Lily (3 page)

The wisdom of that act troubled her again, as it had at least a dozen times since she’d climbed into the mail coach. If she’d stayed, they
might
have believed her. She was a respectable woman, had never been in any kind of trouble. Her father had occasionally made himself known to local law-keepers for minor infractions, but surely they wouldn’t have held that against her. But it was too late now. Running away had insured the appearance of guilt, and there was nothing to do but make the best of things. But how? How was she going to… .

Her thoughts tapered off. She kept her eyes unfocused on the middle distance while the tail end of a conversation brought her to rigid attention.

“… afraid I wouldn’t know of anyone who’d suit you just now,” Mrs. Bickle was saying. “But why would you be wantin’ to hire servants from so far away? Are there not girls much closer to home who would do? If your master’s house is in Cornwall, why don’t you look—”

“Because the estate is isolated, and it’s hard to find any but slovenly country girls who’ll stay past a month or two. The master’s particular and won’t put up with sluts. It was only an idea,” the sour-faced woman added ungraciously. “I thought to ask, though I didn’t really expect you to know anyone who would do.”

Mrs. Bickle’s smile finally wavered, and her curtsey was the merest bob of the knees before she turned and left the room.

She was hardly out the door when Lily stood up and followed her.

She found the landlady in the inn’s private parlor, pouring tea for an old man who was reading the newspaper in front of a coal fire. When she saw Lily, her smile came back. “The privy’s behind the house, dear, just through this—”

“Mrs. Bickle, I have a favor to ask you. I have no money, nor am I likely to get any soon, so I won’t pretend that what I need is only to be a loan. I want to write a letter. It—it’s rather urgent. I don’t need a stamp, just pen and ink, and perhaps an envelope if you—”

“Is it a piece of paper and a quill you want?”

“I—yes.”

“Well, for goodness sake.” She looked relieved that it wasn’t more. “Come over here, lamb.” She went to a writing desk in the corner of the parlor. “Can you see in the murk? I can light a candle if you want it.”

“No, this is fine. Thank you so much, I can’t tell you—”

“Nonsense, help yourself and take as long as you like.” She gave Lily two bracing pats on the arm and went out.

She sat down. The paper was plain but surprisingly good—an unhoped-for piece of luck. She found the newest-looking quill and dipped it in the well inset in the desktop. After a minute’s thought, she began to write.

“Lily Tr—” She stopped short, amazed at the stupidity of what she’d almost done. What would her name be, then? T-r what? A tiny smile pulled at her lips and she set the pen to paper again. “Lily Troublefield has been in my employ for the last year and a half. During that time she has shown herself to be a biddable, honest, and able girl in the capacity of maid-of-all-work in my household. She leaves my employ because”—she paused again and tapped the quill against her lips thoughtfully—“because I am about to embark on a year-long journey on the European Continent, and Lily is unwilling to continue in service away from home for so long a time. I know her to be of good character and cheerful disposition; she is naturally industrious and uncommonly intelligent for a girl of her class. My recommendation of Lily is unqualified.”

Had she overdone it? Probably, but she couldn’t help liking the “uncommonly intelligent” part. With a self-conscious flourish, she signed the paper, “Dow. Lady Estelle Clairton-Davies, Marchioness of Frome.”

There really was such a person—she owned a country house outside Lyme, and once Lily had seen her rather grand coach-and-four waiting beside a jeweler’s shop in the town. But she’d skillfully gotten rid of her ladyship by shipping her off to Europe, so the likelihood of anyone writing to her to verify the truthfulness of this reference was small—a risk worth taking. She sprinkled silver sand across the paper, waited a moment and blew it away, folded the letter, and tucked it into an envelope. It looked too crisp, too clean. She massaged it between her fingers for a few seconds, folded it in half, unfolded it, folded it again. Better. She slid it into her pocket and stood up.

How did she look? Her dark-blue dress of cotton cambric was shabby enough, but was it too fine nonetheless for the likes of a humble maid-of-all-work? Perhaps, but then again, perhaps not for one who had worked in the home of so illustrious a personage as the Marchioness of Frome. It didn’t matter, she had nothing else. And there were other ways to convince the prune-faced lady from Cornwall that she was a maid. She squared her shoulders and started for the common room.

She wasn’t there. Lily searched the room frantically with her eyes. She wasn’t there!

“Did you write your letter, dearie?”

