Manor of Secrets
Authors: Katherine Longshore
CONTENTS
A
dventure awaits.
Charlotte Edmonds stood on the patio and looked out across the wide expanse of lawn. The canopy glowed flat white against a backdrop of trees, surrounded by men in linen jackets and women in pastel silks and floaty chiffons. Like ants at a picnic, milling and gossiping and picking at bits of food. Perfectly content.
But hardly an adventure.
Charlotte fidgeted with the buttons on her gloves, avoiding eye contact with her mother. Lady Diane sat on a chaise in the shade of an ancient oak. Her blonde hair didn’t show a hint of gray, and her slate-colored and severely tailored day dress only served to heighten the steel of her eyes. The space beside her yawned empty, waiting for Charlotte to fill it.
Expectation of Charlotte’s every future move laid out in pale silk and small talk.
The thought made Charlotte want to run. Across the terrace, over the ha-ha, and into the trees beyond. Never to look back.
But the ha-ha lay at the far end of the lawn, and she’d have to dodge neighbors, footmen, and her mother to get there. And then dive the four feet to the pasture below. Her bid for freedom would surely result in broken bones and a near-terminal decline in social standing. Her mother would scarcely give her time to heal before packing her up and sending her off to finishing school.
And her life would be over at sixteen.
So Charlotte smoothed the lace of her dress — an anemic-looking ecru that Lady Diane insisted was the height of fashion — and pasted on her best smile. She pointed herself in the direction of the party and stepped onto the lawn.
As she passed the new footman, Lawrence, Charlotte used her imagination to turn him into a dashing cavalier. Those high cheekbones and extraordinarily dark blue eyes were just too enchanting to be wasted on a mere manservant. He would have to be a deposed Italian prince, who would carry her off to live in a community of poets and adventurers who never talked about the weather.
“Think it will rain?”
Charlotte came crashing back to The Manor and her mother’s garden party. Lord Andrew Broadhurst hovered near her right elbow.
Safe, dependable, ever-present Andrew Broadhurst. With his dependably brown hair flopping over one dependably brown eye, dressed dependably in white linen and a straw boater hat.
Eighteen, heir to the Earl of Ashdown, with a good head for business and cricket and not much else. Lady Diane loved him, despite his rather quirky habit of asking how the pudding was made.
Perfect marriage material
.
The sun beat down on the back of Charlotte’s neck, making her feel itchy and cross. She opened her mouth to snipe, but over Andrew’s shoulder, she saw her mother watching.
So Charlotte lifted her chin a little and tipped her head to one side, smiling up at him from just beneath the veil of her new hat.
“Why, yes,” she said. “Yes, I think it will.” Adding in her mind,
Eventually
. It always rained in England eventually. It would be September on Friday. Surely the drought couldn’t last forever.
Andrew frowned up at the sky — a clear blue like something found in a hand-painted photograph.
Charlotte took the temporary distraction as a gift and used it to excuse herself, earning a glare from her mother but also a chance to breathe again beneath her corset, which seemed to tighten every time Andrew approached.
Skirting the edge of the party, Charlotte sought relief in the shade of the canopy and in the company of Frances Caldwell, her only friend in the entire crowd.
“What have you been daydreaming about?” Fran asked. Her blonde hair was cut daringly short, and perfectly framed her heart-shaped face, the corner of her little bow mouth tipped up into a teasing smile.
“Escape.” Charlotte cast a quick look at her mother, hoping she was less observant than Fran.
“And the new footman,” Fran whispered. “I can tell.”
Then she turned and waved Lawrence over.
Charlotte felt a blush start to rise and tried suppressing it with thoughts of throwing Fran into The Manor’s lake. But Fran just swiped a lemon ice from Lawrence’s tray and thanked him politely. Lawrence inclined his head and turned away.
“He
is
handsome,” Fran said before he walked out of earshot. Charlotte thought she saw Lawrence hesitate as if waiting to hear her reply, his head turned slightly so she could see the line of his jaw.
Charlotte imagined herself coming up with the perfect reply. But she couldn’t in real life. She hesitated for so long, Lawrence carried the ices to the rest of the guests and Fran changed the subject.
“Where are your brothers?” Fran asked, craning her neck to look at the guests, and then up at The Manor itself. She innocently studied the Tudor brick façade and the long stripes of windows that reflected the sky. Charlotte heard the feigned indifference in her friend’s voice and knew Fran was really asking about Charlotte’s eldest brother, David.
“Out,” Charlotte said and smiled.
“All
five
of them?” Fran choked.
“London, Army, Navy, Cambridge, boating.” Charlotte ticked them off on her fingers. Her brothers weren’t imprisoned at The Manor. They could do
anything
.
“No wonder the party is dull.” Fran rolled her eyes. “Your mother is a fashionable hostess, but she doesn’t invite any eligible
men
.”
Charlotte laughed. “There’s always
Lord
Andrew Broadhurst.”
“He’s really quite appealing in the right light,” Fran said. They both turned to watch him. He stood at the very edge of the lawn and appeared to be in earnest conversation with
Lawrence while the ices melted. Probably about the weather. Despite Fran’s assessment, Charlotte thought the light favored the footman. She sighed.
