Summer Holiday

by Nancy Campbell Allen

  Sarah and Mrs. Roach exchanged amused glances. Betsy complained about Mary every year.

  With the back of her forearm, Betsy dabbed her forehead, then continued chopping. “We haven’t nearly enough meat.” She shook her head disdainfully. “And it’s as if no one has bothered to replenish the spices in months.”

  Mrs. Roach raised the notepad. “What is wanting?”

  “Chives, to begin with,” Betsy said. “Pepper, cinnamon, and cloves. Not to mention that we’re abominably low on molasses, sugar, and lard. How could anyone expect me to make pastries and biscuits without the most basic of ingredients? I’m a cook, not a magician.” She chopped some more as Mrs. Roach wrote it all down. Betsy raised the thick knife into the air and used the tip to punctuate her next words. “And marmalade. If I’d known the pantry here was clean out, I’d have brought some of my own preserves from Rosemount.” She shook her head and returned to work.

  “I’ve made a list,” Mrs. Roach said, holding it out to Sarah. “If you think of anything else, Betsy, let me know, and I’ll send her out again tomorrow.”

  Sarah released the plunger and reached for the shopping list in Mrs. Roach’s outstretched fingers. Looking from one woman to the next and back again, she asked, “Shall I go now? Or should I finish the butter first?” Both women tended to act as if they were in charge. Betsy ruled the kitchen, and the butter churn was her domain, as was the need to restock the pantry. But Mrs. Roach ruled the household, and her word overruled Betsy’s. Yet Sarah knew that one did well to show the utmost respect toward both women.

  “Now,” Betsy said. “I need pepper and beets right away if I’m to make a proper dinner. Add beets to the list.” Once again, she gestured at Mrs. Roach with the knife blade for the latter instruction. “If Jacob’s got a free minute or two, he can finish up the butter.”

  Footfalls sounded on the stone hall outside the kitchen, and not a moment later, Jacob poked his head into the kitchen. “Did I hear my name?”

  Sarah’s hands instinctively grasped the plunger again. The shopping list wrinkled in her palm. She didn’t move the plunger, but her knuckles turned white as she did everything in her power to avoid catching his eyes. Their reunion the day before had been odd at best. One moment, he’d been his fun-loving, teasing, and—dared she think it?—flirtatious self.

  Yesterday, he’d been everything she remembered from summer one moment, then stiff and distant the next, as if they were only acquaintances. He’d grown quiet and pensive, which was so unlike him, as was his odd refusal to answer the simple question of where he’d been that made him late.

  She’d expected a thigh-slapping story, not a sentence or two spoken in a quiet tone, with knitted brows, followed by several awkward moments of silence. It was as if the young man she once knew had been replaced by someone else altogether. Perhaps in her excitement, she’d spoken too loudly or had otherwise embarrassed him. She tried to remember every word they’d exchanged by the trunks, searching for any hint of word, tone, or expression—his or hers—to explain his changing behavior, but she couldn’t puzzle it out. If she’d offended him she could make amends. But she couldn’t fix what she didn’t know was broken.

  More than likely, he’s changed his mind about me and doesn’t know how to behave now. The thought made her eyes sting. She blinked a few times and looked at the wall to hide her face. She would not show such emotion around others, least of all Jacob.

  “You heard right,” Betsy said to him as she waved him into the room. “You’re in your outdoor clothes anyway. You can come on in and finish churning the butter without worrying about mussing up your suit. I need Sarah to go on an errand right away.”

  “I could take care of the errand, if you like,” he offered. Even in his worn shirt and trousers with threadbare knees, he was handsome enough to make Sarah want to stare at him all day. She preferred him in regular clothes to the servant’s coat and tie.

  “Mr. Millington is out on business. I’m not needed upstairs until supper,” Jacob said. “Or . . .” From the corner of her eye, Sarah thought he looked in her direction, but she kept her focus on the wood grain of the butter churn. “I could go with Sarah . . . as a chaperone.”

  At that, Betsy let out a full-throated laugh, then wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Sarah needing a chaperone in the market. Quite the joke. You do beat all, Jacob.”

  The suggestion of Jacob going with her on the errand made a drum of her chest, with her heart pounding against it. Did he truly want to go to the market with her? If so, perhaps she hadn’t offended him or breached some rule of etiquette she was unaware of.

  On the other hand, he might be looking for an excuse to leave the house to go wherever he’d been yesterday. Did he assume she’d help him a second time? The thought that he might want to use her as a convenience made her stomach feel heavy and sour.

  She wanted Jacob to genuinely wish to spend time with her, just the two of them, as they had many times over the years, moving about the bustling city on errands for the family. Today’s errand would be a relatively brief one, but no matter; she’d looked forward to such times for months now. But now that she was here and he’d been acting so strangely, she didn’t know what to think.

