Midnight Secrets (12 page)

“Very. Not to mention erroneous as well.” He grabbed his cane and swiftly stood in a very stalwart, healthy way.

“Perhaps that too.” I moved around so that the counter was between us and the servants’ stairs were right behind me. He arched at brow at me, his keen gaze raking down my body, making me feel as if I wore only my wet gown, if anything at all.

“Do you need proof?” He stepped toward me, his lips curving into a very sensual smile that wrapped around me, urging me closer to him.

“No,” I yelped, louder than I meant. His draw upon me was so strong that I had to back to the stairs to feel proper.

His expression changed suddenly as if pained and he turned from me, his free hand clenching into a fist at his side. “Good night.” His voice turned harsh, so unlike the teasing amusement just moments ago.

“But—” I bit my lip. I felt as if I’d hurt him in some way, and I couldn’t leave.

“Leave me.” He spoke so loudly, so forcefully that something akin to fear snaked down my spine.

I turned and dashed up the servants’ stairs blindly. Somehow I reached the safety of my room without falling. Once again I stood with my back to my locked door, gasping for air. I didn’t move for a very long time. Finally, when I could stand no longer and had heard no odd noises, no steps in the corridor, and no tap of a cane against stone or wood, I crawled into bed. Once my head hit the pillow, I curled myself into a ball, pheasant shell in hand, and cried.

I cried for a bath. I cried because I smelled and my skin itched. I cried for home and my family, but most of all I cried for Mary.

A sharp rap on our door brought me and Bridget stumbling quickly to our feet, fearful that we were late, then confused, for the darkness of the night had yet to be softened by the predawn light.

“Blimey,” Bridget muttered, stumbling to the door. “Who’s there?”

“It’s Janet and Adele.”

Bridget opened the door, yawning. “What’s a matter with ya?”

The Oak sisters wore matching expressions of worry. “We were ’oping you’d know. Mrs. Frye wants us all downstairs in the laundry room immediately.”

“It’s three in the mornin’,” Janet said. “Shameful the way she works us so ’ard.”

“Worse than that, I tell ya,” Adele added.

Bridget grabbed her dress and slid it over her head. Wincing, I did the same and nearly choked on the smell of my uniform. As I put on my stockings and my shoes, I quickly came to the conclusion that if I didn’t get a bath soon, I just might expire. At least my discomfort kept me from dwelling on what had happened after I’d fallen asleep late into the night.

I had dreamed about Mary for the second time. I heard her calling to me as if she needed my help. This time we weren’t in the sea. We were in the castle. I caught sight of her in a corridor, but when I ran toward her, I could never get close enough to touch her. Her white gown billowed from her slight form like a ghostly cloud as she led me to the marbled center hall then up the winding stairs to the second floor. At the third set of double doors on the left, she stopped, fell to her knees and begged me not to—

I don’t know what she wanted from me, for that was the exact moment Janet and Adele had knocked. A heaviness settled inside me as I puzzled over and over what I had dreamed. I wanted to know the significance of it, and I definitely wanted to know if there were double doors on the second floor, and whose room was third on the left?

After Bridget and I dressed, the four of us hurried downstairs, surprised to find Mrs. Murphy hard at work in the kitchens. Fires blazed in the stone hearths where iron cauldrons bubbled. She wiped her hands on her apron then set them on her ample hips. “I’ve never seen the likes of this in all of my days, I tell you. The Killdaren has gone completely mad, he has.”

“What is it?” Janet whispered.

“What are ye boiling?” Adele asked as she peered into one of the pots, wincing at the rising steam.

“Ourselves it seems, lass.” Mrs. Murphy threw her hands in the air.

Bridget, Janet, and Adele gasped, taking frightened steps backward. “Ye cannot mean that,” Bridget cried, her freckles blanching white and her blue eyes huge with horror.

“A Mrs. Turnbill did that over in Derry. ’eard about it last year. Boiled her maid and sold the broth she did.” Janet grabbed Adele’s hand and they took several more steps to the door.

Bridget stamped her foot. “Ack, this is nonsense. He’s a vampire, I tell ya. They drink yer blood, not boil yer bones.” She glared at Mrs. Murphy. “Now tell us the truth, ma’am.”

