Rutherford Park (4 page)

He wished the old man back now—wished it with all his heart. His father had died when he was sixteen, his mother when he was twenty-six. They had been a doting, quiet couple. It was hard to believe that they sprang from the Beckforth stock, that rapacious family who had once ruled their West Indian island and taken everything it could yield: sugar, slaves, taxes, power. William’s grandfather had given Rutherford to his son because he was ashamed that the boy had been more interested in plants and flowers and Egyptian cats than living in London and being at Court. William’s father had been put here, exiled here, in fact, to prevent the rest of the Beckforths laughing him out of society. It had been a shock when William’s uncle had died suddenly and his father came into the title. But still, the old man had cared not at all for London: he had liked his Yorkshire exile, had grown to love it. He was interested in the farms and the gardens; he had built the great glasshouse and the orangerie. Had a dozen dogs, a stable of horses, even a racehorse that ran at York. He had been a kind, benevolent person. Never cheated a soul.

Never cheated a soul. William slumped on the nearest chair and put his head in his hands.

When he wanted to be with his father now, more often than not he went to the archive and held his father’s precious amulets and stones and trembled at them, if the truth were known—and it was hardly a truth he could tell anyone, even Octavia—that he actually trembled with passion to hold what his father had loved. He had gone in there the day he had buried William Cavendish, 7th Earl Rutherford, and flung himself down in his father’s Egyptian chair and felt so utterly alone. Frightened at the responsibility of being the eighth earl, and what he was supposed to achieve from that day forward.

“Father,” he murmured. “Father, for Christ’s sake, tell me what to do.”

* * *

T
he afternoon wore on; the tree was hauled out beyond the kitchen garden; the light faded. As the last drops of daylight were drained from the sky, the lamps in Rutherford were lit. All was silence in the snow-filled parkland, but downstairs in the house, the atmosphere was electric.

Emily was facing Mrs. Jocelyn in the housekeeper’s sitting room.

“What on earth were you thinking of?” the older woman demanded.

“I couldn’t help it,” Emily replied. “She spoke to me.”

“
She?
” the housekeeper repeated.
“She?”

“Lady Cavendish, ma’am.”

“And what were you doing in Lady Cavendish’s way?”

“If you please, ma’am, she was in my way.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Emily faltered. “Not so much in my way. I mean, she was on the stairs as I came out of the drawing room. She was standing—Lady Cavendish, I mean—was standing on the stairs and she
walked to the door and she asked if it was unlocked. And then she said she wanted tea and I was to tell Miss Amelie. And then…then she said about the tree.”

Mrs. Jocelyn stared at her. “And you go to Mr. Bradfield.” It was said with complete disdain.

“No, ma’am,” Emily objected. “I was coming to tell you…. I was coming to tell Cook…. I was in the corridor, and Mr. Bradfield—”

Mrs. Jocelyn put up her hand to stop Emily’s flow of words. She sat in the upholstered armchair in front of her coal fire and regarded Emily for some time. “And now you’ll tell me what’s the matter with you.”

The blood ran cold in Emily’s veins. “Nothing, ma’am.”

The older woman looked her up and down. “You’ve put on weight.”

Emily said nothing.

“Come here.”

She took a step or two forward hesitantly, and the housekeeper grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her to the arm of the chair. Looking into her face, she put her hand on Emily’s stomach. “Do you think I don’t know what ails you?” she asked.

“I am all right.”

“Who is to blame? Besides you, Emily.”

“I am all right,” the girl repeated.

“Jack Armitage, is it? One of the farm boys?”

Emily felt herself swaying. “It’s no one,” she said.

Mrs. Jocelyn sighed. “Of all the girls, I would have thought you had more sense,” she complained. “I shall find it out. I shall find the culprit.” She pulled Emily even closer. “What are you?” she asked, not unkindly. “Four months? Five?” She squinted at her suspiciously. “More?”

“It is not that,” Emily said.

“Don’t lie to me, child.”

“It is not that. I’ve been feeling sickly. I’ve been eating too much.”

“You?” Mrs. Jocelyn snorted derisively. “You eat nothing,” she said. “Your arms…your hands. Look at them; you are nothing but skin and bone. You’ve been starving yourself so that it doesn’t show. You think I don’t know? What do you suppose I have for eyes? Don’t you think I’ve seen it before?”

Emily closed her eyes. “Not Jack,” she whispered. “Not anyone.”

The housekeeper abruptly let her hand fall. In the fire grate, the coal hissed. “Emily Maitland,” she said. “This is a God-fearing house, and God shall certainly strike you dead for your lies.”

