A Heart Revealed (15 page)

“I spoke out of turn, Miss,” Suzanne said, humbled now that her fervor had passed. Or perhaps because she’d been pardoned from the fate Amber could not escape from herself.

“No, you did not,” Amber said. She looked up to see sincere sympathy on the face of her maid. It nearly undid her, and she blinked back the emotion. “Will you attend me to Yorkshire if I convince my mother to help you find a new position upon your return to London? I shall see that you are financially compensated for the sacrifice as well. Perhaps you could send the payment to your sister so that she might procure additional help for your mother during your absence.”

Suzanne held Amber’s gaze for some time, looking equal parts relieved and regretful. Amber sensed that she wanted to speak but did not know how to address her mistress now that they had both stepped over the unseen lines of station and address. “I will attend you, Miss,” she finally said, her expression softened. “Which dresses would you like me to pack in the small trunk?”

Amber went to her wardrobe to look over her dresses and in the process saw the black coat that had hung there since Carlton House. She pulled it from the closet and looked it over with only a vague memory of the man who had given it to her.

One man amid the hundreds gathered there had given her aid. A man Amber did not believe she was acquainted with, and yet he had been kind to her. She wished she knew how to return his coat to him and thank him for that kindness, but to try to find him would mean reigniting people’s memories of what his kindness had intended to hide.

She was to disappear today, slip away from London and people’s thoughts, taking with her the shame and embarrassment she had brought upon her family and perhaps this man too—he’d have been left at a ball without a coat. Perhaps he would not want it back anyway after it had been about her head.

She let out a breath and pushed the coat into the back of the closet before fingering through her day dresses and morning gowns. He was without a coat. She was to be without far more than that.

Two hours later, Amber closed the curtain inside the traveling coach, not wanting to see London and all it symbolized fall away from her; not wanting anyone of her acquaintance to see her leaving in shame. She feared she would never come back, and yet she was relieved to be parted from the place of so much heartache. She rested her cap-and-bonnet-covered head against the cushions of the seat and spent the first five miles attempting not to cry. There would be plenty of time for that when she was settled in the country house—Step Cottage, her father had called it—in Romanby, North Riding, Yorkshire.

Alone.

Unattended.

She could only hope she would not call this cottage “home” for long.

Chapter 16

They stopped overnight at the Crimson Shield Inn, arriving late and leaving early. Suzanne and Amber took their meals together in the room they shared rather than join the other guests in the coaching house. The proprietor said it was the finest room the inn had to offer, but it smelled sour and the sheets were rough.

Once back in the carriage for the second day of travel, Amber could stand the silence no longer and asked Suzanne about her family. The maid was hesitant to talk at first, but Amber continued to prod her with questions until eventually Suzanne disposed of the one-word answers.

Both of her parents had worked in service, but Suzanne’s younger sisters had married into the merchant class and were not employed outside of running their household and caring for their children, though her one sister did mending for a few gentry families. Suzanne’s father had retired five years ago after an illness left him unable to keep up his duties as a gardener of a grand estate outside of London. He died in his sleep the following summer, leaving their mother to work in the kitchens of a London house until being let go two years ago this August.

“I fear she may not live another winter. The cold is increasingly hard on her.” She paused, then looked at Amber and forced a smile. “Which is why I must thank you for talking with your mother of my return to London. I could not bear being away from her or my sisters at such a time. The additional funds you procured will be of great help to them both, for which I thank you too.”

“Your affection for them is a credit to all of you,” Amber said, not liking the reflection her own family cast through the prism of Suzanne’s. “I certainly hope all is well until your return and that perhaps the summer will result in an increase of health for your mother.”

“As do I, Miss,” Suzanne said.

Amber wondered if she would she be missed by her family. When she had parted the London house, her mother had given her a quick embrace and said she would come to Yorkshire when the season was over. Seeing as it was May, it would be several weeks until the gentry who gathered in London returned to their country estates. Perhaps by then her mother would have missed her and they could start afresh.