Mrs. Murphy burst into laughter. “A vampire?” Mrs. Murphy gasped and laughed more. “The Killdaren has you believing those rumors, does he?” She shook her head. “The lad wants every one of us to take a bath! He’s filled half the laundry with tubs. You’d have thought the world had come to an end, the way he had my Murphy and Stuart and Jamie rearranging everything in the middle of the night as if the Queen herself had made a decree.”

“A bath!” Bridget, Janet and Adele’s gasps rang twice as loud as mine, and their wide-eyed expressions were more horrified than they’d been at the notion of being boiled alive. I laughed so hard that tears brimmed my eyes.

Mrs. Murphy shooed us toward the laundry room. “Best hurry up. Mrs. Frye will be inspecting the results before the morning meal.”

Bridget, Janet and Adele all groaned as if in pain. Meanwhile my heart sang as if I’d just been handed the crown jewels.

“There isn’t any point in complaining and ye lasses best accustom yourself to the notion. Yer to bathe every Friday, more often if ye’ve the want. Now hurry up with it. I’ve a number of chores that need doing.”

I led the way to the laundry, dragging the others with me. Entering the room, I stood a moment amazed at its transformation. Along the back wall in four barn-like stalls sat three hip-baths and one tub, each with its own privacy curtain pulled to the side. Steam rose from the tubs in a blessedly welcoming mist.

He did this
, I thought with wonder.

Rushing over to the full tub, I dipped my fingers into the water and sighed. On a table beside the tub someone had placed a large bar of soap and a soft cotton cloth and my bath things I’d left on the counter in the kitchen last night. In seconds I had my shoes and stockings off, and had started on the buttons of my dress when I remembered the curtain. Turning to reach for it, I found Bridget, Janet and Adele still standing at the doorway, staring at me is if I’d gone insane.

Having had to round my younger sisters up for their baths when they were little and had yet to covet the comfort of cleanliness, I knew just what to do. “Come along with you now. We’ve much to do to pass Mrs. Frye’s inspection and very little time left.”

Grabbing Bridget’s arm, I pulled her to one hip-bath, and shooed Janet and Adele to the others. “Now off with your clothes. I’ll have Mrs. Murphy go gather fresh uniforms for all of us from Mrs. Frye, so she can’t find a blemish.” I’d have to wear mine pinned so as to fit well enough to stay on, but nothing was going to stop me from being wonderfully clean.

By the time I managed to get the three maids in the hip-baths and had put them through the horrifying experience of ducking their heads under the water and scrubbing their hair, I had very little time left for my own bath. The water had cooled considerably in the tub, but not even that could lessen my ecstasy as I sank beneath the water. I hurriedly subjected every inch of my being to soothing suds and a soft cloth.

I’d been given a new life.

“This ’ill be the death o’ us,” Bridget said as she helped me dry my hair with a soft towel.

“’twill be the making of you, Bridget. Once you’ve accustomed yourself to the exhilaration of being clean, all of life will be brighter. Think about it. Remember how you felt racing down the hill to the village yesterday? Don’t you feel a little like that now?”

She frowned. “Perhaps, though running and bathing don’t have much to do with each other iffen ya ask me.” She narrowed her eyes and lowered her voice so that Janet and Adele, who were across the room couldn’t hear. “Cassie, I don’t know how, but ya did this, didn’t ya?” Then she immediately shook her head and answered before I could. “No, how could ya?”

Suddenly, she grabbed my shoulders, a mixture of surprise and excitement on her face. “Blimey!” she hissed, still whispering, but more forcefully. “The Killdaren saw ya just yesterday and now he has us bathin’! He wants ya, that’s what. Yer not going to have to scrub much longer, ya aren’t. Be wearin’ dresses and drinkin’ tea with Miss Prudence. She was an upstairs maid until he took a fancy to her, dressed her up and had her educated he did.” She clamped her hand over her mouth, looked about and lowered her voice even more. “Best keep this as quiet as we can, now. No use in setting tongues wagging before there’s a need to. Miss Prudence didn’t say a word to anyone about it until she couldn’t hide that she was with a bairn. Ya might be right about this bathin’ stuff after all, Cassie.”

Bridget turned around and did a little dance on her way to the kitchens.

I stood, so flabbergasted that I couldn’t even speak. Good heavens. She truly thought being a man’s mistress was some sort of salvation.

