Manor of Secrets (26 page)

“You’re laughing?” Janie cried.

“It’s about time the two of you stopped pretending there was nothing between you.” Mrs. Seward picked up the empty
kettle from the kitchen table and held it out to Janie pointedly, still chuckling.

They hadn’t talked about what would happen next. Janie wasn’t sure she wanted to work for Lady Beatrice. Or move to Italy. It would take several months to establish the Manor House restaurant in London, and her mother wouldn’t need kitchen staff until it opened. Janie knew she couldn’t remain at The Manor. She’d probably already overstayed her welcome, having spent the night. She could get a train to New Romney, and from there walk the two and a half miles to her uncle’s farm. They wouldn’t turn her away, but with no job and no character reference, she’d just be a burden.

Janie traced a finger along the grain of the scarred oak table.

“I’m going to miss it,” she said.

Mrs. Seward laid her hand over Janie’s, stilling it.

“There is an entire world out there, my girl. This is not all there is.”

Janie thought of the view of the hills from the kitchen gate. She thought of the mud between her toes down at the lake. She thought of early mornings, alone with Harry, the two of them working together before anyone else awoke.

She couldn’t imagine the entire world.

She heard the scraping and clatter from the servants’ hall. And she heard what Miss Caldwell said next. She pressed her lips together as she watched Miss Caldwell lead Charlotte into the kitchen.

“I hear you’re looking for tea,” Janie said.

Harry stepped up next to her, his arm pressing hers lightly.

“I hear you’re Charlotte’s sister.” Miss Caldwell tossed her head.

Janie nodded.

Miss Caldwell took a deep breath, and a glimmer of doubt crossed her expression. Then she stuck out her hand.

“I’m Frances Caldwell,” she said. “Charlotte’s … friend.” She cast a questioning look in Charlotte’s direction. “I hope.”

Janie stared at the hand. And then shook it.

“Janie Seward.” She smiled wryly. “Former kitchen maid.”

“I know who you are,” Fran said. She looked Janie up and down. “And you’re more than a kitchen maid. You’re an adventuress. At least in Charlotte’s stories.”

Janie looked at Charlotte. “You wrote about me?”

“I was always the helpless maiden, getting rescued,” Charlotte said. “You were the girl warrior. Doing all the things I couldn’t imagine myself doing. Fighting your own battles. Rescuing yourself.”

Janie wanted to be the sort of person Charlotte thought she was.

“They were all you, Charlotte,” Fran said, swiping a hot scone off the tray. “You just didn’t realize it.”

As Janie watched her, grinning around a mouthful of scone, a series of images flashed through her mind. Fran sneaking looks at Charlotte’s desk. Charlotte throwing the pages in the wastebasket. Janie taking them downstairs and hiding them. A flash of pink at the kitchen window.

“How do you know?” Janie asked.

Fran stopped chewing and appeared to have difficulty swallowing.

“Know what?” she asked.

“What Charlotte wrote.”

“You read it.” Charlotte stepped forward to look Fran in the eye. “I didn’t realize it last night. I was so … confused. But you knew about Lawrence, too. The Italian count. The Côte d’Azur.”

Fran shrugged minutely.

“I gave it to Janie for safekeeping,” Charlotte persisted, a deep V creasing between her eyebrows and her arms stiff at her sides.

“And you found it in the cookery book,” Janie finished.

Fran looked at Charlotte’s hands — tightening against her skirts — and took a step back. “I was curious.”

“You showed them to Mrs. Griffiths,” Janie said, nearly breathless with anger. “You said they were mine. You almost got me sacked.”

“Mrs. Griffiths caught me in here,” Fran said, her voice a thready imitation of its usual penetrating timbre. “All I said was that you hid them.”

“I blamed
Harry
!” Janie cried.

“Mother almost burned them.” Charlotte’s voice was flat with anger.

Fran pressed up against the table behind her. “I didn’t know that. I didn’t know any of it. I wasn’t supposed to be snooping, was I?”

