Secrets and Lords. Justine Elyot
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shrugged. ‘We’ve all made mistakes, the first few days of a new place. Haven’t you, Mrs Munn?’
‘Yes, and I was properly corrected,’ she hissed, clearly unappreciative of the chauffeur’s attempts to pour oil on the troubled waters. ‘And thankful for it. You may go, Edie, and I will expect a substantial improvement on this performance tomorrow.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Munn,’ whispered Edie, and she ran from the servants’ hall, regardless of the fact that it was almost dinnertime, and into the darkening kitchen garden where she sat herself down on a low wall and burst into tears.
This was all a crazy, ridiculous mistake.
She would pack her bags, go back to London, back to papa and back to her circle of friends. Service was perfectly horrid and so was Deverell Hall and so was everything.
Except Ted Kempe. He was not horrid. He was kind and handsome, and he approached her now from the scullery door, uniform cap in hand, smile of rueful sympathy on face.
‘Hey, you’ll be missing your supper,’ he hailed her, coming closer and perching at her side. ‘That won’t do.’
‘Oh, please, leave me be. I’m not fit for company and I can’t bear to go in there and have all those eyes on me, knowing what a useless creature I am.’
‘Don’t be daft. They don’t think that at all. Here. Dry your eyes. I’m sure you don’t need to blow your nose, a ladylike person such as yourself but …’
He handed her a handkerchief and she giggled woefully.
‘Actually, I do,’ she said. ‘But I won’t, not in front of a gentleman.’
‘First time I’ve been called that,’ he said, beaming brightly. ‘I’ll treasure it.’
‘Well, you are, you know. Thank you for standing up for me in there. You didn’t need to do it.’
‘Mrs Munn needs reining in a bit sometimes, that’s all. She breathes fire on everyone and everything, not realising that, half the time, it just ain’t needed. You don’t need the same amount of flames for a paper tissue as you do for a bloomin’ oak tree.’
Edie laughed again. ‘Am I a paper tissue then?’
‘More like a paper rose,’ he said gallantly.
‘Oh, give over,’ she said, rather proud of herself for replicating one of Josie McCullen’s favourite expressions.
‘So, are you coming in? Get yourself some food, it’ll cheer you up. Steak and kidney pudding tonight, one of Fingall’s specials.’
Edie tried a few moments more of token resistance but ultimately she could not resist Ted’s blend of charm and solicitude. She followed him back into the house just as the first spots of new rain fell on already sodden ground.
* * *
‘I have my reservations about this.’ Mrs Munn hardly needed to voice the words; her face said them for her. ‘But Carrie really isn’t well enough to serve at table tonight. I don’t have anybody else. I’m counting on you.’
‘Thank you, I won’t let you down,’ Edie assured her, though she hoped she wouldn’t be asked to swear on her life.
Dinner in the servants’ hall had been surprisingly heartening, most of the staff having secret sympathetic smiles for her for her misfortune in getting on Mrs Munn’s bad side so soon. Nobody asked any awkward questions and only a couple of the girls looked askance at her when she came out with an overly London turn of phrase.
She had been sent on an errand after tea, a kind of test of her knowledge of the house’s geography. Unfortunately she had failed.
The first footman, Giles, had found her wandering about in the East Wing, wringing her hands as she passed the same door for a third time.
‘Hey,’ he said, appearing from behind a door – one of the family bedrooms, if she wasn’t mistaken. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I don’t know where I am,’ she said helplessly. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Let me show you back to the basement. Too many stairs in this place, that’s the problem. Don’t worry. I was the same when I started here.’
‘How long have you been here?’ she asked, following him along yards and yards of crimson carpet patterned with gold fleurs-de-lys.
‘Couple of years,’ he said vaguely. ‘Straight after I demobbed.’
‘Gosh, were you in the trenches?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a bit different to that here.’
He turned around and gave her a very odd smile.
‘Yes. In some ways,’ he said.
No more was spoken until they reached the kitchen.
But now Edie was in best black-and-whites, listening to Mrs Munn’s pep talk on how to behave when serving dinner guests.
She felt like breaking in and telling the woman that she’d been to enough dinners to know what was done and not done, but she had to endure the sermon without interruption.
In the background, Ted was eating a chicken leg and grinning at her.
It was too bad of him – Edie was flustered enough already and when he winked at her she had to look away and block him from her mind.
She was already a little feverish at the prospect of being in the same room as Sir Charles again. What was this peculiar fascination he held for her? She had never been drawn to such characters before. The thought that Jenny might be accurate in her surmise that he would notice her and try to seduce her made her feel alternately hot and cold all over.
By the time Mrs Munn’s talk was through, Edie felt an uncomfortable band of sweat beneath the elastic of her cap. All she could think of was the way he had looked up at her from the forecourt below, a blend of curiosity and something else, something she had never thought much about because it frightened her.
The trap. The thing that caught so many good women and took them out of the world, where they could have forged a path of their own.
She thought about this all the time she helped to lay the table, placing forks within forks and spoons below spoons. Jenny showed her how to fold the napkins ‘the Deverell way’ but she was clumsy and could not manage to pleat them properly, so she was sent to set out the glasses instead.
Cars had been pulling up outside the house all evening. Ted Kempe had made several journeys to and from the station as well.
She could hear the muffled voices from the reception room beyond and she tried to make out what people might be saying, but it was too hard. Now and again she heard the fruity, theatrical tones of Lady Deverell, followed always by laughter. This made her knees weaken. Sir Charles’s voice was distinctive too, but he didn’t seem to amuse quite as much.
Stanhope, the butler, sailed into the room just as the last piece of crystal was set in place.
‘Take your positions,’ he muttered.
Like frilled centurions, Edie and Jenny stood guard by the table, with four other servants, while Stanhope threw wide the large double doors on the far side of the room to announce dinner.
There were twenty-four at table and Edie found a vicarious interest in looking at the gowns and jewels as they shimmered past, adorning pale aristocratic flesh.
She did not know the woman on Sir Charles Deverell’s arm, but she saw him cast the quickest little dart of a glance in Edie’s direction before pulling out his companion’s chair.
Lady Mary was gorgeous in royal-blue satin overlaid with net, beaded and jewelled at the neckline and on the sleeves. She was transparently a female version of her brother, his dark looks softened and made sleek on her smaller canvas.