Chapter 9
At a quarter to six, Mrs. Easton disappeared upstairs to change her dress and pin up her hair. When the kitchen door swung open thirty minutes later, Caroline did a double take at the tidy, fashionable woman on the threshold.
“Mrs. Easton,” she said, “you look wonderful.”
Gone was her omnipresent white cap; her steely hair was plaited and pinned in a regal chignon. Above a simple midnight-blue gown, her dark eyes sparkled like stars. She must have been something in her youth, Caroline thought, when her hair was thick and black, her hands not yet scarred with burns.
The landlady’s lips twitched at the compliment, but she made no reply. She glanced around the kitchen. The roast steamed on its pile of carrots and onions. The mashed potatoes were ready for their silver tureen. The cake stood on a cut-glass pedestal, its candied currants glistening like garnets.
“Well done,” Mrs. Easton said. “Well done, us.”
Caroline beamed.
“Now, get yourself upstairs,” she said, making a shooing motion with her hands. “Put on a clean frock. We serve supper at seven.”
—
In her room, Caroline opened the armoire doors and stared at her dresses.
They hung like exotic birds, brightly colored, their fine materials shining.
Over the past weeks, she had alternated wearing the black crepe—which she had beaten in the copper washing tub until the mud stains disappeared and the dye bled—and the high-necked green, which she was wearing now, and which reeked of bacon grease.
She ran her fingers across the hanging sleeves. To a ball, she would have worn the pink satin, to a garden party, the green-and-white muslin with ruffles. To supper at a neighboring county home, the russet silk. She pulled this last dress from its companions and examined it.
The neckline scooped lower than she remembered.
The cap sleeves were a nod to propriety but barely extended beyond the edge of her shoulders.
The fabric was the color of autumn leaves, warm and deep, and against it her skin glowed white as bone.
She imagined Rab seeing her in this, and a shudder ran up her spine.
She put the gown back.
In the end, she chose a cambric morning dress.
The pattern—pink and maroon flowers—was too lively for supper, but the neckline grazed her collarbones and the puffed sleeves extended nearly to her elbows.
Thinking of Mrs. Easton’s neat hairstyle, she twisted and tugged at her own coppery strands until she had affected something close to the style Carys had perfected for dinner parties.
She turned her head side to side in the glass, impressed at her own handiwork.
When she opened her bedroom door, Rab was standing on the landing.
“You look nice,” he said immediately.
Hot blood flooded her cheeks. “As do you.”
It was true. He wore a dark green dinner jacket over a black-and-white-checked shirt and necktie the same deep yellow as his eyes.
The curls cascading over his forehead were tighter than usual; Caroline detected a whiff of pomade.
He looked nothing like the pale dandies at Staffordshire country dances in their interchangeable waistcoats of black and gray. He looked like no one but himself.
Rab offered her a crooked elbow. “May I escort you to supper by way of the dark, dank servants’ staircase, milady?”
Her heart pounded. She did not trust him, wanted nothing less than to be alone with him. But she must give him no reason to suspect her.
Caroline lifted her skirt and dropped into the graceful curtsy it had taken years to perfect. She remembered to wobble a bit on the way up. “I’d be delighted,” she said, “to accompany you.”
—
In the cool black of the stairwell, every nerve in Caroline’s body tuned itself to the warm pressure of Rab’s arm on hers.
They descended the steps together, matching their pace so as not to upset the point at which they were connected.
A buzz of masculine voices filtered up from the parlor, underscored by piano music.
She cast about anxiously for something, anything, to say that would break the silence and distract from the surprising intimacy of the moment, but she could think of nothing except the sound of his breath held close against her.
The attack in the alley came rushing back. A stranger’s hot pant on her cheek, the hard line of brick behind her. She fought the memory, chased it away. For Charlie. For Charlie she was here. For Charlie she would be brave.
When they reached the light-framed door that led to the dining room, Rab stopped. He slid his fingers down Caroline’s arm until they cupped her hand, raised it to his lips. “Adieu,” he said, and pressed a kiss into her skin.
But he didn’t drop her hand. His fingers wrapped hers so tightly she yelped, but still he clutched them, pulled them higher, closer, to his mouth, to his nose, until she took a stumbling step into him and his free hand caught her lower back.
She could smell his camphor tooth powder; the heat from his body scorched her where they were pressed together.
