Manor of Secrets (2 page)

“She shouldn’t be doing that,” Fran said, her mouth a firm line. “She should be working.”

“She’s just cooling off,” Charlotte started to say, but Fran stepped out from behind the tree and shouted.

“Jenny!” she cried. “I say, Jenny!”

The kitchen maid spun around so fast, she almost slipped.

Fran marched down the slope. The other girl saw her and scrambled to her discarded stockings.

“This is private property,” Fran said. “Not yours.”

The kitchen maid lifted her chin defiantly. “I live here,” she said.

“You
work
here,” Fran replied, condescension freezing her tone. She sounded like Lady Diane. “And you’d do well to remember who your betters are. Now, put your shoes on and go back to it. Before you find you have no job to go back to.”

The defiance left the other girl’s face immediately. She slipped her muddy feet into her shoes, balled her stockings into her fist, and walked past Fran without another word.

Charlotte attempted to hide herself behind the oak tree. To distance herself from Fran’s arrogance. But the kitchen maid saw Charlotte’s movement and stopped, staring.

Charlotte saw a little of her own fear mirrored in the other girl’s hazel eyes.

Charlotte tried to look in charge. Tried to look like she would fire someone on the spot for being disobedient. But she knew she couldn’t take the longing out of her eyes. The longing to be able to take off
her
stockings and paddle in the lake.

The kitchen maid dipped her head and walked on.

Fran slapped her hands together. “Job done,” she crowed and strode back up to Charlotte. “Back to the party.”

“Why don’t we do that?” Charlotte asked without thinking.

“What?”

“Take our stockings off. Wade in the lake.”

Fran laughed. “You do have a fanciful imagination, Charlotte.”

Charlotte hesitated. “It looked … nice.”

“It’s mucky. And full of crawly things.”

Charlotte tried to smile. “Now who has the fanciful imagination?”

But something about the look on the kitchen maid’s face when she dipped her feet in the water wouldn’t leave her be. The possibility of adventure. Of relief. No matter how small.

“I think I’ll brave the crawly things,” Charlotte said, surprising herself.

Fran narrowed her eyes. “
You
are not a kitchen maid, Charlotte Edmonds.”

“You’re right,” Charlotte said, her conviction growing stronger. “I’m not. I don’t have a job I need to do.”

“Oh, yes, you do. Your job is to be hostess. To be at your mother’s side. You may not be making the finger sandwiches and pots of tea, but you have a job to do, just like she does.”

Charlotte hesitated. But only for an instant. Then she turned and walked down to the water.

“I can’t lose mine,” she called.
Even if I wanted to.
If the kitchen maid was willing to take the risk to cool off in the lake, surely Charlotte could.

She looked back up to where Fran was frowning at her.

“I won’t cover for you,” Fran said.

Charlotte felt a rush of exhilaration. “I don’t need you to.”

Fran blew the hair off her face, turned on her heel, and stomped back along the path.

Only then did Charlotte begin to question herself.

She turned back to the lake. On the far shore, duckweed lapped against the rocks, but otherwise the water was clear, reflecting the silhouettes of trees against the sky. She sat on a boulder and removed her shoes and stockings. Then she looked over her shoulder at the shadows and the trees, Fran’s condemnation ringing in her memory.
Indecent
.

But if Charlotte could not see the lawn and the party guests, they couldn’t see her.

Charlotte grinned wickedly, lifted her skirts, and walked to the verge of the lake. She was a lady adventuress, on a distant beach, about to dip her toes into the Pacific Ocean. She closed her eyes and wiggled her toes, feeling the mud ooze between them. She lifted her face to the sky, imitating the kitchen maid, and felt the tension ease from the back of her neck.

And something crawling up the back of her leg.

Charlotte jumped and kicked spasmodically. There was a splash as
whatever-it-was
hit the lake. Charlotte looked for it, but saw nothing but the rippling sky. She turned to see if anything else might be creeping up on her and saw nothing but her own footprints.

