Manor of Secrets (13 page)

Charlotte stood and wrapped Janie in a hug, but dropped her arms immediately when the other girl flinched.

“Of course you’re good enough to be a lady’s maid, Janie. You’re bright and … and … and eloquent. You shouldn’t run yourself down so.”

“I am content with my station in life.” Janie’s voice was as brittle as the stiffness in her limbs.

Charlotte recognized one of her mother’s personal vexations. Lady Diane complained about servants who left The Manor to work in the city. About scullery maids who wanted to go to the local school. About the working poor who emigrated to America. About Charlotte wanting more than marriage and menus and calling cards. Lady Diane said everyone should be content with his or her station in life. As she was.

“Well, you shouldn’t be.”

Janie looked like she’d been slapped, but didn’t lift her gaze from her hands clasped in front of her. “You know best, Lady Charlotte.”

The silence that followed rang tinny and loud in Charlotte’s ears, and she felt the afternoon’s cakes thick and sweet in the back of her throat.

“Don’t you want to be more?” Charlotte asked. “My mother wants me to marry Andrew Broadhurst.
To be a countess. But I want to wait for someone better for
me
. Don’t you see? I want to be with someone I can … enjoy kissing. Someone who can hold a conversation about something that interests
me
. I don’t just want to be a wife. I want to be a … a …
person
. Don’t you?”

“I only ever wanted to be a cook,” Janie said, the defiance returning to her voice. “It’s what I’m good at.”

“But what about love?” Charlotte asked. She almost asked about Harry. She could imagine Janie and Harry together. Easily.

Janie looked up at her. “It earned my mother nothing but heartbreak. And it made her lose her job.”

“Why are there all these rules?” Charlotte cried.

Janie looked startled. “It’s the way things are,” she said, and her tone was so matter-of-fact that Charlotte almost believed her. “Though maybe not the way we’d like them to be.”

Almost
believed her.

“I have to think things can be different,” Charlotte said vehemently. “That things can change. Or my life will be over when Lord Broadhurst finally proposes.”

Charlotte was surprised when Janie laughed.

“It’s probably not necessary to be so dramatic,” Janie said. “But let’s see what we can do to stem the tide of the apocalypse, shall we?”

Charlotte laughed, too.

“Let’s give a little truth to our lie, as well,” she said, and pushed Janie toward the dressing table. “Sit.”

“What are you going to do?” Janie looked up over her shoulder.

“Show you how to do a chignon.” Charlotte turned Janie’s face toward the mirror and loosened her hair. It fell in thick waves, a deep rich brown with those red highlights.

“Oh, Janie, you have such lovely hair,” Charlotte said, picking it up and hefting the weight of it.

Janie just pursed her lips together, but Charlotte noticed she looked pleased.

Charlotte reached for her hairbrush and began running it through Janie’s hair in long, deft strokes. Janie winced once or twice when it caught in a tangle, but then closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair, letting Charlotte’s hands run through the long strands.

“Your aunt was downstairs,” Janie said. “She was asking about my mother.”

Charlotte paused. Aunt Beatrice got more intriguing by the hour.

“Why?”

Janie sighed. “I think she’s offered her a job.”

“Oh.” Charlotte twisted the hair into a rope, smoothing strands as she went. She wondered if Mrs. Seward would take the job. If she’d take Janie with her. But Charlotte had just found Janie. She couldn’t stand to see her go. She wondered if she could convince her mother to keep Janie on as a maid. “Watch.”

Janie’s eyes opened. “Don’t tell Lady Diane,” she said. “Please. Just
thinking
of going somewhere else could get Ma sacked.”

Charlotte nodded and curled the rope around itself, tucking the end beneath the rest, making sure all the pieces that might frizz were well hidden.

“Would you go, too?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

“Lady Beatrice is only one person.” Janie’s voice sounded small and scared. “I don’t think she’ll need a kitchen maid.”