Caroline opened her mouth to scream, to cry out, it was happening again, she was so stupid, so stupid—
But the harsh embrace she expected did not come.
A cool inhalation raised the fine hairs along her arm. The tip of his nose brushed her skin, sending a thrill from the base of her spine to the base of her skull.
Rab dropped her hand. Without a word he turned away to the door that she had forgotten, in her blind fear, lay behind them. His fingers fumbled on the handle. Then he was through, a black silhouette against the dazzling light of the dining room.
The door slammed shut.
Caroline stood in the dark, breathing hard, blinking away the bright spots from the chandelier.
—
“It’s time, Miss Huxley,” Mrs. Easton said. She took a deep breath and began to climb the kitchen staircase toward the shut dining room door.
Caroline followed numbly.
She had moved in a daze after the run-in with Rab.
Mrs. Easton’s barked orders did not seem to penetrate her ears; the landlady took over the whipped cream and chopped chives with a huff of irritation.
But Caroline hardly noticed. Her mind was in the stairwell; over and over, she brought tentative fingers to the back of her hand, searching for a mark that did not exist.
Now, with every step, the damp heat of the kitchen dissipated. Her legs felt watery under the weight of a tureen of mashed potatoes and the prospect of seeing Rab. Serving Rab. Feeling his wild eyes on the back of her neck.
He had not forced upon her an intimacy that she had been told to fear.
The act—the tightening of his fingers on hers, so hard and sudden that she’d nearly cried out, his other hand firm on her lower back, the lightness of his nose against her skin—had been strange and sensuous, and she felt more undone, she thought, than if he had kissed her.
—
The party—whatever its occasion—was well underway.
By the animated blur of voices, she guessed that Senhor Perreira’s prized madeira had already been flowing freely.
Mrs. Easton reached the dining room door first and pushed it open.
The voices hushed, then rebounded, louder and giddier than before, as the guests recognized their hostess.
Grinning, the landlady entered to an explosion of applause.
Caroline gritted her teeth and followed.
The decrescendo that accompanied her appearance was stark.
Cries of enthusiasm died mid-word. Hands missed their beat.
Eyes found eyes in a silent question. There were four strangers at the table.
She had the impression of a few silver-haired heads, a thick black beard, before she caught Rab’s yellow gaze and dropped her eyes to her boots.
There had been nothing in his face. No embarrassment. No apology. Her pulse hammered at her ears with rage.
“Who’s hungry?” Mrs. Easton asked, pulling the tray of smoked salmon canapés from the dumbwaiter to another ragged cheer. “Pour the madeira,” she whispered. Caroline set the potatoes down hurriedly and lifted the wine jug.
“Ooo-ee!” Mr. O’Riley exclaimed, fluttering his shirt collar like a bellows. “It’s hotter than a whorehouse on nickel night.”
This drew a laugh. Caroline felt the strangers watching her, judging how she would take the joke. She focused on her task, hovering the lip of the wine jug over the closest glass, which happened to be Monsieur Rodart’s.
The Frenchman gave her a reassuring smile as she poured. For a moment Caroline felt fortified, until she remembered what she had found in his bedside table.
“Well, now,” said a deep voice to Caroline’s left. “Who is this?”
The silent air thickened like custard. Caroline turned.
A man with an unruly black beard, seated in the chair opposite Monsieur Rodart, was staring at her. His lips were very red, almost femininely so, and as she watched, they curled into a predator’s smile.
“This,” came Mrs. Easton’s voice from the opposite side of the table, “is Miss Huxley. She’s helping me with the cooking and cleaning.”
Caroline dropped her eyes to the carpet. But she could still feel his gaze on her, hot and appraising.
“What an improvement, eh, lads? That last maid was an eyesore.”
The other maid, who had served these men before her. Who was now dead and buried, her throat opened like a second mouth. The blood left Caroline’s face.
“You’ll not speak to her.” It was Mr. O’Riley’s nasal American drawl. “You’ll not so much as look at her, Jacobs. And you’ll sure as shit keep your hands to yerself.”
So the bearded man was Mr. Jacobs, whose feud with Mr. O’Riley, the details of which were a mystery to Caroline, had Mrs. Easton so worried that she had assigned them rooms on different floors.
“What Jim means to say, I think,” said Monsieur Rodart, lacing his long fingers together elegantly on the tablecloth, “is that we are all very grateful to have Miss Huxley in our service. And we shall not tolerate any inappropriate behavior toward her.”