“So you couldn’t just tell the truth?” Janie asked.

“No one else does in this house,” Fran snapped. “I don’t see why I should.”

“Maybe it’s time we started,” said a new voice from the doorway. Lady Beatrice.

Charlotte turned so quickly she almost fell. Fran caught her elbow, and Janie steadied Charlotte on the other side. The two girls looked at each other. Janie wanted to finish the argument, but realized there were more important matters at hand.
Charlotte needed all the support she could get. Even if it came from Frances Caldwell.

“Forgive me for interrupting,” Lady Beatrice said. Her chin tilted up slightly, as if she were feigning confidence. “But I came in search of my daughter.”

W
hen Charlotte had been a child, she’d imagined she was someone else’s daughter. Like Rapunzel or the Stolen Child by Yeats. As she whiled away long hours in the nursery — never allowed to come out because her mother didn’t want a little barefoot dervish downstairs — she told herself stories. Of the day her real mother came to get her.

None of the stories were anything like this.

“Why are you here?” she asked Beatrice. She couldn’t think of her as
Mother
. She didn’t feel any connection to this woman.

Beatrice’s chin dropped, like the air had been knocked out of her. Mrs. Seward turned away, clattering spoons and banging the kettle.

“I wanted to see you,” Beatrice said, and flicked a glance
at Mrs. Seward’s back. “And I wanted to make amends. It was my fault.”

“Yes, it was your fault,” Charlotte heard herself say, her tone not half as angry as she wanted it to be. “It was your fault Mrs. Seward had to leave her place here. It was your fault Janie grew up without her mother. It’s your fault my mother is the way she is — so full of rules and what people think that she can’t see the real people living under her own roof.”

“I’m afraid Diane was a bit like that before,” Beatrice said. “She has an active imagination, and wants to do everything she can to prevent all those fictitious scenarios from happening.”

Charlotte stared, her thoughts ticking over like a clock with faulty gears. They kept sliding backward into the same place.

Lady Diane imagined what could happen and spent all her energy making sure it didn’t.

Charlotte imagined what could happen and spent all her energy wishing that it would.

Neither one lived in the present. Neither one dealt with life as it truly was.

Beatrice stepped into the room, but not far enough to be part of the circle. Fran and Janie still flanked Charlotte, and Harry stood on Janie’s other side, his left hand covering her right on the edge of the oak table.

“I think Diane wanted to be a writer, too,” Beatrice said softly. “But she eventually saw all the shameful possibilities and talked herself out of it.”

“And what about you?” Charlotte asked.

“All I ever wanted was adventure.”

There it was. The connection.

“And you found it,” Charlotte said.

“But I went too far.” Beatrice stepped closer to the table. “Diane always worried too much about rules and appearances, so I was determined not to care. To do what I wanted, despite what other people thought.” She looked sadly at Mrs. Seward, who stood to one side, watching. “Or suffered.”

Mrs. Seward smiled tightly.

Charlotte felt spite coiling in her chest.

“So you came back to what?” she asked. “To make amends? To apologize so we’ll all be a happy family? I don’t know if that’s possible. You saddled my mother with an unwanted baby, and now you’ve ruined her social status as well. It’s all she ever cared about.” Charlotte had to take a breath, and then another because the first one caught in her throat. “And what about me? Did you just expect me to welcome you with open arms?”

“No!” Beatrice said loudly, startling them all. “I expected nothing of the sort!” She looked about at all their faces.
“I don’t expect any of you to forgive me.” She stopped in front of Charlotte and looked at her steadily. “Though I hope you will. Eventually.”

Silence descended on the little group, and Charlotte imagined herself saying the words that would bring them all to a happy ending. But she couldn’t.

So instead she said, “I’ll try.”

And Beatrice nodded her understanding, her eyes glassy with unshed tears.

“I’d like you to come with me,” she said. “To Italy.”

Charlotte didn’t respond. She just stared at the great oak table.

Janie squeezed her arm. “It would be an adventure.”

