Secrets and Lords

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 each other’s apron laces.

The rain still beat dully against the little square-paned window and somebody had thought to light a candle, even though the summer dawn had broken half an hour since.

Edie had never risen this early, save on a handful of special occasions, and she bitterly resented having to leave the warmth of her bed to engage in a day of more hard and mystifying work.

The girls seemed disinclined to talk, going about their morning ablutions in pale-faced trances. The memory of Charles and Lady Deverell at last night’s dinner hit Edie once more – a big, nauseating blow. Why had she been so stupid as to get herself noticed? All she had had to do was serve some soup, for heaven’s sake.

‘How was the bed? Could you sleep in it?’ asked Jenny, coming up behind Edie as she brushed her hair, having waited patiently for the use of the room’s only mirror.

‘Oh, it was a little narrow, but comfortable enough,’ she said vaguely.

‘I was so pleased to have a bed to meself, I never worried about its being narrow,’ confided Jenny. ‘Had to share with two sisters back at home. Have you got brothers or sisters?’

‘None.’

‘You won’t be missing them, then. Is your ma and pa alive?’

‘I live with my father. Lived,’ she corrected.

‘He’ll feel your absence, then. Only child gone away from home.’

She pursed her lips sympathetically. Edie, feeling underhanded and low for garnering the girl’s simple compassion, merely smiled tightly and put the brush down.

‘Could you arrange my hair? I have no skill for it myself.’

‘You’ll have to get it,’ said Jenny with a laugh. ‘Heavens, you need to be able to do these things. You’ll never rise to lady’s maid if you can’t fix hair.’

‘You’re quite right. I wonder, Jenny, would you let me practise on you sometimes?’

‘If you like.’

There was a silence while Jenny’s fingers worked deftly on Edie’s heavy auburn hair.

‘You’ve got such a lovely lot of it,’ she said, fixing the cap on top with a quantity of pins. ‘It’s just like Lady Deverell’s – that glorious colour too. I’ve always longed to be her maid and get my hands on those locks. I can play with yours instead now.’

Edie laughed. ‘I’ve been told I have a look of her sometimes. Do you think so?’

Jenny narrowed her eyes, looking over Edie’s shoulder into the mirror.

‘The hair, yes. The eyes, no. Hers are blue, yours are brown. And your nose is completely different … but I think in the shape of the face … Well, let’s say I wouldn’t get you mixed up from the front, but I might from behind, if your hair was down.’

‘There are many worse people to resemble,’ said Edie.

‘Yes, look at me, I’m told I favour Little Tich.’

Edie burst out laughing. ‘Oh, you don’t!’ she exclaimed. ‘That’s a wicked and cruel thing to say.’

Verity, the senior housemaid of the group, stood in the doorway tutting.

‘Enough of that,’ she said. ‘You’ll be late for breakfast. Jenny, you aren’t her lady’s maid, for heaven’s sake. If she can’t do her own hair, it’s high time she learned.’

Downstairs – such a way downstairs – Edie served herself a ladleful of porridge from the big pan and sat down at the long trestle. She did not want to draw attention to herself, but she had questions on her mind and hoped somebody would be able to answer them.

In the event, Ted did the job for her, without her having to say a word.

‘Morning, Topsy,’ he said, ruffling her hair as he passed. ‘Can’t stay, I’m afraid – got to take His Lordship to London.’

‘He is going away?’

‘Yes, some shindig at the club, birthday do, I think. Nice little jaunt to the Smoke for me. Wish you could come.’

‘Ted,’ reproved Mrs Munn. ‘That will do.’

He saluted her and made a brisk exit, grabbing his peaked cap from the nail by the door as he went.

‘In view of yesterday’s somewhat inauspicious start,’ Mrs Munn continued, addressing herself to Edie, ‘I’m going to have Jenny keep an eye on you again today. If there’s any repetition of the fiasco with the mirror, I’ll have to consider letting you go. Is that clear?’

‘Perfectly, Mrs Munn,’ said Edie, feeling like a recalcitrant schoolgirl. No Latin prose had ever been as challenging as the mysteries of cleaning and serving, though.

* * *

‘Ted likes you,’ said Jenny, kneeling down beside Edie to sweep the first of a great many fireplaces free of ashes.

‘Oh, he’s a ladies’ man, though, isn’t he? I bet he’s like that with all the girls.’

‘Not all of them,’ Jenny insisted. ‘A lot of the girls are after him, though. He does wear that uniform well.’ She let out a tiny sigh.