And the hem of her dress dragging through them. The silk streaked where the water soaked up into the fabric. The eyelets of the lace plugged with mud.

Lady Diane would disown her.

“Oh, no,” she moaned. There was no way she could hide it. No way she could go back to the party.

And nowhere else she could go.

She wished for rescue. For the dashing cavalier.

“Lady Charlotte!” a male voice called out.

Charlotte didn’t know if she should call out in return or run. Maybe she could hide herself in the lake.

“I’m here?” she finally called, hating that her voice made it more of a question than an answer.

“Lady Charlotte.” Lawrence the footman appeared from the gloom. “Your mother is concerned about your absence.” He stopped, his eyes on her bare feet.

Indecent.

“I can’t go back like this,” Charlotte said, squeezing her eyes shut, as if that would prevent him from seeing her.

“True,” Lawrence said. “And we can’t let you in through the front of the house like that, either. Mr. Foyle would have a fit.”

Charlotte’s eyes flew open. He was looking at her as if she were a puzzle to be solved. Not a flagrant delinquent who deserved the wrath she was sure to incur. He caught her staring at him, and he winked.

“Servants’ entrance,” he said confidently. “The only thing for it.”

Charlotte took a step toward him. And another. Then stopped. Afraid.

“My shoes,” she said to cover up, and looked down at the pristine eggshell silk of her slippers. She would ruin them. She went through all the things she’d already done that day that her mother would punish her for. Leaving the party. Going into the lake. Muddying her dress.

Being alone in the woods with the footman.

“In for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose,” she said with forced gaiety and stepped into her shoes, cringing at the slick wetness.

“We’ll get you inside safely,” Lawrence said with a gallant bow.

Definitely dashing.

Charlotte followed him through the woods. They kept
the little hill and the rotunda between themselves and the garden party in order to approach The Manor from the east. The house seemed to rise from the earth of its own volition. The cupola over the marble hall was just visible over the roof line.

Lawrence motioned for her to stop, then crept forward behind a giant beech. Charlotte held her breath while he peered around the tree and then returned to her.

“The party is on the other side of the patio,” he whispered into her ear, his breath tickling her hair a little. Charlotte breathed in the scents of soap and lemon, almost forgetting her predicament. “The wall should hide us. If we run low, we can avoid being seen.”

She followed him across the lawn, her heart beating tight against her corset. She didn’t look left or right, but kept her eyes on Lawrence’s back the entire time. Together, they went through the kitchen courtyard and down the basement steps.

It truly was another world. The brick-floored hall illuminated only by the stepping-stones of light coming from the doorways along it. And the sounds of clanging pots and barked orders riding the waves of heat emanating from the kitchen.

No wonder the kitchen maid had escaped to the lake.

Charlotte hadn’t been downstairs since she was five. Back when her brothers thought it would be fun to sneak a cute little girl into the servants’ hall to cover stealing cakes from the kitchen and flirting with the housemaids.

Lady Diane had forbidden any excursions to the basement after she found Charlotte playing pat-a-cake with the biscuit dough and David in a clinch with the second housemaid. David was sent back to Oxford, and the girl was sent packing without a reference.

Charlotte stopped.

“I shouldn’t be here,” she whispered, and then realized with horror that she spoke the truth. She looked up at Lawrence. His dark hair fell casually over his forehead. And those eyes.

“I promised to get you to safety.” Lawrence’s tone brooked no disagreement.

But then the kitchen maid swung around the corner and froze, staring at the two of them so close together. Then she looked down at the mud caking the hem of Charlotte’s dress.

From the depths of the kitchen, a voice Charlotte recognized as the cook’s called out, making the kitchen maid jump.

“The
parsley
, Janie Mae! Her Ladyship is on the warpath!”

Charlotte frowned. Had the cook called the kitchen maid
Janie
?