The air around Charlotte stilled, and suddenly she was overly sensitive to everything in the room. To the cut of the teacup’s rim beneath her finger. The shallow
drip
that came from the scullery. The heat of the oven on the other side of the room.

“An adventure,” she repeated.

She could leave The Manor. Get out of her mother’s sphere of influence. Make some of her own choices. Experience another country — another culture.

Write.

Terror fluttered in her throat. Adventure was for the imagination.

Wasn’t it?

“But —” she stuttered and looked up at the woman in front of her. “I don’t know you.”

Lady Beatrice cocked her head to one side. “You could get to know me.”

Charlotte paused. She thought about Andrew. How she’d always assumed he was boring. But he wasn’t. She looked at Janie, and remembered what she’d said the night she taught Charlotte the hesitation waltz.

Sometimes people aren’t what you think they are at first.

Maybe Beatrice wasn’t an adventuress. But maybe she wasn’t just a selfish deserter, either. Maybe she was somewhere in between. Charlotte would never know if she didn’t try.

She studied Beatrice. Her blonde hair. Her hazel eyes.

“What did he look like?” she asked.

Beatrice bit her lip and glanced quickly at Mrs. Seward. She regarded Janie for a moment, and then turned back to Charlotte.

“He looked like both of you,” she said, finally. “He had red hair and greenish eyes. And a nose that just started to turn up at the end.”

Sarah clattered into the doorway and stopped short, frowning at the collection of people in the kitchen.

“Lady Diane is awake,” she said, and her gaze finally landed on Charlotte. “She wants to see you.”

A trickle of fear slid down Charlotte’s throat. She had no idea what to expect from Lady Diane. Or even what she expected in return.

She was essentially free from all the rules and obligations heaped upon a daughter of The Manor. She no longer
had
to do what Lady Diane said. But the woman who raised her deserved her respect at the very least.

“Now,” Sarah said. It looked like she was restraining herself from stamping her foot.

Charlotte refocused on the housemaid. The girl who had helped her dress and done her hair for years. And who now treated her like she was undesirable. Charlotte could see what Andrew meant about the injustice of class distinctions. That people should be judged on their integrity and not their social standing.

“One moment, Sarah,” Charlotte said, and turned to Janie. “You’ll still be here?”

“I have a train to catch.”

“But you can’t,” Charlotte said. “You can’t just leave.”

“I’m still hoping to persuade Janie to come and work for me,” Beatrice said.

Janie? Charlotte looked at her friend — her
sister
. They could be together. Just like she’d imagined.

“I haven’t decided,” Janie said, her words rushed, and turned to Beatrice. “I don’t know when you’re leaving.” She paused. “And I can’t stay here.”

Sarah — still in the doorway — made a
humph
ing sound. But when Beatrice glared at her, the housemaid widened her eyes in mock innocence.

“Lord Edmonds has agreed to let me make some of the household decisions while my sister is … indisposed,” Beatrice said, turning back to Janie and Charlotte. “I think you should stay here for at least another day, Janie. With your mother.”

Charlotte moved to the door, keeping her eyes on Janie. “Please.” She looked at Sarah’s already disappearing form, and then back again. “For me.”

After Janie nodded, Charlotte followed Sarah down the basement passageway and out through the door that opened beneath the grand staircase in the marble hall. Charlotte tried not to listen to the echoing of their footsteps. Tried not to remember Lady Diane’s voice ringing across it. Or the shocked stares of all the guests.

At the top of the stairs, Sarah turned left, away from Charlotte’s room. They passed paintings by Turner, Gainsborough, and Brueghel. Charlotte hadn’t been down
this hall since she was a child and her nanny would walk her past all these terrifying faces and landscapes after tea.

Back then, Lady Diane would be waiting to inspect Charlotte’s clothes, her hair, her fingernails. She’d ask for a recitation of a poem or, later, how to address a marquess in person or a viscount in writing. And then Charlotte would be dismissed. All parental interaction done for the day.