Manor of Secrets (3 page)

O
n her five a.m. trek down the servants’ stairs from her attic room, Janie Seward paused on the second-floor landing. Her fingers itched to open the door. To see once again the thick carpet, the paintings in their gilt frames. To catch the scents of luxury.

She placed her hand on the door and listened. The entire Manor was asleep. She could just … look. No one would ever know.

For a moment, she fought helplessly against the invisible barrier. The one that kept the servants in their places. The one that should have kept Lady Charlotte Edmonds out of the kitchen yesterday.

“I know where I belong,” Janie murmured. She hoisted her candle aloft and continued down the stairs to the kitchen.

It was still sweltering. Janie quickly passed it by and opened the scullery door to the courtyard. The relief was immediate, the early morning air flowing like mercury down the basement stairs — thick, cool, and silvery with the dawn.

Janie glanced once at the empty kitchen, then ran up the stairs and through the courtyard. She stopped at the gate, looking out over the hills of the Weald and the mist still clinging to the ash trees down by the River Eden.

Eden.

Janie sucked in a deep breath, closed her eyes, and lifted her face to the sky. She loved The Manor in the morning, before anyone else was awake. She loved to breathe in the smells of sweet grass and chestnut trees in summer, the frost and wood smoke in winter.

Janie remembered the words of Miss Caldwell yesterday. “You
work
here,” she had said. But Janie felt she lived here more than the family who owned it. They missed so much, all tied up in their clothes and jewels and newspapers. They had those big, wide windows in every room and never looked out of them.

The morning star shimmered in the haze and Janie breathed out, wishing on it. Then she turned and reentered the kitchen. It was probably her last breath of fresh air for the day.

Yesterday, her spontaneous decision to play truant down at the lake during the garden party had very nearly been a disaster. It still could be, if little Miss Charlotte decided to tell Lady Diane. Janie’s pay could be docked. Or worse. She knew better than to do anything that might jeopardize her position.

It wouldn’t happen again.

Mollie was not in the scullery yet. She was supposed to light the donkey boiler so the house could have hot water, but Janie did it for her.

“That’s not your job, you know.”

Janie turned to see Harry Peasgood, the hall boy, leaning against the door frame, grinning at her.

“I know,” she said, standing and brushing her dirty hands on her apron. The hierarchy among the servants was as strict as it was among the aristocracy. Everyone knew his or her place, and everyone held on as tightly as they could, never deigning to stoop a little bit lower, even to help the less fortunate.

“No one ever did it for you when you were a skivvy,” Harry added. Janie heard the bitterness in his voice. Harry had been hall boy since he was twelve. At seventeen, he should be moving up to footman. But Lady Diane thought he wasn’t
handsome enough. She liked her footmen tall and dark and effortlessly dashing. Harry had yet to reach her six-foot standard, and his sand-colored curls were cropped close, squashed by sleep on one side.

“
You
did, Harry,” Janie said and rubbed his head, making the curls stand up again. “That’s why I do it for Mollie. The poor girl was crying again yesterday.”

Harry ducked out of reach. “Tea?” he asked, and started to fill the kettle before she could reply. “You’re a bit late this morning.”

“Had to visit the view,” Janie explained, and went to the pantry. She measured flour into a bowl and cradled it in the crook of her right arm, then hefted the sugar, baking powder, and salt with her left, carrying them back to the scarred oak table.

Every morning was the same, ever since her first day as scullery maid four years before, when Harry found her cursing at the donkey boiler. He had cleared the coal dust, lit the fire, and made her a cup of tea. After that, they always spent the pre-waking hours at The Manor as a team. She would clean the range while he stoked the fire, knead the bread while he brought in more coal. Together, they shared the first scones off the pan.

And the quiet before the storm.

Janie watched Harry as he checked the flue of the second stove. His back had grown broader, his hands more capable. His face had lost most of its boyishness, but he was still Harry.

“Has this been drawing properly?” He turned and caught her staring.

Janie quickly looked down at the dough she was kneading. “We’ve been trying not to use it because of the heat.”

“You’ll have to for the shooting party. Double the guests. I’ll take a look at it later today.”

“This house wouldn’t run without you, Harry Peasgood.”