A fear nagged her that Lady Marchent wouldn’t come, but surely her mother would not abandon her completely. There was such a difference in age between herself and her brothers that she knew they would not notice her absence; they had always been kept to a different schedule as they were sons instead of daughters. It was Amber and Darra who had always been the most closely aligned, both in age and in their equal desire for the attention of their parents. Amber did not want to think of Darra right now. It stung to do so.

“How many nieces and nephews do you have?” Amber asked, eager to keep Suzanne talking as it took her out of her own thoughts.

Suzanne told of her endearment toward her sisters’ children, which brought another lump to Amber’s throat. Amber had grown up privileged and, in her mind, envied by the lesser classes she interacted with but rarely. The more Suzanne spoke of her family connections created through the affection they shared, the more envious Amber felt. Did anyone within her own society love their children the way Suzanne’s family did?

Amber had never seen or experienced such bonds and began to wonder if Suzanne were making fun of her. She eventually stopped asking questions, not wanting to be made a fool of by believing such stories of parents playing with their children, or teaching them the skills of daily life without the help of servants. She struggled to make sense of the jealousy she felt toward Suzanne’s situation; she was loved and she knew it. Was Amber loved by her parents? Did she love
them
?

As daylight began to slip away, they stopped in the village of Topcliffe. Amber assumed it was to change horses, and it was, but then she saw the groom talking with a man who he then brought toward the carriage. Amber shrank back against the cushion, alerting Suzanne, who leaned forward to see the men approaching.

“Who is that man with Jeffery?” Suzanne asked. “Do you know him?”

“Of course not,” Amber snapped. “I know no one this far north. Why is Jeffery bringing him over?” She pulled at the lace edging of her cap as she watched the men getting closer. She looked to her bonnet lying beside her on the seat—she’d removed it while it was only her and Suzanne’s company she needed to accommodate. She quickly put on the bonnet, her fingers fumbling to tie the ribbon.

“Act your part,” Suzanne said, drawing Amber’s eyes to her. The maid mimicked sitting straight, folding her hands in her lap, and lifting her chin. “You’re your own mistress, now. Act the part of a Lady and everyone will treat you as such.”

Amber straightened as Suzanne had indicated, prepared to encounter this man, then snapped her gaze back to Suzanne. “Is he to address me directly, then? Should he not be speaking with you until I invite his attention?”

It was Suzanne’s turn to look startled, but she nodded quickly and straightened her own posture moments before Jeffery knocked on the side of the carriage. Suzanne unlatched the door, which Jeffery then pulled wide. The man with him was older than Amber’s father and dressed in the simple attire of a workingman. He took off his hat to reveal thinning gray hair. He bowed, then looked up with a sincere smile that seemed incongruent with his country clothing and mottled teeth.

He glanced at Amber but then turned his attention to Suzanne. “I am but right pleased to meetcha, Miss. My name be Paulie Dariloo. I take care of tha cottage where his lordship dun says you be staying this next while. Asked me to meet yer carriage in Topcliffe, he did, and I done been waitin’ jus ’alf an ’our’s all. Made right good time, yer driver did.”

“Yes, he did,” Suzanne said nervously.

Amber kept a polite smile on her face but found herself very much on edge. She was as unprepared to take charge of this situation as Suzanne was, but she was no longer a daughter or a debutante with someone speaking for her. She would have to take the position she had left to others all her life or she should have no order and respect here in the North.

“You are too kind to have met us, Mr. Dariloo,” Suzanne said after an awkward delay, glancing at Amber who nodded to confirm that she should continue. Suzanne returned her attention to Mr. Dariloo. “You’re to give direction to the coachman in finding the cottage, I presume?”