“The lady in the black coat, she came in the coach after ours and there was a man with her, younger—”

“They’ve gone out, love. The Penzance coach is just leaving. You can catch her if you—”

She broke off when Lily spun around and dashed for the door. Halfway through it, she remembered to stop and call back over her shoulder, “Thank you for the paper! Good-bye!” The startled landlady lifted a hand to wave, but Lily had disappeared.

The young man was already handing the woman into the coach. “Oh, Mrs.—madam! Excuse me!” she cried, breaking into a run across the rutted dirt yard. She reached them out of breath. The hostile looks they turned on her had a diminishing effect on her confidence. She took a breath and plunged in.

“Beggin’ your pardon, mistress, but I chanced t’ overhair what you were sayin’ t’ the landlady just naow, an’ I was after wonderin’ if you’d be thinkin’ o’ meself for housemaid, like. I’ve a wonderful good character from me last lady, so she told me, an’ I’m a nate an’ tidy parson by nature an’ would wark tremendous hard for you. Would you be wantin’ t’ see me character?”

Well, it was
sort
of Irish, or at least more Irish than anything else. She hoped. Without waiting for the woman’s answer, she took out the envelope and thrust it into her hands, smiling a big, respectful smile. The woman returned it with a suspicious scowl, but Lily decided it was her natural expression and not meant personally. Yet.

She shrugged one massive shoulder with irritation and opened the envelope. Lily waited, praying the ink was dry. She hazarded a glance at the man. They had to be mother and son; the resemblance was too strong to be accounted for by any other relationship. But he was smiling, something she hadn’t seen his mother do. It wasn’t a nice smile.

The mother finished reading and looked up. She had small black eyes, slightly protruding, and narrowed to slits now with skepticism. Lily spoke quickly. “Is it a good one, then? I’m not much for raidin’,” she said with a little embarrassed laugh, “but me mistess did say ‘twould sarve me well when th’ time came.” When the
toime
came, I should’ve said, she fretted, wondering if the accent was such a good idea after all. Her father was an Irishman, but he’d lost most of his lilt after all the years lived in England. But sometimes, when he’d drunk too much whiskey, he would lapse into an exaggerated brogue, and it was her imperfect memory of that accent that Lily was relying on now to see her through this interview.

“If it’s true, it’ll serve.”

She widened her eyes in innocent protest. “Oh, ma’am, it’s true, be Jaysus, as God is me witness—”

“Hold your tongue! Would you take the Lord’s name to my face? How dare you!” Her scowl blackened and her bulldog eyes snapped with indignation. “If you come into my service, that sort of talk won’t be tolerated. What kind of household did this great lady of Frome manage, then? A godless one, I’m bound, if you’re the result.”

“Oh, no, ma’am, don’t be thinkin’ it! It’s a daycent garul I am, truly, only sometimes me tongue gets away from me. It’s because o’ me dear departed father.” She made it rhyme with “lamer.” “He were a good man at heart, but a terrible blasphemer. Naow when I’m in distress, like, out pops the very wards I used t’ scold ’im about.”

“So you’re in distress, are you?”

“I—” She thought fast. “Not
distress,
as you might say, but more like anxious. I was after stoppin’ in Axminster t’ visit me old friend Fanny, her as works as housemaid for th’ pastor’s wife, an’ while we was traipsin’ around the market fair in th’ taown, me pocket was picked! Pure an’ clane, an’ turned outside-in like a pilla case. Well, ma’am, it shortened me holiday considerably, you can understand, an’ put me in nade of anither post sooner than I was plannin’. Would you be thinkin’ of hirin’ me, naow?”

The fat coachman came around in front of the horses and glowered at them. “You’ll have to get up now, I can’t be waiting any longer.”

Lily turned winsome eyes to her prospective employer. But that lady was not to be persuaded by winsome eyes, nor hurried by an impatient coachman. “If I gave you a job, you’d start in the scullery. It’s three shillings a month, and you must buy your own cap and aprons. You’d work hard and have Sunday mornings off—to go to church, not Mass—as well as an afternoon a month for yourself. I’m Mrs. Howe, housekeeper to a viscount; Devon Darkwell is his name, Lord Sandown. Is that your only dress?”

“I—yes, ma’am.”

“It’ll do for now, I suppose. Can you pay coach fare to Trewyth?”

“I can t!”

“Then that’ll have to come out o’ your wage as well.” She tapped the edge of the envelope in the V between her thumb and forefinger and peered at Lily consideringly. “You don’t look that strong.”