Harry hefted a bucket of water onto the table. “I have no illusions of my importance here, Janie. Look at this.” He stuck his hand into the water and then looked up at her. “See my hand?”

“Of course I do. It’s in my clean water.”

Harry didn’t laugh. He watched her as he drew his hand out of the bucket, making sure she saw what he was doing. “See that water? Think it notices my absence? Well, neither will anyone here.”

It was true the downstairs staff at The Manor changed regularly. Laundresses, kitchen maids, gardeners’ boys. They were invisible. Didn’t even have names — if Lady Charlotte wanted to call Janie
Jenny
, she’d be Jenny.

But Harry had been there for years. He’d opened the tradesman’s door to her when she’d arrived — half-starved and silent — returning to a birthplace she’d never seen and a mother she didn’t know. He was one of the reasons The Manor felt like home.

“I would notice,” Janie blurted.

Harry grinned. “Only because I wouldn’t be around to make your tea in the morning.” He poured the water away and refilled the bucket, putting it back on the table so she could use it to clean up.

Janie’s throat tightened, but she didn’t say anything. She put the scones in the oven and sliced the bread while Harry poured the just-boiled water over the tea leaves. She slathered a thick slice with butter and strawberry jam, and traded it for the mug of milky tea he held out to her.

His eyes were such a beguiling color, like tea. Brown and gold — warm and comforting.

“Eat that,” she said, putting as much of a tease into her voice as she could muster. “And get to work.”

“I will when I finish doing yours.” Harry laughed and danced away before Janie could land the punch she aimed at his arm.

Janie scraped the leftover knots of dough into the pig bucket. “I guess breakfast won’t make itself.”

“You really should get Mollie down here earlier. She’s supposed to wake
you
up. And you can’t do two jobs at once.”

“I’ve been doing it for this long — why stop now?” Janie said, going to the larder for the bacon. Even when she was in the scullery, she had taken on extra cooking jobs just to learn. Anything the kitchen maids didn’t want to do, Janie did.

But that wasn’t the real reason. The reason she couldn’t say out loud except in a tease.

“Besides,” she said, returning to the table, “maybe I just want you all to myself.”

Harry choked on his bread and chased it with a gulp of tea.

“I guess I just don’t like change,” Janie amended, focusing on slicing the bacon into thin strips. “I like things the way they are.”

She loved the quiet of the early mornings before the kitchen whirled into well-controlled chaos. She liked having a friend.

“Change is inevitable, Janie,” Harry said, finishing off the bread. “You don’t want to be a skivvy all your life.”

Janie slammed her knife down on the table. “I am
not
a skivvy,” she said heatedly. “I am a kitchen maid.”

Harry held very still, watching her. “Do you really want to spend your life in service? I can’t believe you want to be a kitchen maid forever.”

No, she didn’t. But she didn’t want Harry Peasgood telling her so.

“My mother is in service,” she said, picking up the knife again and laying each slice of bacon on the broiler tray. “My grandparents were in service. My great-grandparents. My father tried to better himself. He joined the Army. And died in South Africa before I even knew what he looked like. I make a good kitchen maid. I do my job and keep my place. My entire life is mapped out for me.”

“There are no maps of life, Janie,” Harry said. “My parents were in service, too. But what if I want something different? What if I want to go to uni and become an engineer?”

“You watch what you say, Harry Peasgood; Lady Diane would tell you that you’re trying to get above yourself.
Be content with your station in life.
” Janie did a good imitation of Her Ladyship’s clipped articulation and pinched way of looking over her nose at people. It was exactly what Lady Diane had said and exactly the way she had said it when Mrs. Seward asked if Janie could attend the local secondary school.

“Maybe I don’t want my station in life,” Harry said. “I have options. I could work in a factory or move to America where there isn’t all this hierarchy and status. Workers are fighting to be paid fairly — look at the dockworkers’ strikes. Things are changing. We have more choices than ever.”

Janie tried to look into the grand future Harry thought he was describing. But she couldn’t picture the servants being equal. Couldn’t picture a house with no servants at all, unless it was one where poverty crushed the occupants and slid them toward starvation — like the years she’d spent with her aunt and uncle on Romney Marsh. The men who spent their days bent over a plow, the boys who spent weeks at a time following the sheep whose wool would sell for a few pennies.