“He’s rich,” Fran pronounced. “You could do worse, Charlotte.”
“Maybe I want to do better.”
“You think you can marry a duke?”
“I want to fall in love.”
Fran stuck out her lower lip and blew a curl off her forehead, which Charlotte took as a show of contempt.
Sometimes Fran reminded Charlotte of Lady Diane. Perhaps it was because Fran wanted to marry David and become the next lady of The Manor. And seeing that the current lady was deep in conversation with Fran’s mother, it looked like that might be a distinct possibility.
“Who is that?” Fran asked suddenly.
Charlotte craned her neck. All she saw were neighbors. Her mother’s friends.
“Who is who?” she asked.
“No, you little owl.” Fran laughed and put her face next to Charlotte’s. She pointed
past
the party, to where the lawn met the trees. “Her.”
The girl definitely wasn’t a party guest. Gray cotton dress, thick black stockings, and sensible black shoes. Her brown
hair in its bun turned reddish in the sunlight. She glanced back over her shoulder quickly, giving Charlotte a split-second view of her face, then walked away, her stride purposeful.
“The kitchen maid?”
“Is that a question or a statement?” Fran raised an eyebrow. “Is The Manor so big that you don’t know your own staff?”
It was, actually. The upstairs alone required twenty servants — from the very visible and utterly formal butler, Foyle, to the hall boy who could only be seen if one woke up early enough to catch him carrying the wood to the fireplaces. There was no telling how many staff worked in the stables, laundry, gardens, scullery, and kitchens. Downstairs was
terra incognita
— an entirely different world, populated by myths and wraiths and an ever-changing array of workers.
But Fran sounded so … accusatory.
“It was a statement,” Charlotte said emphatically, and seized on the information that appeared in the deep recesses of her mind. “Her name is Jenny. I think she broke her collarbone diving off the ha-ha a couple of years ago.”
“How positively irresponsible of her,” Fran replied. “Why isn’t she in the kitchen?”
Charlotte wasn’t sure she cared. “Getting more cress from the garden for the sandwiches?”
Fran turned to face her. “
That
is not where the gardens are.
That
is the way to the rockery and the lake.”
Fran stood with her arms akimbo, her gloved fists resting on the minty green skirts of her day dress. Demanding an answer.
Charlotte could only shrug.
“You don’t even care that one of your staff members is wandering away in the middle of a party?” Fran asked. “What if she dives off the ha-ha again?”
“Does it matter?” Charlotte’s irritation rose with Fran’s questioning. “Maybe it’s her afternoon off.”
“During a
party
?” Fran said. “She should be in the kitchen. That girl is definitely up to something.”
Charlotte imagined the kitchen maid meeting a boy in the forest, trading locks of hair and kisses. Or perhaps she was selling secrets to a spy.
Not that The Manor had any secrets to keep.
Fran grabbed Charlotte’s hand and started dragging her across the lawn. “We’re going to find out.”
“We can’t just leave.” Charlotte tugged her hand out of Fran’s grip. She glanced at the empty space next to Lady Diane, still waiting to be filled.
Charlotte imagined walking past it, not caring what was expected of her. She was always brave and spontaneous in her
imagination. It was the only way to continue to be herself in real life.
Just once, Charlotte wanted to do the unexpected. Be irresponsible. She watched Jenny’s straight back disappear around the corner of The Manor. Fran was right. The kitchen maid couldn’t have the afternoon off.
That
was a spontaneous girl.
Charlotte followed Fran around the edge of the party, trying to appear casual. She caught Lawrence watching her, but she quickly looked away and increased her pace until she reached the shelter of the woods.
Walking beneath the canopy of the trees was like walking into a cave. The temperature dropped, the light disappeared. Charlotte had to blink a few times to adjust her eyes, and a prickle of gooseflesh ran up her arms.
Her mother didn’t let her go into the woods alone. Lady Diane said mud was for men, and the state of the gun room proved it. But the days without rain had solidified the woodland path and turned the fallen leaves brittle and whispery.
Up ahead, the kitchen maid’s dress had disappeared into the gloom, but Fran’s pale silk glowed ghostly in the freckled light. Charlotte followed this like a beacon. They wove between the trees and around the artfully tumbled boulders of the rockery and down the slope to the lake.
She caught up to Fran, who was pressed up against the trunk of a wide, ancient oak, peering around it.
The kitchen maid, Jenny (or was it Jean?), paused on the muddy bank, then sat down on a rock and removed her shoes and rolled off her stockings.
“What is she doing?” Fran gasped. “It’s indecent!”
Gingerly, the kitchen maid stood and walked to the mud at the edge of the lake, her toes in the water and her face lifted to the sky above. The very picture of bliss.
Not indecent at all.
The water looked so cool. So inviting. So much nicer than the garden party. Charlotte wished she could trade places with the kitchen maid. Wished she had that much freedom. She curled her toes inside her kid leather slippers, imagining they were digging into the mud. Felt the caress of the water as she stepped farther in.