‘Oh, Jenny, do you …?’ She left the question delicately poised.

‘It’s a silly daydream, that’s all it is. Plain little Jenny Wrens don’t land fellows like that. I’ll live and die in this place, I don’t doubt.’

‘Oh, don’t say that.’ But Edie knew Jenny was right. Men were scarce these days and those who remained were keenly sought after.

‘I suppose Ted fought in the war?’

‘Yes, he was an infantryman. Fought in the trenches, he did. He won’t never talk about it though. Says he’d rather forget all about it.’

‘And what about … the Deverell sons?’ Edie’s heart stepped up its pace at the mere mention of the name. Damn Charles Deverell and his insidious ways. ‘Did they go to the Front?’

‘Yes, both of them. I’ve told you, haven’t I, about poor Sir Thomas and his shrapnel wound. Very unlucky. Mind you, I suppose he’s still alive, at least.’

Edie wanted to ask after Charles, but she did not trust herself to speak his name without putting in some nuance of tone that might give her away. Jenny already suspected her of a pash on him. Was she right? No, she could not be right. The man was a perfect stranger, and not a very nice one at that.

Instead, they chatted about inconsequential things while grates were black-leaded and floors swept.

They were working in the morning room, Edie on her knees, making heavy work of polishing the fender, when their joint rendition of ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ was silenced by the entrance of a family member.

‘No, do continue,’ Charles said, sinking into a chair and unfolding a newspaper. ‘A little music while I read would be rather congenial, as it happens.’

Edie’s fingers clenched around the cloth, her arm too stiff to move for a moment or two. She did not dare move, knowing that every inch of her skin from the tips of her ears downwards was burning bright. She willed Jenny to ignore her.

‘How’s our new girl?’ he asked softly. ‘Getting into the swing of things?’

Edie made no reply, and Charles did not pursue the conversation. For a deeply uncomfortable half-hour there was no sound but the rustling of newspaper and the scrubbing of iron. She was mortifyingly aware of her bottom sticking out in its tight black skirt, swaying from side to side as she worked. She felt sure that Charles Deverell was watching it. Her skin prickled, an itch at the back of her neck. And something else too – a damp heat between her thighs that she wished would go away.

A masculine cough, the click of a lighter, then the smell of cigarette smoke wafting over her. He wanted her to be aware of him. With rising excitement she wondered, what would happen if Jenny was not in the room?

Would he come over to her, crouch down beside her, tell her he knew that she thought of him, put his hand on her spine and rub it up and down, moving ever lower until he reached her bottom …

This was not a profitable line of speculation. She shut it down and forced herself to concentrate on conferring a high shine upon the poker and the shovel instead.

The only person to come and crouch beside her was Jenny.

‘Next room,’ she whispered. ‘Grate’s looking lovely, too, that’s a nice job you’ve done.’

Only because she had displaced all her thoughts about Charles into hard work, Edie realised. The next task might not absorb her so thoroughly.

She picked up her trug and tried to walk primly out of the room without looking at the indolent Lord in his chair of state, but at the last minute she flicked him a sideways glance and saw that he was watching her.

She lifted her chin higher and stared ahead.

‘Dinner at eight again? I’ll look forward to it,’ he drawled as she hurried through the door.

‘What was all that? Why are you flirting with him?’ hissed Jenny, once they had attained the freedom of the corridor.

‘Flirting with him! I’m doing no such thing. I didn’t even look at him, didn’t even answer his question.’

‘To him, that’s flirting. The more you run, the harder he chases. The worst thing you can do is ignore him.’

‘But that makes no sense. Are you saying that I should, should … make sheep’s eyes at him and then he’ll lose interest and pursue some other poor girl? Perhaps I should offer myself to him. Is that what I should do?’

Her agitation seemed to quell Jenny’s suspicions, but she did not sound entirely convinced when she said, ‘I’m sorry. You weren’t flirting, I know that. But I’d make sure I was never alone in a room with him if I was you.’

He ruins girls. He could ruin me.

Chapter Three

Carrie, the indisposed housemaid, was better and so Edie was not called upon to serve the family at dinner that night.

Instead she sat in the kitchen with the cook, the scullery maids and various low-level male staff, drifting in and out of their conversation while she stitched at a rent she had made in her sleeve.

‘You’re accident-prone, you, aren’t yer?’ remarked Mrs Fingall, tiring of some talk about how Lady Mary had reacted to a mail delivery that morning.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Edie. ‘I’m fearfully clumsy. Have been from a child.’