During the morning meal, I still couldn’t find the words to express my shock, partly because of Bridget’s mercenary notions, and partly because I feared she was right. After last night’s debacle, Sean most likely thought I’d deliberately exposed my breasts to his view and had arranged the employee bathing with an eye to furthering his acquaintance with me, a very upsetting matter in itself. But not as horrifying as the idea of involving myself intimately with a man in order to escape doing chores. It was most likely the only way a woman in Bridget’s position in life could better her circumstances, and that realization disturbed me the most.

As the meal ended and the women gathered up the plates to be washed, I slipped a knife into my pocket, deciding any weapon would be better than no weapon. Bridget and I received the task of cleaning and polishing the music room after passing Mrs. Frye’s cleanliness inspection. Amazingly, she informed us she’d be hiring two scullery maids and a laundress. Then, starting tomorrow, a fresh uniform would be readied every other day for each member of her staff. They were to wear it the next morning, having their person in just as clean a state. Every Sunday, half the servants would be off the entire day. Then the next Sunday, the other half would have the day free.

I wondered less about Sean’s motives in providing a bathing facility then, and my heart warmed over the fact he’d heard and acted on what I’d said.

Bridget didn’t say a word until she shut the ornately carved, gold-leafed double doors, closing us inside the music room, then she started dancing another jig, bursting with joy. “I’ll not be scrubbing any more dishes or slavin’ over any more pots! And two whole days a month with my family! It’s a miracle, I say.”

I could barely hear, for I stood in awe. The room wasn’t just a receptacle for musical instruments, but boasted a theater as well. Elaborate chairs with cream brocade seats and gold accents faced a stage framed in rich, snowy damask curtains fringed with gold. A grand piano and a huge golden harp sat center stage and were backed by the gleaming gold pipes of a pipe organ. Lining the cream and gold walls in beautifully carved mahogany and glass cases lay exquisite musical instruments of wood, gold, and silver. Some encrusted with jewels, others so rustic and frail in appearance that they had to be as old as the Druids themselves.

“This is unbelievable. Who plays these instruments?”

“It’s a right shame, it is, but no one does, though Mary was working with my sister Flora, teaching her to sing, she was.” Bridget handed me a dusting cloth and moved to the first glass case.

I followed her, peering closer at the odd black flute-like instruments wrapped with gold dragons, thankful to see a printed card explaining its use, for I’d never seen such an instruments in my life. “Tartoelen Dragon Shawms,” I read. “‘Differently pitched wind instruments that imitate the human voice. These shawms were used by a young actress in Vienna during a performance for Emperor Maximilian the First. He became so enchanted that he claimed this golden haired actress, Anna Breisua, for his lover. Jealous and fearful of losing their power over the Emperor, certain court nobles accused Anna of witchcraft, of casting a spell over the Emperor through the Dragon Shawms—’”

“She…was burned at the stake for her sinful deed.” Bridget finished the last sentence for me.

“Excellent.” I focused on Bridget’s improvement and avoided the pall the story cast over the pristine glow of the room.

Bridget frowned, more fiercely than ever before. “What do ya mean? That was horrible. The poor woman.”
 

“I meant your reading was excellent, Bridget. The events told were indeed horrible. Thank God the world has moved past such barbaric practices.”

“What do ya mean?”

“Parliament dispensed with that punishment about a hundred years ago, but if you ask me that was a couple of hundred years too late. After Bloody Mary’s reign, few men were burned at the stake, but they continued to burn women to death for the crimes of murder and counterfeiting until 1790.”

“Blimey. How’d you learn all that?”

“Reading. Books can tell you anything and take you anywhere in the world you want to go, Bridget.”

Her eyes misted. “And I’m learning how. You know, you’re like Flora’s friend Miss Mary, you are. She was always helping and a teaching the wee one, and teaching Flora to speak proper, and learning us all about the world. She read us the papers every day, she did.”

A huge lump of emotion caught in my throat. I nodded my head and scrubbed the glass harder, paying close attention to a blur that didn’t disappear until I blinked. My cousin had left a legacy behind, one of care and love.

“We’d better hurry. We’ll need to be further along before Mrs. Frye checks on us.”

Bridget laughed. “You’re learning too, Cassie.” She smiled and I smiled back.

We quickly moved through a number of glass cases. As we did, I silently read the captions for each of the instruments, but didn’t bring them to Bridget’s attention. By the fifth case I had an ill feeling in the pit of my stomach.