The family that ate for an entire week off the amount of bacon she would put on the servants’ table for just one morning.

“Maybe I don’t want choices,” she said. “Maybe I want to be a cook. Here. At The Manor.”

“Your mother is The Manor’s cook,” Harry said mildly. “You’ll have to leave eventually.”

“I’m not leaving!”

Janie’s shout rang down the hall like the bells that called the servants. Harry froze but Janie kept moving. She threw the tray of bacon in the oven, lifted her hands, and pushed him.

“After spending years on the Marsh with barely enough to eat. After the death of my father and the final return of my mother, I am back in the place I was born, Harry. I belong here.”

Janie’s voice cracked and she slumped a little, blinking hard not to shed the tears, trying to regain some of her anger so she could shout instead of cry.

Harry reached for her, but Janie twitched her shoulder out from under his hand. She looked up at him, her eyes dry.

“I’m not leaving,” she said again.

“Who’s leaving?” Mollie the scullery maid walked in, her blonde hair in a messy knot.

“No one,” Janie said, looking at Harry pointedly.

“I wouldn’t dare,” Harry said. “And there’s always wood to chop and shoes to polish, so I guess for now, I’m indispensable.” He swiped a freshly baked scone off the tray and winked at Janie before leaving the kitchen.

But the wink didn’t cover up the hurt in his eyes.

“I wish I could leave,” Mollie said, her voice small and sad. Her hands were already red and raw and she hadn’t even started washing dishes yet.

Janie sighed. She felt guilty enough for shouting at Harry; she couldn’t scold Mollie for coming down late. “Sit down a minute.”

“I can’t,” the other girl said. “I haven’t even lit the boiler.” Tears sprang up, and Janie envied the ease with which Mollie shed them.

“It’s done,” Janie said briskly. “Now sit and hold out your hands.”

Janie rubbed Mollie’s hands in honey and then wrapped them in oatmeal and a kitchen cloth. “That will help. Do it again tonight when you’re done.”

“It won’t help.”

“It
does
. You forget I was scullery maid for four years.” She put her hand under the other girl’s chin. “It gets better.”
And it gets worse.

Tess, the head kitchen maid, stepped into the kitchen and stopped short. Glaring.

“You …” She pointed at Mollie. “… shouldn’t be sitting down.”

Mollie hopped up and tore off the cloth covering her hands, pushing it at Janie as if trying to shed culpability.

“You should know better.” Tess turned to Janie. “We have the shooting party this week. His Lordship arrives tonight and Lord David tomorrow. The Caldwell girl and Lord Broadhurst will be arriving Wednesday, and the rest the day after. The house will be full.”

Janie rolled her eyes. She’d been in The Manor kitchen longer than Tess.

Tess gripped her by the shoulders. “Don’t think that because you’re the cook’s daughter, you can get away with
skiving off. I’ll tell Mrs. Griffiths you’ve been sitting down when you’re supposed to be working.”

Janie didn’t say that, technically, she hadn’t been the one sitting down. She didn’t say that Mrs. Griffiths, the housekeeper, wasn’t in charge of kitchen staff. She didn’t say that she had seen Tess sitting in the servants’ hall reading a penny romance the day before when she should have been making the aspic for dinner.

“Don’t worry, Tess,” Janie said instead. “I know my place. And I always get my work done.”

Mollie pushed past her on the way to the scullery as the servants began bustling in, demanding tea and breakfast. The door to the servants’ hall was crowded one instant and empty the next as the maids grabbed a scone and bread, and then rushed to clean the lower rooms of the house. As a lowly second kitchen maid, it was Janie’s job to cook for and serve them — plain scones, bread, porridge, and bacon — while her mother cooked the sausages, eggs, kidneys, and whatever else the Edmonds family might want for breakfast.

Janie cleared plates with one hand while setting down a fresh batch of scones with the other.

“Fifty-five days without rain,” Lawrence said, not looking up from the newspaper spread in front of
him. “No wonder it’s so bloomin’ ’ot.”

The butler, Mr. Foyle, strode through the door, prompting all the servants to stand.