Manor of Secrets (9 page)

J
anie felt for the floor with her toes. The stuffiness of her attic room hadn’t abated much, even with the window open, and she felt a little queasy. She leaned over and shook Mollie, who snorted and flapped an angry hand and then turned over. Janie knew how she felt.

Two hours of sleep.

Mrs. Griffiths had brought Mr. Foyle, the butler, in. And all of the people still left in the servants’ hall. Mollie, Sarah, Tess. Even Lady Beatrice’s lady’s maid, who had just come down to ask for a needle and thread. Mr. Foyle had lectured them all on the house divisions for over an hour. Respecting the privacy of the family. But also respecting their status.

“Remember your place,” he said at last. “Remember your station and never forget it.”

Servants. Downstairs.

“Remember that your life here begins and ends with the earl’s family. You are only temporary, and they will remain long after you are gone.”

Janie knew The Manor wasn’t her real home. Not like it was Charlotte’s. Her life wasn’t a children’s story. But when she’d arrived, it had been like something out of Dickens, where a beneficent angel had bestowed upon her everything she’d ever wanted.

Food.

A bed.

Her mother.

A friend.

Janie had Harry. And Charlotte had — what? Money. Comforts. Beautiful dresses. A mother who commanded much and bestowed little. And a room at the end of a long hall, far away from everyone else.

So after Janie woke her mother, fed the servants, cleaned the kitchen, helped prepare luncheon, and cleaned the kitchen
again
, she washed her hands carefully, put on a clean apron and cap, and climbed the back stairs to the second-story landing.

She stopped, one palm flat on the thick, woolly fabric that covered the green door. She didn’t have to go. She knew she
shouldn’t
go. It was too great a risk.

But Harry’s words haunted her. And so did her glimpse of the world abovestairs the day she sneaked Charlotte back to her room.

She wanted to see it again.

Stepping through the door was like entering another country. The carpet beneath her feet was like walking on the thickest of newly mown grass. The electric lights cast glaring halos across the ceiling. The paintings were like great windows to the sky. Or the past. She breathed in the scents of furniture polish and perfume. The odors of affluence.

And silence was the sound of it. No clanging pots or loud voices. No ringing bells. Her feet made no noise as she crept past the first door on the left.

She glanced back once to the servants’ stairs. The door had fit back into the wall, the wainscoting and dado rail blending almost seamlessly. Barely visible. As if the downstairs didn’t exist.

Or existed only to serve when needed.

Janie stopped outside the second door.

Opposite Charlotte’s door was a large painting of a man and a woman. The woman had a band of curls over her forehead and looked straight out of the portrait into the hall. As if she could see Janie’s every move. The man had a long face
with a pointed beard and a sensuous mouth, his long, dark, curly hair spilling over his shoulders. He looked at the woman as if she were his very life.

Janie turned to Charlotte’s door and lifted her hand. Her fingers were red and raw — the skin cracked from scrubbing the copper pots in the scullery because Mollie couldn’t get them to Mrs. Seward’s standards. So obvious against the clean white elegance of the door.

Janie strengthened her resolve and knocked. The swift motion broke the silence like a thunderclap and pushed the door half-open. Janie caught a glimpse of Charlotte hunched over her desk, scrambling up a sheaf of papers.

Charlotte looked over and Janie dropped her gaze and turned away. She shouldn’t be peeking into people’s rooms. Like she was really spying.

“Janie!” Even Charlotte was whispering. Janie heard the door open all the way, and Charlotte joined her in the corridor. “You came!”

Janie nodded, her eyes on the painting across the hall.

“Is that … ?” Janie asked, gesturing to the canvas.

“A Van Dyck,” Charlotte said.

“Charles the First?” Janie said at the same time, and blushed. “I’m afraid I don’t know paintings. But I read a book
once. About him.” She wished she were back in the kitchen. Soufflés and aspics she understood. Kings and Van Dycks made her feet itch.

