallic determination, and her busy hands corralled her mind.
She set the dining room table with six place settings and unloaded the trays of food from the dumbwaiter. She rang the bell, then disappeared downstairs to get the potatoes boiling for supper before any of the guests saw her face.
But when she returned to retrieve the dishes, her carefully constructed mask nearly slipped. The dining room was empty save for Mr. Toussaint, the bull-shouldered Barbadian. He was stacking dirty plates.
“I thought you could use an extra hand,” he said in his resonant voice.
Caroline blanched. They were alone. He easily weighed twice as much as her. She felt the man’s filthy hand over her mouth again, his fingers digging into the soft flesh under her ribs.
“Do you feel quite well, Miss Huxley?” Mr. Toussaint said, frowning slightly. “You look a bit peaked. I hope you are not coming down with Mrs. Easton’s cold.”
Caroline swallowed. “I’m fine,” she said unconvincingly. “Really. Thank you for your concern, Mr. Toussaint. But you don’t have to help me—”
He lifted the stack of porcelain as easily as a book of matches, placed it in the neatly loaded dumbwaiter, and nodded to the open cellar door. “After you.”
She could not deny his assistance without making a scene.
In the past week, this man had only ever treated her with a sort of disorienting respect when he passed her in the hall or when she cleared his plate at supper.
But before Caroline followed, she turned her back to him and slid a mustard-smeared knife up her sleeve.
With every jarring step down the stairs, the serrated teeth scraped the skin of her forearm.
Mr. Toussaint started on the dishes, slinging a stained tea towel over his shoulder and whistling a lively tune that Caroline had never heard before.
She was tense as a rabbit in an open field, every sense turned to the Barbadian’s back as she emptied the dumbwaiter and stacked the dirty plates on the counter beside him.
She had never seen a man do the washing-up.
At Audley House, the kitchen staff had been entirely women, gossipy old hens with chapped hands who chased the stable boys from the larder like so many mice.
But Mr. Toussaint—who, Mrs. Easton had told Caroline, had begun a transatlantic transport business with just one ship and now owned a fleet of them—seemed entirely at home.
He rolled the fine cambric of his undersleeves up past his elbows and started scrubbing the burned oats from the bottom of the pot.
“I was the eldest of seven,” he said, intuiting her question.
“Mum worked in the big house up the road and was gone each morning before it was light. I lit the fire, cooked the rice. Got the little ones off to church school.” He chuckled.
“Even ironed their uniforms, though I wasn’t very good at it. Singed all the collars.”
Seven children. What would it have been like to have six brothers and sisters, to have never been alone?
“Do you miss them?”
It was a foolish, intimate question. But he just flashed her a sad half smile and said, “Oh, yes. Every day. Those who are left. And the ones who are gone, even more.”
Mr. Toussaint took his polite leave when the dishes were done, claiming he had a business meeting in Commercial Street. In his absence, the kitchen felt cavernous.
As she reached for the broom in the corner, something bit Caroline’s forearm. It was the mustard knife. She drew it from her sleeve and washed it thoughtfully before setting it back in its block.
When the potatoes were boiling for supper, when the lunch dishes were dried and put away, Caroline carried a tray up to Mrs. Easton. Despite her snooping, she had not yet entered the landlady’s bedroom and was unsurprised to find it as neat and spartan as the woman herself.
“Tea with honey,” Caroline announced, placing the steaming cup on the bedside table. “And the last of yesterday’s mulligatawny.”
Mrs. Easton emerged from a pile of quilts, blinking blearily at the lines of light escaping the curtains.
“I don’t have the cordial, I’m afraid. Mr. Ripley was…was not in.” Caroline resisted the urge to touch her swollen throat.
“I’m sorry to have sent you,” Mrs. Easton replied huskily, dunking the spoon into the shimmering broth. “You have more than enough to do today, without taking care of me. Has it been quite awful?”
Caroline forced a thin smile. “It’s been fine,” she lied. “Really. Breakfast was already done, and Mr. Toussaint helped me with the lunch dishes. Supper will be a bit bare-bones, but no one will starve.”
Mrs. Easton considered her. The landlady’s face was still pale, but a few bites of the soup had already returned some brightness to her eyes.
“I know I haven’t been the most patient mistress,” she said, “but I’m glad you knocked on my door that day.”
Caroline stared at the coverlet and kept her eyes dry.
—
Rab returned at five, as he always did. Caroline, who had not left the kitchen since after lunch, heard his buoyant step on the overhead floorboards as she was starting a stock for tomorrow’s soup. He whistled as he descended the stairs.
“Look at you,” he said cheerfully, surveying Caroline with his hands on his hips. “You’ve taken to kitchen drudgery like a fish to water. No one would guess you were once a lady’s maid.”
“I can hardly believe it myself.”
“It could be worse,” he went on, sauntering across the flagstones toward her.
Caroline’s hackles rose. “We’re not such a bad lot, all things considered.
If you were working at one of those high-street inns, your bottom would have been pinched so many times by now that you wouldn’t be able to sit down. ”
Caroline threw a chunk of carrot at him to cover the angry flush in her cheeks.
Rab caught it and popped it between his teeth, chewed it with his mouth open.
She wanted to throw the knife next. Her nose prickled, suddenly and stupidly.
She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to demand he tell her everything he knew about Charlie.
She wanted to tell him what had happened.
“Is something wrong?”
Caroline wiped a sleeve over an eye. “Just the onions. Have you seen Mrs. Easton?”
Rab stole another sloppy carrot slice from the pile at her elbow. “Just now. Poor old bird. She told me you stopped at the chemist, but it was closed. Sorry about that. I popped out for something to eat. Couldn’t have been gone more than ten minutes.” He clicked his tongue. “Bad timing.”
Caroline nodded but did not look up.
“Viv said you needed a medicine of your own?”
“There’s no rush. I’ll come by a different day, when Mrs. Easton is feeling better.”
“Which medicine is it?”
“A nerve tonic. For my constitution.”
Rab nodded professionally. “Ner-Vigor? Spasmosédine?”
“I’m not…I’m not sure.”
She wanted Charlie. Charlie’s long arms around her, Charlie’s heartbeat calling to hers. But Charlie was not here. She could feel her edges fading, the faintness waiting just beyond the perimeter of her vision.
Are you taking your medicine? The concerned way her brother always bit his bottom lip when he surveyed her peaked face, her pale cheeks. The last words Carys spoke to her. Don’t forget to take your medicine.
She could not afford to let the old illness sink its claws into her. Not before she found Charlie.