Secrets and Lords. Justine Elyot
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Thomas. He had a thin moustache that did not look as if it had much more growth in it and his eyes were tired and hooded.
And then – yes, it could only be Lady Deverell, in sweeping floor-length emerald silk that swished about her and was overlaid with a cloud of black tulle. The emeralds at her throat and in her tiara set off the deep red of her hair, while swirls of black beads decorated her bodice and the hem of her skirts. She was like a creature from another world, and yet she was so familiar that Edie’s throat tightened and ached.
Lord Deverell, at her side, was a grizzled, faded nobody.
Edie felt a blush of transferred shame, as if all the gossip that must inevitably be attached to their marriage had infected her. But she was nothing to do with it.
The guests were mainly elderly, it seemed, with a sprinkling of younger people, perhaps their children. Everybody was talking about the grouse and salmon seasons, so perhaps they were fellow landowners from the local area.
She could not take her eyes off Lady Deverell, who smiled as brightly as the electric lamps at the theatre, dazzling the candlelight into a dim second place. But her smile was strange, not quite natural. At times it almost looked as if it wavered at the edges of her lips and then it found renewed purpose and flashed again in its full glory. Her eyes wandered, frequently settling on Sir Charles, who seemed to know a lot about their baffling topic of conversation and held the floor with effortless authority. She leant towards him when he cut across or contradicted his father and gave him an extra gleam of her teeth. She was amazingly beautiful.
Lady Deverell looked towards her, sharply, as if she had noticed Edie’s unbroken gaze. Edie dropped her eyes and looked instead at Jenny, who signalled that they were to serve the soup which had been brought up from the kitchen.
When she reached the table, Lady Deverell was still looking at her, but not hostilely now. She had a distant, dreamy kind of look upon her face, but it disappeared when somebody asked her about her jewels, whisking her back into the social slipstream.
Edie had been consigned to the end of the table, serving six of the elderly guests, but even at this distance Lady Deverell’s radiance reached out to her. Her hand shook and she could barely breathe.
‘Be careful, girl,’ snapped a dowager in pink and black lace.
A splash of soup had escaped the ladle and spotted the cloth.
‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ blurted Edie, desperate not to draw attention to herself.
The tiny contretemps had reached the notice of Sir Charles, however, for Edie became hotly conscious of his eye upon her. If only he would look away.
She avoided his gaze as studiously as she could, attending to her other guests, but when she glanced back up, he still watched her.
Her grip on the ladle slipped and it fell with a clatter back into the tureen.
Lord Deverell frowned and several ladies tutted, their jewels flashing as they turned to grimace at each other.
Edie apologised again, on the verge of tears. This was all a terrible mistake. She would catch the mail train back to London and tell papa she was sorry, she had been wrong and he had been right, could she now take back her old life, please?
‘Leave her be.’
The voice was rich and commanding and it belonged to Sir Charles.
‘She is new, I think. Isn’t that so?’
Edie nodded, wanting to be anywhere but this place, with all these eyes upon her.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, then. First-night nerves. You know all about them, don’t you, mama?’ The way he said this, with a sneer, to Lady Deverell made Edie gasp, and she was not alone.
‘Charles!’ Lord Deverell reproved his son.
‘Sorry, did I speak out of turn?’ He sat back, dabbing his napkin at his lips with an insolent air.
Lady Deverell was flushed but it only made her more beautiful. She levelled a combative stare at Sir Charles and shook her head.
For a moment there was silence while stepmother and stepson locked everybody else in the room out of their mutual tension, then somebody complimented the soup and everybody rushed to agree.
Edie, for the moment, was forgotten, and she melted back into her place with gratitude, waiting for the first course to be finished.
The fever that had affected her on her first sighting of Lady Deverell eventually wore off and Edie was a better mistress of herself when called upon to serve the other courses. She was thankful to be at the end of the table furthest from the family, able to watch them without having to get too near.
Lady Mary sulked about coming back from the London season too early and missing the best closing balls, while Lord Deverell heavy-handedly reminded her that there was a good reason for that, which made her sulk all the more.
Edie exchanged a look with Jenny that asked, ‘What reason?’ Jenny responded with a tiny shrug.
Conversation was far from lively. Sir Charles occasionally attempted to stir things up with a sly barb or two, but nobody seemed to be in sufficient spirits to react in the way he wanted. Sir Thomas barely spoke at all, glaring down at his plate as if he saw the face of a mortal enemy in it.
Edie was lulled by the low murmurs, the scraping of knives and forks on fine china, the low light and the ambient warmth into a kind of daze. Her legs and feet ached and her head was so fuzzy now. She had been awake since five o’clock in the morning and she had walked as many miles inside the house as she had outside it.
Could they not just finish their meal quickly and let her go to bed?
Through half-shut eyes, she saw the red-gold glow of Lady Deverell and the gleam of Sir Charles’s teeth, dangerously bared. Points of light from various gems danced across the walls and ceilings behind them. The wallpaper pattern was a repetitive curl of red and gold, a curiously soothing thing to look at. She fixed her attention on it, lulled, comforted. She leant back against the door jamb, feeling her legs twitch a little and then …
A kick on her shin.
‘Keep upright,’ hissed Jenny.
She had been on the point of falling asleep where she stood, like a horse. How did anyone live this life without doing so all the time? And this was only her first day.
Somehow she dragged her body through pudding, but it was still another half-hour before the ladies retired to the drawing room.
She swooped forwards to take the dishes downstairs for the last time. Gathering the last of them up, she made the mistake of looking again at Sir Charles, who was smiling at her as he poured himself a brandy. The smile struck Edie as predatory and she made a hasty escape to the kitchen, feeling like one of the grouse they had spoken of shooting at.
‘Told you,’ said Jenny at the bottom of the staircase. ‘He’s got an eye for you already. Watch yourself, girl.’
‘I don’t want to watch anything,’ said Edie, stacking the dishes up by the sink, thanking her lucky stars that she wouldn’t be washing them. ‘I want to shut my eyes and fall into my bed.’
‘Aren’t you coming for a game of cards in the kitchen?’
‘I simply can’t. I’m half asleep already.’
‘Fair enough. Sweet dreams, then. I hope they won’t be of him. I don’t want to see you go Susie’s way.’
‘I won’t.’
* * *
Edie’s dreams were of nothing, or, if they had substance, it soon melted from her memory. Her first consciousness was of a foreign place, a bed too hard, a pillow too flat, and a peculiar smell of other bodies and their exhalations.
She was the only one abed. The other three girls were dressing already, yawning and tying