Charlotte fidgeted for a moment. She felt it, too, Janie could tell. But then she stepped forward and looped her arm through Janie’s in a proprietary manner.

“Come in and see my room.” Her tone was soothing. Like something one would use on a shifty horse.

The window of Charlotte’s room looked out over the patio and the formal garden. And beyond — to the hills and the river. The sun was just beginning to dip toward the west, turning the lake into a dark and mysterious hollow between the hills. It was the same view Janie saw from the kitchen gate every morning. But different. Framed, like a painting.

Sunlight flooded the room. The walls were a lemony yellow, the wainscot a leafy green. Drapes of the same green hung from the giant four-poster bed, the thick velvety counterpane turned down from the white linen of the pillow. The pot of ink on the desk stood open, the top page of the hastily gathered papers covered in curling cursive.

“What do you think?” Charlotte asked. She sounded shy. Nervous.

“It’s lovely.” Janie’s gaze moved involuntarily again to the window. What she wouldn’t do to have that view. Her own window opened too high to see out of, just under the rafters, and facing the drive.

“I was just …” Charlotte angled her body between Janie and the window. No, not the window. The desk. She kept stealing uneasy glances at the pages lying there.

“Writing?” Janie finished for her.

“It’s silly.” Charlotte picked at the lace cuff of her peach-colored tea gown. But then she frowned. “No. It’s not silly.” She looked Janie in the eye. “It’s private. And Mother wouldn’t approve.”

“I’m not supposed to be here, remember?” Janie said. “I won’t tell.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” Charlotte said quickly. “After last night.”

“I almost didn’t.”

Charlotte bit her lip. “I hope I didn’t get anyone in trouble.”

“You got everyone in trouble.” Janie wanted to take back the words as soon as she said them.

Charlotte slapped a hand across her mouth, tears springing to her eyes.

“Oh, no,” she said. “What can I do? What can I do to make it better?”

All kinds of solutions came to Janie’s mind.
You can be a better mistress than your mother. You can leave us alone.

“Don’t come downstairs anymore.” It was exactly what the butler had told them that morning at breakfast. If anyone saw Lady Charlotte in the servants’ part of the house, they were to escort her immediately to Mrs. Griffiths, who would take her back upstairs. As if she were a toddler who needed minding.

But Janie couldn’t say all of that to Charlotte.

Charlotte sat on the edge of her bed and looked down at her hands clasped on her knees. “That’s what my mother said.”

Janie swallowed the sour dread that rose in the back of her throat. “Lady Diane knows?”

“Mrs. Griffiths told her. I explained that you didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to go downstairs. That it wasn’t your fault.”

Janie frowned. “You’re forbidden from going downstairs?” The Manor was Charlotte’s home. And even she couldn’t venture into parts of it?

“One of Mother’s rules. She says … she says it will corrupt me.”

Janie almost laughed. “Corrupted by spending time with
people who are too busy to eat their meals, and too exhausted to have fun?”

Charlotte looked up. “I had fun last night, Janie. It was the most fun I’d had in months. Except for eating that chili. And putting my toes in the lake.”

“So maybe I
am
corrupting you.”

“There’s got to be more to life than calling cards and charity fetes!” Charlotte cried, standing up and pacing the room from one end to the other. Janie noticed it took at least a dozen strides. Probably more. In her attic room, there was barely enough space to stand between her bed and Mollie’s. “There’s got to be more than waiting for Andrew bloody Broadhurst to propose.”

This time Janie did laugh. “Language, Lady Charlotte.”

Charlotte stopped dead in the center of the room, eyes wide. Then she started to laugh, too.

“No wonder Mother has me locked up in my room,” she said. “She’ll only let me out on my wedding day.”

The idea seemed infinitely foreign to Janie. Yet she and Charlotte were the same age. Surely too young to think of marriage.

“Lord Broadhurst is going to propose to you?”

“Mother’s been sure of it since I was born, I think. It would be like marrying dry toast. Bland. Boring. Always the same.”