“Yes, Ma!” the kitchen maid called, without looking away from Charlotte. The recesses of Charlotte’s brain dug up another fact — this girl was the cook’s daughter. And she was probably about Charlotte’s age.

The kitchen maid — Janie — took two steps forward and lowered her voice. “Can I help you, Lady Charlotte?”

“I’m taking her up the servants’ stairs,” Lawrence said.

“No, you’re not, Lawrence,” the girl hissed. “If anyone catches the two of you alone together, you’ll be out on the street before you can say Jack Robinson.”

Lawrence took a step back, looking less like a cavalier and more like a boy afraid of a caning.

“But he’s helping me,” Charlotte argued. “We’re not doing anything wrong.”

Janie raised an eyebrow. “Begging your pardon, Lady Charlotte, but gossip spreads faster than fire. And some people only say what they see, not the way things really are.”

It sounded worse than the London tearooms. Charlotte felt even more out of place in this downstairs world than she had moments before.

“I’ll go through the front entrance,” Charlotte said, trying to sound brave. It was, after all, where she belonged.

One of the bells on the wall twitched and rang with a deep, throaty boom. Lawrence and Janie both froze. An instant later the bell rang again.

Something crashed in the kitchen. “Where is that bloody footman?” the cook bellowed.

Janie grabbed Lawrence by the shoulders and spun him around, pushing him down the long hall. “Go.”

Lawrence didn’t look back.

Janie turned to Charlotte, wide-eyed. “That was the bell for the marble hall.”

“How do you know?”

“The ring. Every bell has a certain ring.”

“There’s someone up there?” Charlotte asked.

“Your mother is up there.” Janie bit her lip. “She’s the only one who rings twice.”

Charlotte felt light-headed. Spots appeared in the corners of her vision and she looked down at her filthy skirts. Why did her mother demand she wear ecru? And why did Charlotte think she could have an adventure?

“You went into the lake?”

Charlotte looked up again to see the kitchen maid studying her.

“It just looked too inviting,” Charlotte said. She wiggled her toes, still sticky with mud inside her slippers.

“I know.”

They stood, staring at each other for just a moment. Understanding.

“I’ll take you upstairs.”

Janie slipped by her, and Charlotte followed her down the corridor, the bricks uneven beneath her feet. She followed the kitchen maid past the open door of a long, empty room, dominated by a single table and multiple chairs, an upright piano at the far end. Then past a little sitting room.

“Up here.” Janie led her up a flight of stairs cut short by a sharp corner. When Charlotte rounded it, she saw that the stairs continued upward, bend after bend. To her left was a plain door covered in green baize like a billiard table. But Janie continued up, her feet silent on the bare wood. At each landing was another green baize door.

Charlotte had lived in The Manor all her life, but she had never felt so turned around. There were no windows in the stairwell. The only light was provided by the oil lamp Janie had brought along.

The stairs went up into the darkness until Charlotte thought surely they must be at the roof. She struggled to breathe against her corset and paused on a narrow landing. A shard of brilliant light appeared as Janie pushed open a door and peered through the crack.

“All clear.”

On the other side of the door, stark and wintry electric light gleamed on the white walls and elaborately framed paintings. This was the second-story hallway. Charlotte paused, getting her bearings. Her room was two doors down, on the left. She stepped out onto the thick hall carpet.

She turned back to see Janie still on the landing, the fingers of one hand wrapped around the door.

“Can you come to my room?” Charlotte asked. “I …” What did she want? For the adventure to continue? She didn’t want to admit that she could barely dress herself. And looking at this girl, who could make food and find solutions and go down to the lake on her own, Charlotte felt ashamed that she was so helpless.

“I can’t.” Janie looked right at her and shook her head. “I don’t belong upstairs.”

“All right,” Charlotte said. She turned away. But she found that she didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to go back to her room, change her dress, face her mother. Didn’t want to leave the warm yellow glow of the dimly lit servants’ stairs.

She turned to thank Janie for her kindness. But the door had already closed, only a slim straight line betraying its existence.