Relief tingled all the way down to Charlotte’s fingers. Until she realized they were the only things holding Janie’s hair up.

“Oh, blast.”

Janie’s shocked gaze met hers in the mirror.

“I forgot that I need pins,” Charlotte explained. “Sarah always has a handful tucked into her apron pocket. Can you reach them? In that little cloisonné chest.”

They moved together so Janie could reach the far end of the dressing table. She unclasped the lid and revealed a porcupine of hairpins and hatpins, a broken earring, and a button. She handed Charlotte three hairpins and pulled out the button.

“This isn’t one of yours.”

Janie was right. Charlotte had found the plain bone button on the street in London. She liked the feel of it. Worn and smooth. She liked to wonder who had lost it. To imagine the places the button had been.

“I found it and couldn’t throw it away.” Charlotte slid a hairpin beneath the knot, securing it.

“Why don’t you put it in your button box?”

Charlotte felt a blush starting to rise. “I don’t have one.”

Janie turned, nearly wrenching the almost-complete knot out of Charlotte’s hands. She stopped dead still and waited for Charlotte to push in the last pin. Then she turned all the way around and looked Charlotte full in the face.

“You don’t have a button box? A sewing basket?”

“I have my tapestry basket. And embroidery floss.”

“Of course. You wouldn’t need to mend your stockings or replace a button.”

Charlotte thought she heard a tinge of derision in Janie’s tone. She looked down at her hands. So useless most of the
time. Useless for anything but writing letters or holding a calling card, or occasionally the reins of a well-trained horse.

When she looked up again, she expected to see a pitying look on Janie’s face. Instead, she saw a look of wonder. Janie’s hand was up, touching the nape of her neck, stroking upward from her ears.

“How did you do that?” she asked.

Charlotte saw a slim girl in a gray cotton dress. A long neck exposed by the absence of hair. The simple, elegant knot changed the shape of Janie’s face. Made her cheekbones more prominent. The shape of her eyes more visible. More green than hazel, and quite extraordinary.

“You’re beautiful,” Charlotte said.

Janie stood. “Don’t be daft.” But her eyes flicked back to her own reflection.

Charlotte smiled and sat down. “Your turn.”

Janie stepped back and shook her head. “I can’t.”

Charlotte unpinned her own hair and held out the brush. “I tell you what, I’ll teach you how to do a chignon if you teach me how to sew on a button.”

“I can teach you how to make toast, as well.”

Charlotte laughed and relaxed into the feel of Janie’s hands in her hair. She’d read stories about girls who brushed each other’s hair. It made them seem like best friends. As she
guided Janie through the steps, she imagined them pretending to be sisters, living out of suitcases, having adventures. Seeing the frescoes of Florence and exploring the Colosseum in Rome. Or heading off to Antarctica like the Scott expedition. Or to America on the boat they were building in Belfast — one of the biggest ships in the world.

Janie stuck the tip of her tongue just out of the corner of her mouth while setting the hairpins. Charlotte grinned, remembering how she did the same when learning to play the piano. Until her mother shamed her out of the habit.

“What do you think?” Janie whispered.

Loose strands of hair floated around the lopsided knot like a halo.

“I think it’s perfect.” Charlotte saw the disbelief register on Janie’s face and amended. “For a first attempt.”

The corner of Janie’s mouth curved upward. “Are you suggesting there’s going to be another?”

“I need an excuse to get you up here,” Charlotte said, standing up. “I don’t have anyone else to talk to.” She realized she sounded pathetic, so she put on a bright smile. “And how else am I going to find out all your secrets?”

Janie darted a glance at her and rubbed the back of her neck. “I don’t really have any secrets.”

“I mean about Aunt Beatrice,” Charlotte said hurriedly.
She hadn’t meant to be nosy. After all, she didn’t want to tell anyone her secrets, either. The only way she could tell was to make them into a story.

“Janie!” she said, remembering. “Thank you for saving my writing from Fran earlier. She … she never would have understood.”