“It’s nice to know what you can expect,” Janie said. “Even dry toast is better than starvation.”

Charlotte flopped backward onto her bed.

“But it’s not adventure!” she cried.

Janie laughed. “Perhaps adventure is overrated.”

Charlotte sat up again. “But you’re adventurous,” she said. “You go to the lake on your own and dance in the servants’ quarters every night and dive off the ha-ha on a dare.”

Janie was startled by Charlotte’s open admiration of her recklessness.

“That dive earned me a broken collarbone and no pay for the time I took off to heal.”

Charlotte was stunned into silence for a moment. But only a moment.

“But you have your mother. She wouldn’t let you starve.”

“Neither will yours,” Janie said, but not with much conviction.

“No, she’ll just send me to finishing school.” Charlotte’s voice was so heavily laden with bitterness, Janie took a step back in shock. “Where I’ll learn how to address a letter to a duke and make scintillating conversation with the best of society.”

“Those sound like good things,” Janie said helplessly. Her sympathy sounded as feeble as it felt.

Charlotte went to the little dressing table in the corner. It had a single mirror that faced the room, reflecting the yellow and green. Charlotte sat down and picked up a hairbrush.

“I don’t want to have scintillating conversation. It’s meaningless! It’s all about roses or church windows or the weather.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

Charlotte’s eyes met hers in the mirror. “I want to be able to talk like you do, Janie. I want to be able to tease boys and joke with them. Like you do with Harry.”

“Harry is like a brother to me,” Janie said. “We practically grew up together.”

“But you’re the same with Lawrence.”

Not entirely
. Janie couldn’t tell Charlotte how Lawrence had made her feel like a mouse caught beneath a cobra’s gaze. Thrilled and afraid all at once. So she shrugged.

“They’re just boys,” she said. “Not another species.”

Charlotte looked up at Janie with a grin on her face. “Have you met
my
brothers, Janie? Sometimes they seem like they’re from a different parentage altogether.”

Janie laughed and Charlotte put a hand up over her mouth. “Don’t tell
anyone
I said that!”

“Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.”

The door burst open behind her and Charlotte dropped the brush with a clatter on the floor. Janie spun to see
Miss Caldwell framed in the doorway like a model in a fashion magazine, her pink skirts artfully swirled around her ankles. When Miss Caldwell caught sight of Janie, she narrowed her eyes.

Janie picked up the hairbrush and turned away. Charlotte’s gaze met hers briefly in the mirror, then slid to the desk under the window.

“You’re early,” Charlotte said to her friend.

“And hello to you, too,” Miss Caldwell sniped. “Your mother sent a message saying you need company. I came to drag you out into the gardens.” The Caldwell girl never took her eyes off of Janie.

“I was just …” Charlotte stopped. “I was just getting ready to go out.”

“Your hair isn’t done,” the Caldwell girl pointed out.

Charlotte looked helplessly at Janie.

“I was just …” Charlotte said again, looking again at the desk. “I’ll just be a minute.”

Miss Caldwell started picking through the gloves at the top of Charlotte’s cedar chest. She looked up and stared pointedly at the brush Janie still clutched to her chest.

“Well, hurry up,” she said. “I can’t wait all day.”

Janie turned and ran the brush experimentally over Charlotte’s hair. It slid through the straight, shiny strands like
a hand through water. But the Caldwell girl was smart. And observant. She would know Janie wasn’t supposed to be there. She obviously remembered that Janie was the kitchen maid.

In the mirror, Janie could see Miss Caldwell trying on a pair of white, opera-length gloves. The girl wrinkled her nose and sniffed at the fingers delicately.

“You need new gloves, Charlotte. These
reek
of cleaning fluid.” She stood and pulled at the fingers one by one, gazing down her nose at the book on Charlotte’s bedside table.

“I think I’ll wear a hat, Janie,” Charlotte said loudly. “The blue one. So a simple knot will do.”