  “Go on,” Betsy said, nodding toward the butter churn. “You men can make butter faster than we of the weaker sex can.” She tilted her head and raised her eyebrows in challenge and added, “Unless such work is below ya?”

  Kitchen work most definitely was beneath most male servants. As valet, Mr. Lunceford wouldn’t have stood for such an order, but Jacob was young, and without the status of a butler or valet. He wasn’t wearing his black, pressed servant’s suit, so if some buttermilk splashed on him, there would be nothing to worry about.

  “I’d be happy to,” he said, entering the kitchen fully and striding toward Sarah.

  Betsy dumped a pile of chopped potatoes into a pot. “Sarah knows the shops I trust. I need her to go right away. Aside from needing the pepper and beets today, I must have cloves for tomorrow’s breakfast.”

  “Indeed,” Mrs. Roach said, drawing out the word. Sarah rose from the stool and gave Jacob a tiny smile as he took her spot before the butter churn. Mrs. Roach watched Jacob work the plunger a few times. “Come, Sarah.” Mrs. Roach gestured with a quick motion of her hand. “You’ll need some money.”

  Sarah followed the housekeeper down the hall to her room. Mrs. Roach went inside, but Sarah, as always, stayed in the doorway out of respect. This time, however, Mrs. Roach shook her head. “Come in, girl. Come in.”

  Unsure what this unexpected turn of events meant, Sarah stepped across the threshold, and when she’d cleared the doorway, Mrs. Roach shut the door.

  Am I to be punished? For what, Sarah could not fathom—unless Mrs. Roach knew about how Jacob had hidden behind the shrubs and Sarah’s part in keeping that fact from Mrs. Millington. The drum of her heart grew heavier, this time with worry.

  “What do you think of Jacob?” Mrs. Roach asked, pacing away from Sarah down the length of the narrow room.

  “I—I’m not sure what you mean,” Sarah managed.

  Mrs. Roach reached the end of the rug, turned about, and walked back toward Sarah, one eyebrow lifted. Sarah had been the target of that eyebrow many a time; it drilled into the very center of her soul. Sarah was quite sure that with Mrs. Roach and her eyebrow on his side, Napoleon would have won at Waterloo. Sarah stood there, hardly able to breathe under Mrs. Roach’s piercing gaze. Sarah swallowed against the knot in her throat.

  After a few seconds of eying Sarah, the housekeeper walked—still oh, so slowly—to her writing table in the corner and sat down. She gestured to the stool on the other side of the table. “Please, sit.”

  Sarah pointed behind her as if Betsy and her knife were there. “What about the pepper and beets?”

  “We’ll take care of that soon enough,” Mrs. Roach said. “For now, sit.”

  “Of course.” Sarah meekly crossed to the stool and
sat upon it, setting her clasped hands in her lap.

  “You and Jacob have known each other for some time now.” It was a statement, not a question, of course—Mrs. Roach had known Sarah and Jacob as long as they’d known each other—but it was a statement Sarah had to respond to.

  “I’ve known him for several years, yes.”

  My actions from yesterday have gotten me in trouble, then.

  Mrs. Roach took out her key chain and unlocked a drawer. “What do you think of him?”

  How to answer such a query? What did Mrs. Roach mean by it? How much did she know about Jacob’s tardiness? Sarah’s clasped hands tightened. The drumbeat sped up so much that it felt like a hummingbird fluttered in her chest; Sarah worried she might faint.

  Should I confess? Is that what Mrs. Roach wants to hear? She hadn’t directly accused Sarah of anything, but this might be a test to see whether Sarah would admit to wrongdoing.

  “Well,” Sarah said tentatively, “I think he is a hard worker.”

  Once more, the arched eyebrow made its appearance. “Anything else?” Mrs. Roach asked.

  Sarah was grateful to be sitting; her knees might not have withstood that black arch again. “And he’s loyal to the family.”

  “Yes, I believe he is,” Mrs. Roach said, studying Sarah. Then she cleared her throat, counted out some money from the desk drawer, and set the coins on top. “That should be enough for today,” she said as she locked the drawer and pocketed the key. “Be sure to return any extra.”

  “Of course.” What that all? Had she passed the test? Unsure, Sarah stood and reached for the money, baffled about the private interview but grateful that it appeared to be over for the moment.

  “You know, I believe Jacob sees you in very much the same way you see him,” Mrs. Roach said suddenly.

  “Pardon?” Sarah’s fingers curled around the coins in her palm; they dug into her skin. Something in the housekeeper’s tone made it clear that she meant far more than Jacob’s opinion on whether Sarah was also a hard worker and loyal servant.

  The eyebrow lowered, and Mrs. Roach’s mouth softened into one of her rare smiles. “I have eyes, Sarah, and I haven’t always been this old. Rest assured, I can keep a secret. But it occurred to me that this summer may be different from your others here. As I said on the way here, this summer could be a Season of sorts for you. That is, if you’d like it to be.” The last was spoken as a question, seeming to probe whether Sarah had come to care for Jacob in the way Mrs. Roach clearly suspected.