‘Perhaps service ain’t for you,’ suggested the cook. ‘All that precious china up there. Clumsy people ought to keep away from it. Gawd, ain’t you never sewed before? You’re making a hash of that too. Here, let me.’

She sat beside Edie and took over the operation, her sausage fingers surprisingly deft with the needle.

‘Little bird tells me,’ she said in a low voice once the youngsters had started joshing each other about sweethearts, ‘that one or two fellas round here is sweet on you.’

‘Oh, no,’ protested Edie, wanting to get up and run away, but trapped by the thread that Mrs Fingall held taut.

‘I’m sure you’ve been warned about our Sir Charlie,’ she carried on. ‘So I won’t repeat what’s already been said. But Ted’s a lovely lad. A real prize. Do you think you could look kindly on him?’

Put on the spot, Edie could not pluck one single word from the air.

She swallowed and shook her head, then nodded, then shook her head again.

‘Oh, I am not here for … for that kind of thing,’ she whispered.

‘Of course not. And quite right too. Just, you know, if you ever was so inclined … you could do a lot worse.’ She winked.

A bell rang and Edie glanced up at the complicated system of pulleys and levers that hung on the far wall.

‘Sir Thomas for you, Giles,’ Mrs Fingall called out.

The footman leapt up from the table and dashed away.

‘I’d get to my bed if I were you, dear,’ said Mrs Fingall, cutting the thread with her teeth and tying a final knot. ‘They’ll be finished at dinner soon and they won’t need you for anything more.’

‘Yes, I think I will,’ said Edie, eager for some solitude.

Alone in the attic, she looked out of the window and thought about how far she was from home, in more senses than the strictly geographic. She had never realised how easy her life was, nor how free she had been compared to most women. And not just the servants either. Lady Mary was discontented, straining against the yoke of her father’s expectations for her. Most women lived in prison. She had heard it said but had never understood it as fully as she did now.

She sat on the bed, pulled her knees up to her chin and thought of Sir Charles. It was different for him. He could do as he liked and nobody called him to account. It made her angry, made her want to seek him out and slap his face.

But, of course, that was impossible.

What about Lady Deverell? Was she the most imprisoned of all, forced to play a role for the rest of her life, even though she had fled the stage? If only she could ask her. If only things could be simple.

The thunder of feet on the back stairs drove her to undress quickly and slip into bed, where she feigned sleep before she could be questioned on anything further.

‘Sir Charles wants her,’ she heard Jenny say.

‘Do you think she’ll fall for him?’

‘They all do, don’t they?’

A sigh.

‘If only he’d fall back,’ said Verity. ‘But he never does.’

‘Surely Lord Deverell’d kick him out if he got another girl in the family way.’

‘Maybe. Remember how it was when they found out about Susie?’

There was a collective shudder.

‘You could hear the shouting right across the lawns.’

They fell silent then and Edie waited, curled up on her side, until each body creaked into its bed and the candle was snuffed.

As the girls drifted into sleep, Edie thought back to Mrs Fingall’s words at the trestle table. Could she think of looking kindly on Ted?

Ted.

It would not do to be mooning over a chauffeur. He was lovely, of course, but no doubt he was the same with all the girls. He was a natural flirt, that was all.

Besides, there was to be none of this lovey-dovey frippery for Edie Crossland. She had not spent the last seven years wedded to the Women’s Suffrage movement to be swept off her feet by a fellow in a peaked cap who dropped his aitches. It was inconceivable.

No, he was a helpful friend, and that was as much as he could be. Love was the silly trap into which so many good women fell. It was not going to catch her.

And why was sleep staying so stubbornly away tonight? An hour ago, as she toiled up the back staircase, she had been fantasising about her old bed with its pile of pillows and patchwork throw. Every limb ached, her feet were blistered and her eyelids were gritty with the day’s exertion, and yet her mind would not let her be.

It persisted in going back over the emotions of the last forty-eight hours, so that she swirled in a vortex of fear, exhilaration, curiosity, humiliation, attraction.

The narrow bed was less than comfortable, and the air of the high-up room was thick and humid. She needed to clear her head.

Slippers and dressing gown on, she stole out of the stifling dormitory and down the uncarpeted back stairs, as quietly as she could. At first, she had no notion of where she might wander, but it soon occurred to her that she could find Lady Deverell’s room and stand, albeit divided by the door, in the close presence of that fascinating woman.