“I’ll get the pages back to you.”

“I know.” Charlotte bit her lip. “I’m glad you’re my friend.”

“I’m your servant, Lady Charlotte,” Janie said sadly. “And neither one of us should forget it.”

F
ancy the skivvy becoming a lady’s maid.”

Lawrence caught Janie on the back stairs before she made it to the basement.

Irritation flashed through her. “I’m not a skivvy.”

“I didn’t mean any harm by it, Janie,” Lawrence said. He leaned back against the wall and looked at her with those hooded blue eyes. “I think it’s a good thing to try to better yourself.”

“I’m not going to be a lady’s maid. I want to be a cook.” She thought about telling him how gratifying it was to transform butter and flour and stock into
sauce velouté
. But she didn’t think he’d understand. “So I think I’ll just remain a kitchen maid.”

“You want to spend your life icing thousands of fingers of cakes? And slopping out the pig bucket?”

“I’m willing to put in the work so I can end up doing the thing I love.”

Lawrence studied her as one might an unknown species and Janie squirmed a little under his scrutiny.

“You really love what you do?”

Janie almost laughed. “I do. I like feeding people.”

“I wish there was something I loved that much.”

Janie looked up into Lawrence’s face. He was the perfect vision of a footman — tall and handsome. Pleasant to look at and gentle in his service. His blue eyes bright and warm …

She wasn’t sure how long they stood there before Lawrence reached up his right hand to tuck a stray hair behind her ear.

“You’re beautiful, you know that?” he said. Just as Charlotte had — but it sounded very different coming from Lawrence.

His fingers remained on her temple, sending little flares of sensation across her skin and down her throat. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to be beautiful.

She wanted to rest her cheek in the palm of his hand and hear him say it again.

As if he could hear her thoughts, his lips curved into a smile and his gaze moved from her eyes to her mouth.

He was going to kiss her. She had never been kissed before, but she knew. Sure as she knew her own name.

“I —” Janie put a hand on his chest, panic and exhilaration pinching her ribs and lifting her onto her toes.

A single kiss could cost her her job. Her career. Her life.

“Can’t.”

Janie dropped back to her heels and stepped away. It was like coming out of a dream. Out of a spell. Reality came back in a rush — the clatter of pans in the kitchen, laughter from the servants’ hall, the soft thunk of the door above them closing. Without looking back at Lawrence, she made her way down the last five steps to the basement.

Mrs. Seward had the night off, so the kitchen maids were in charge of the meal for the family and their two unexpected guests. Just a “simple supper” — only five courses. All the prep work had been done earlier in the day, and the cold meat was ready for the servants’ supper, so Janie set a kettle on the stove and sat wearily in a chair at the kitchen table. And tried to digest what had just happened.

Tess, the head kitchen maid, wheeled on her. She had a spoon in each hand, and sweat beaded on her forehead.

“Well, look at you, Miss High-and-Mighty. Too big to make your own tea now? Don’t think you can get away with that here with your mother gone. We need all the help we can get. Right, Mollie?”

Tess looked over Janie’s head and when Janie turned, she saw Mollie nodding, her eyes hard and bitter.

Janie refused to rise for the bait. “I am perfectly capable of making my own tea.”

“You’re certainly right you are,” Tess said triumphantly. “And you’re not too good to make the servants’ dinner, either. Or scrub the floor.”

“I’ve done that every day for the past four years, Tess McKinnon. I’m unlikely to stop now, you know.”

“Sarah says you’re training to be a lady’s maid,” Tess ranted. “I know what you upstairs maids are like. They’re too good for the likes of us. Skivvies, we are, Mollie.”

“Don’t drag her into this,” Janie said, her ire finally pushing her to her feet.

“Don’t think you can tell me what to do, either,
Janie
. You work for me here.”

Janie took a step back. She and Tess had always worked well together. They didn’t share secrets or go to the pictures, but they got along. They got the work done.