* * *

T
he house was feverishly busy belowstairs that night. By tradition on Christmas Eve, a table was laid in the great hall and not the dining room. A twenty-foot tree, brought from the estate, dominated one end of the hall—the Tudor fireplace, blazing with logs, the other. All the family were now home; the children Harry, Charlotte and Louisa had come downstairs first, the girls in a flurry of loose, gauzy gowns, and Harry in a new dinner suit that had been delivered just that week from London. Their voices and laughter had filtered through the house. Sixteen guests were now occupying nine of the guest rooms.

Every member of staff, aside from the master’s valet and the mistress’s maid, was working below. The cook, undercook, kitchen maid and scullery maid, helped by the housemaid of all work, were elbow-deep in entrées, releve, game course, entremets, all of it providing a smoky cloud of condensation as soups, fish, cutlets, meat and duck were passed from the huge black-leaded ranges to table
to serving dish. The butler, first footman and two second footmen were marshaling the setting of the table and the serving of food.

For a while, the three chambermaids had had breathing space, a light meal with the rest of the servants at half past five; then the two parlor maids had been summoned to help Amelie with the ladies’ dressing. Helene de Montfort had her own maid, a little Parisian girl who spoke no English, and Ida Stanningfield employed a girl who was competent and unfussy, but the others needed help with their hair and gowns. As soon as the guests came down to dinner, the three chambermaids went back to the bedrooms, putting away clothes, turning down the beds, warming them, restocking the fires, closing the curtains and shutters, replenishing the water jugs, straightening the chairs.

Emily was coming down the back stair, exhausted, when the first footman, Harrison, caught her. She wanted to avoid him, because he had tried to catch her once in the yard, tried to press his face against hers and find her mouth with his lips. He had smelled of the beer he used to pinch from Bradfield’s pantry when the butler’s back was turned. She had a feeling he would try to find her again tonight, when the footmen were allowed a glass of brandy to toast Christmas at midnight. “Hello, Maitland,” he said. “On your own?”

She tried to edge past him.

“Go and find March,” he said.

“What?”

“Don’t answer back.”

“Mr. March?” she repeated. “But I’m not allowed out.”

“I’m passing on a message from Mr. Bradfield.”

“But he’ll be in the gardener’s house.”

Harrison sighed. “State the obvious, won’t you?” he said. “Tell
him Lady Cavendish wants gardenias brought in from the glasshouse.”

“In the middle of dinner?”

“After dinner, you dolt.”

“But I’ve got to take up more water to the rooms.”

“Better get a move on then, hadn’t you?” At last, he grinned at her. “Don’t want to disappoint, eh? Her ladyship wants to show off her prize fucking gardenias.”

She pulled back as if he’d struck her. But he passed on, smiling at his own prohibited obscenity, and then adjusting his expression to one of blandness as he rounded the corner to the kitchen. In just a moment, he reappeared with Nash at his side, both of them carrying silver trays in whose polished, domed lids she caught sight of herself standing in the corridor—a patch of white apron, a glimpse of pale face. “Get off with you,” Harrison ordered. He nodded in the direction of the boot room. “Take an overcoat. Look sharp.”

* * *

S
he ran. With one of the men’s coats over her shoulders she went out the back door and across the yard, slipping every other step. At the end of the yard was a gate in the wall; it opened into a corner of the kitchen garden, and to the left, in another wall, was a door to the rose terrace. There was barely any light at all here: the kitchen garden was a huge walled area some hundred yards square, bordered on one side by the glasshouse that had been built by the seventh earl forty years before. Here, the gardeners labored to produce the fashion of the moment: pineapples, melons, and strawberries ahead of the season. There were almond and apricot trees and, at the far end, palms and ferns. There was a passion for ferns just now; it was supposed to be a ladies’ pastime. Still running,
her shoes now wet from the snow that had settled on the swept paths, Emily arrived at the glasshouse door and pushed it open. The quickest way to the gardener’s house was through here.

Once inside, she stopped, halted momentarily by the change in temperature. Despite the snow, the atmosphere was clammy; water was dripping somewhere over her head. She looked up and saw condensation in a sheet of opaque droplets over the closed windows of the roof. Running at waist height around the outside walls, hot-water pipes periodically gave off cracks of expansion or contraction. Here and there along the green avenue of plants there were seats. She had once seen Charlotte and Louisa one spring day here as she had passed outside, hurrying on some errand or other; she remembered looking through the glass and seeing how lovely they had looked, reading together while sunshine filtered down through the glass and scattered shadows and light on their white dresses. Their little terrier, Max, had been curled by their feet, fast asleep. She remembered gazing at them as if they had been spirits from another world: so pretty, so careless, so fortunate.