“I am, though. You’d be—”

“And if I ever hear a sacrilegious word out o’ your mouth again, I’ll box your ears and send you packing.”

“You won’t, I prom—”

“Get in, then, and be quick. You’re keeping everyone in the coach waiting.”

D
ESPITE WORRY AND NERVES
and the great question mark her immediate future had become, Lily slept fitfully much of the way to Cornwall. Exhaustion overwhelmed anxiety; and oblivion, she discovered, served a dual purpose: it allowed her to keep her atrociously inept Irish accent to herself a little longer—what a bird-witted idea
that
had been—and it gave her a respite from the sullen, unnerving silences of the Howes—mother and son, as she’d surmised. Early on in the journey she’d made tentative inquiries about her new situation, but with paltry success. Their destination was a place called Darkstone Manor, and Mrs. Howe spoke in short, belligerent sentences of “the master” and “his lordship,” but beyond that Lily could get little from either of them about her new employer. The smell of the sea grew stronger as they went, and yet she had no idea where they were or even toward which Cornish coast, Channel or Atlantic, they were traveling.

It was after midnight and the moon had set by the time they reached Trewyth; all Lily could make of the silent village was that it was small and clean. She climbed from the public coach, limbs stiff from fatigue and inactivity, and waited, shivering a little in the misty chill, while the driver threw the Howes’ baggage down from the top. They had rather a lot of it, she noted, considering they’d only been away for three days while Mrs. Howe visited her sister in Bruton. Lily heard the sound of hooves and turned to see another coach, a handsome black private carriage in need of a wash, clattering toward them down the unpaved street. Lord Sandown’s equipage, she assumed, sent to carry them the rest of the way to the manor house. She felt weary beyond thought. As she climbed into the carriage she wondered how long it would take, and whether she had strength enough to go another mile before she collapsed.

But in a mercifully short while their new vehicle turned in at high stone lodge gates bordering a wooded park and moved sedately down a twisting gravel drive. She forgot her fatigue and peered out the window curiously, but there was little to see except the black shapes of trees passing almost within arm’s reach of the carriage on either side. The salt tang of the sea was stronger now in the windless midnight hush. She thought she could make out a light up ahead, but the road bent sharply and she lost sight of it.

“There’ll be room for you in Lowdy Rostarn’s bed in the attic,” Mrs. Howe said suddenly. “Go on up directly and straight to sleep, no talking. Well?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lily said hurriedly. She wasn’t used to taking orders and hadn’t spoken up quickly enough.

Mrs. Howe had her plump hand on the door handle. In the next minute the carriage stopped and she flung the door open, lowered the step herself, and got out, not waiting for assistance.

“After you,” said the son, whose name was Trayer, and despite the darkness Lily sensed an impudent grin on his lips.

She stepped to the ground, and stood in the gravel half-circle before the brooding black bulk of an enormous house. Three and a half stories of Cornish granite hovered above her like a dark, wide-winged hawk, obliterating starlight in the southern sky.
Darkstone.
She whispered the name, motionless before its austere immenseness. There might be towers at the far corners, but in the blackness she couldn’t be sure. She grew dizzy gazing up at the invisible demarcation between roof and night sky. From somewhere, everywhere, the sound of water on rock was a steady, sibilant hiss. As she watched, lightless cliffs of sheer stone wall seemed to stretch and expand at the edges of her vision, as if to surround her. Fatigue, she scoffed, pulling her thin shawl tighter. Nevertheless, the impression lingered.

Torchlight wavered on worn stone steps leading to the entrance, a scarred and iron-belted oak door with a huge ring for a handle. The Howes were seeing to their bags again. Unthinking, drawn to the light, Lily moved toward the door. She’d put her foot on the first step when she heard the fast, angry crunch of stones behind her.

Mrs. Howe caught her by the elbow and spun her around. “Ignorant trull! Insolent little baggage! Where do you think you’re going?”

“I—I forgot myself, I didn’t think—”

“Forgot yourself!” For a wild second Lily thought the housekeeper would strike her. But with a powerful effort she reined in her temper and pointed toward the east end of the house. “The servants’ steps are there, around that corner. Mayhap her grand ladyship in Lyme lets servant girls use her front door, but there’s none o’ that here. You’d best learn your place quick, Lily Troublefield, or I’ll make you sorry.”