“I’m to lead you in, Miss,” he said, waving over his shoulder toward the road that ran in front of the inn. “These country roads can get a might bit ragged an’ the road to the cottage ain’t an easy one to navigate in the dark. Mr. Jeffery here”—he nodded toward the driver—“says you be wantin’ to get there tonight despite it being a late ’our that you’ll arrive. That set right with ya?”

“My mistress
would
like to arrive at the cottage tonight, Mr. Dariloo.” Neither of the women had any desire to stay in another inn like the one from last night. Amber had barely slept at all for the strange sounds and odd smells of the place, and Suzanne had had to sleep on a straw pallet near the door.

“And ya shall, ya shall,” he said, nodding. “The horses are ’bout changed an’ then we’ll make us a procession, if ya will, to the cottage.” He glanced at Amber, who glanced at Suzanne, who lifted her shoulders in confusion. She did not understand this situation any better than Amber did. Amber fumbled for what to do and then accepted that her time to be mistress had come.

“You may address me directly, Mr. Dariloo.”

His smile broadened, confirming that she’d read his unspoken request for her attention correctly. “Yer father’s man a’business found me just yesterday, he did,” Mr. Dariloo said. “To give me the ’structions. But my missus and I got the cottage set to rights fer ya in time. Everythin’s in place, it is.”

“You’re very good, sir,” Amber said.

His bushy eyebrows went up. “You don’t need to be calling me sir, Miss. I ain’t so fine as that, just a caretaker, that’s all I is. Glad to be of help to ya for your holiday.”

Holiday?
Is that how her father had explained it? Amber pulled at the strings on her bonnet. “Shall we go on, then?” she asked, nervous and wishing she could have the confident demeanor expected of her. Why should an underling such as Mr. Dariloo put her out of sorts?

“Right ya are,” Mr. Dariloo said, backing away, his hat still in hand. “We be ready to go in five minute.”

Jeffery shut the carriage door, and Amber leaned back against the cushion, her heart thumping. “How odd that I should be so anxious over an exchange of that sort,” she said out loud, then looked to Suzanne after pondering a few moments longer. “Neither of us are who we were in London, are we?”

Suzanne’s smile was shaky too. “It does not seem so. You handled yourself very well, Miss. You didn’t appear nervous but for the pulling on your ribbon.” Amber was surprised at how grateful she was for the compliment. Suzanne continued, sounding calmer. “All that breeding will serve its purpose, I’ll wager. It’s not been lost just because you find yourself in Yorkshire.”

Amber pondered that comment for the rest of their journey. As night fell, Mr. Dariloo hung a lantern from his saddle, giving the coach ample mark to follow. They still seemed well within the country when they turned from the relatively smooth ground to a more narrow and pitted road that wound through clusters of trees and fields.

Eager to see the cottage, Amber and Suzanne were looking through the windows when Suzanne touched Amber’s arm. “I think that must be it,” she said.

Amber could see the light from two windows set on a hillside a short distance in front of them. Mr. Dariloo turned onto a drive that took them off the road, and by the time the carriage came to a stop, Amber and Suzanne had their necks craned upward in an attempt to get a better view of the cottage. Amber hadn’t thought about why the place was called Step Cottage, but understood when she removed from the carriage and looked up an impossibly long series of wide stone steps—at least twenty—that led to an equally impossibly small gray house complete with a slate roof. If not for the white sections of stone that reflected the light of the half moon, it would have blended perfectly with the landscape around it.

“Right pretty place, ain’t it?” Mr. Dariloo said as he joined them. He gazed up at the cottage as though it were a castle. “My missus has some mutton stew at the ready. We knew that you would be hungry.” He headed up the rough stone stairs. Amber lifted her skirts and followed, afraid to look anywhere but the next step as they were not equally spaced and Mr. Dariloo’s lantern did not give a great deal of light. She shivered in the night temperature and tried not to think of the haunted forests and forbidden woods of the fairy tales and fables her governess had read to her as a child. Her traveling boots looked impossibly dainty amid the rough surroundings and anxiety crept up her throat with every step.