She started along the glasshouse path now. Perhaps she might see gardenias; perhaps, for speed, she ought to carry some back without disturbing March. What did gardenias look like? she wondered. They were the ones that smelled very nice; were they with the orchids? She stopped at a display of flowers with their pots well insulated against the slightest breeze; she looked at their curious little faces. Pretty things, as pretty as the daughters of the house, and seemingly as fragile. She reached out her own hand to touch one, and saw how reddened the skin of her hand was against the petal.

She didn’t belong here. She ought not to have come; what had she been thinking? She was suddenly convinced that the butler had
not sent her at all, that it was Harrison’s joke at her expense. If she touched a flower, even a single bloom, she would be reprimanded; she would be reprimanded anyway for leaving the house. Mr. March would rage if she dared to disturb him. It was all a mistake, a stupid mistake. Even now they might be calling for her, looking for her, and what could she tell them? That she had been to pick flowers on some fantastical errand for which she was wholly unsuited?

She turned, and suddenly saw him standing in the shadows by the door. He had been watching her; now he walked forward.

“It is a joke,” she said.

“A ruse, yes,” he replied. “Even if I had to employ Harrison.”

“I shall be in trouble.”

“No, no,” he murmured. “No, no.” He put his arms around her, looking intently into her face. “Dear little girl,” he said.

She tried to pull away. “I am not a girl,” she told him. “You have seen to that.”

He kissed her. She allowed it. She wanted to be loved for a moment; she wanted to be seen in the way that he saw her. She wanted to come into focus for someone, to have a name—
Emily
,
Emily—
in the way he was whispering it now. She wanted to be comforted, at least; that alone was almost worth all the rest. Just comforted and kept warm. She would have lain down with the flowers in here and been packed tight against the cold, gladly.

“You are my dear girl still,” he was whispering.

She tried to pull away, holding her hands against his shoulders. “But I’m not,” she said. “Don’t you see? I don’t belong to you.”

He was smiling as if he hadn’t heard her. Out of his pocket, he pulled a little package: it was a midnight blue box.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“It’s Christmas,” he said. “I’ve brought you a present.”

She held the box in her hand and looked directly at him. “What is it?”

“Open it and see.”

“I must get back.”

“At least see what I’ve brought you.” She opened the velvet-covered lid. Inside was a thin gold chain, and each link of the chain was shaped like a heart. “Do you like it?”

She shut the box and held it out to him. “I can’t keep this.”

He closed his hand over hers. “It shall be our secret.”

“But don’t you understand? When could I wear it? The girls would see it. What would I say?”

“Say it’s been left to you by a fond aunt.”

She looked at him, shook her head. “Perhaps in your world,” she said. “Not in mine.”

He laughed. “Darling, you
are
my world. Take it, do.”

She stood trembling; the air was too thick for her to breathe. “I must go away,” she told him.

“What on earth do you mean?”

“I shall have to leave. I must go home,” she said.

He put his head to one side, frowning. “Is someone ill?” he asked. “Is it your mother?”

“No,” she said. “Not Mother.”

And her mother’s face was suddenly conjured up. She knew exactly what her mother would say when she went home.
We shan’t be able to be seen in church.
The church was everything; it was what had kept the family together when her father had died. It was the church that made sure they had parish relief. It was the church that gave them food. Nothing was more important, nothing, nothing, nothing, than her mother scrubbing the church steps and sweeping out the rooms of the vicarage and sending her children to the new
Sunday School, and keeping them clean. Everything had to be clean. The step on the door of their tiny house in a dirty little street. Because it belonged to the church. Because they had to set an example. She and her two brothers and two sisters must go to the church school, eat the church food, clean the church brasses and pews, and arrange their faces to be good children, quiet children. Clean and respectable, their hands clasped in prayer in the back pews, brainwashed to remember whole passages from the Bible. To respect their elders and betters, the churchwardens who kept them from disaster. They were fortunate, her mother always said, to have been saved by kindness when their father died, drowning in the fluid that had filled his lungs. And so very fortunate—so very fortunate—to have been introduced to Mrs. Jocelyn, who was willing to take Emily on because she too was a servant of the church, a regular worshiper when she visited her sister in the town, who had noticed Emily as a good, willing girl.