She had had the opportunity to drink her in at yesterday’s dinner, but today had brought disappointingly few glimpses of the red-haired beauty. She had watched her cross the lawn in her riding habit, head low and stride determined. How much better, though, to perhaps see her, through a keyhole, in repose. The mask she wore every day would be stripped away and she would see the woman behind it, unadorned and unshielded.

Edie slunk on silent feet along the confusing maze of corridors she had negotiated earlier in the day, trying to remember which had led where.

A wrong turn took her to the library, and she was at once thrilled and soothed by its familiar bookish smell, naturally drawn to the shelves where she squinted to make out the gold lettering on the spines. But the night was too cloudy and the light from the arched stained glass windows too dim as a consequence.

There would be no reading in here tonight.

She found at length the right staircase and the corresponding corridor and walked along it swiftly, taking no notice of portraits and busts that might otherwise interest her, until she was in the wing that housed Lady Deverell’s private rooms.

Did she sleep with Lord Deverell? He had a private bedroom and dressing room at the far end of the same corridor. She knew this was a usual arrangement in the grandest of the old family houses, but it struck her as strange. Did they make appointments for love? Or were the separate rooms a mere formality, an age-old habit they did not possess the modernist urge to break?

Here was her door.

And, oh.

What were these noises coming from behind that door? Surely Lord Deverell was in London? He must have returned straight after the gathering, Ted driving him through the night back to his wife’s side. He must be in the grip of passion.

Edie put her hands to her furiously heating cheeks, guilt-ridden at her snooping now. She should not be here. She should go back to bed immediately.

And yet she found she could not come away from the luxurious moans and sighs that poured through the keyhole.

The act of love. That thing she despised and feared, and yet was fascinated by. She had read Freud and found it terrifying, throwing the book aside in repulsion. No man would make her want to do such a thing.

But what was such a thing? She had never seen it, and reading about things was not always the same, loth as she was to admit the treacherous fact.

Lord Deverell, she knew, was a man nearing his sixties, while his new wife was barely forty. Did she desire him, truly? Surely everybody knew it was a transaction – his wealth and status for her fleshly charms and charismatic glamour.

But love?

Perhaps it was. And, if so, what did love look like? She bent to the keyhole, all the while in a kind of horrified trance, her body driving her towards actions of which, in the light of day, she would strongly disapprove.

At first, she saw that the room was in dim light, the gasoliers on the wall turned down low. The huge four-poster bed could be seen only from an angle that hid the heads of the occupants, but she could see the lower portion, and two pairs of feet protruding from the covers. The larger pair lay between the smaller, and the sheets and counterpane rose up from them into an arch – an arch that moved, quite vigorously and in a rhythmic pattern that matched the low grunts emitting from the unseen upper half.

If this was love, it seemed awfully brutal, thought Edie with dismay, and really little more than animalistic. The creak-creak-creak of the bed springs masked some words being spoken, but then a female voice grew louder and higher, and they became distinct.

‘Yes, you awful, awful beast of a man, have your way with me.’

Edie grimaced. It sounded so savage, almost as if she hated her husband. Perhaps she did.

And then tears came to her eyes as she matched the violent, half-delirious voice with the mellifluous tones she had heard on stage, playing Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. This was what she had come to – loveless coupling with an old man who had bought her.

‘Oh, Ruby Red, you’re mine, you are,’ vowed a deeper voice, snarled up in pain by the sound of it.

‘I’ve told you, don’t call me that!’ objected Lady Deverell, and then her words were muffled, as if he had placed a hand across her mouth.

‘I’ll call you what I damn well like, you bitch.’

Edie drew in a great breath, almost nerved to hammer on the door and drag that dreadful man off his poor wife. But then she heard the most unexpected sound, a high-pitched melting into pleasurable surrender, still coming from behind the obstructing door but none the less clear for it; then falling, sobbing, into a deep sigh.

‘That’s it,’ hissed Lord Deverell, almost inaudibly – but by now Edie’s ear was honed and she caught every syllable. ‘You love it, don’t you? You love what I do to you. Oh, God.’

And now it was his turn to tumble into that dangerous uncontrollable place his wife had just visited.

He made the most terrible, frightening sounds, like a man raging into battle, and Edie saw his feet stretch straight out, every muscle tense, then relax.

The feet flexed and moved, all four together, while the coverlet tent collapsed. The voices lowered to murmurings and languid kissing.

Edie, feeling horribly sick, stood straight, wanting very much to run outside and get some air, regardless of the lashing rain, which had begun again.