  How had she figured it out? Sarah had never breathed a word about her feelings for Jacob to anyone. Had Mrs. Roach read their letters? That didn’t seem likely.

  “What do you say to that?” Mrs. Roach said with a satisfied air.

  “I think—” Sarah’s throat closed up. “That is, I suspect—” Her mind went blank.

  “I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” Mrs. Roach said, a knowing glint in her eye. “He no longer sees you as a playmate or little sister. Oh, no.”

  Sarah hoped as much—how deeply she hoped, no one knew—but after the awkwardness with Jacob yesterday . . .

  “He might have felt that way last summer,” she finally said. “And perhaps the sentiment continued during our correspondence, but . . .” Sarah shook her head.

  “But what?” Mrs. Roach asked in what Sarah guessed was intended to be a gentle tone, though the older woman had likely never had such a word ascribed to her.

  “Ever since our arrival, he hasn’t behaved as he used to.” Sarah lowered her gaze to her fingernails, not wanting to see pity in the eyes of the woman who knew her almost as well as a mother would.

  “Has his behavior been improper in some way?” She hmphed and glared at the door, looking ready to march out the door to take a switch to Jacob’s hindquarters as if he were a lad of six again.

  “No, nothing like that,” Sarah hurried to say. “He’s simply . . . distant, I suppose may be the best way to describe it. We used to be able to slip right back into our old camaraderie and easy conversation, but this time . . .” She shrugged helplessly.

  Mrs. Roach didn’t retake her seat, but neither did she march to the kitchen to tan Jacob’s hide. Instead, she crossed her arms and stared at the far wall. “Hmm.”

  Sarah instinctively looked over her shoulder, though she knew all she’d see on the wall was cracked plaster.

  After a moment of pondering, the housekeeper broke her stare and strode to the door. She opened it wide, then spoke rather loudly, as if she’d been midsentence when she’d opened the door. “So you see, I must insist that you don’t go out alone. Not for another week or two at least, until I can be sure that the highwayman and his men have been apprehended.”

  Sarah followed her into the hallway, her brow wrinkled in confusion. “I don’t—”

  “No protesting. You must trust that I know best in this matter. I insist that, at least for today’s errand, someone accompany you. Mrs. Millington would never forgive me if something happened to her favorite maid.” Mrs. Roach called to the kitchen, leaving a dumbfounded Sarah standing in the hall. “Jacob, I’m afraid I need to pull you away from churning.”

  “Oh?” After the sound of the plunger settling came a few steps, and Jacob appeared in the hall. “What about the butter?” he asked, his thumb gesturing behind him.

  “Mary can finish it. Will you please accompany Sarah to the market?”

  Clearly, Mrs. Roach, a decades-long spinster, had decided to engage in matchmaking. For Sarah, just the knowledge that someone had guessed her feelings toward Jacob made her want to crawl into the hole of a dead tree and hide until everyone had forgotten her. She flushed with embarrassment. Judging by the heat in her face—so hot her cheeks felt close to bursting into flames—she had to be bright red. And there was Jacob standing only a few feet away, unwittingly being pulled into Mrs. Roach’s snare.

  Sarah lowered her eyes to the stone floor, but her nerves wouldn’t let them stay there. She looked at the wall, Mrs. Roach, and then finally, unable to stop her traitorous eyes from doing their own bidding, Jacob. He returned her gaze with his familiar impish grin—one that historically preceded a wink when the two of them were alone. He wouldn’t do such a thing with others like Betsy and Mrs. Roach present. Would she see that wink again this summer?

  Perhaps seeing her again had made him realize he didn’t care for her in the same way after all. If that was the case, he wouldn’t wink at her again ever, no matter the circumstance.

  “I’d be delighted to accompany her,” he said.

  “Good,” Mrs. Roach said. “Hurry now. Betsy is liable to get antsy until she has everything she needs for the day’s meals.”

  “Of course,” Jacob said. Smiling at Sarah, he jerked his head toward the servants’ entrance. “Shall we?”

  “Of—course,” she repeated, a mite breathless and confused as to what had just happened.

  She’d been brought back to Mrs. Roach’s room—which the housekeeper had then locked. Typically, that would mean Sarah had done something worthy of a reprimand. Instead, she’d been asked how she felt about Jacob and was told that he likely felt the same toward her.

  Sarah hoped so, but the odds of Mrs. Roach being entirely correct in her estimation seemed as remote as the spinster herself winning a steeplechase.

  Chapter Six

  Face still hot but not quite as fiery as before, Sarah put one foot in front of the other and followed Jacob outside. Every one of her nerves seemed to be alert, ready to notice and study the slightest hint of what he was thinking and feeling. She noted every action, no matter how minute, the tone of every word, the muscles on his face. Oh, if only she could read his mind. Then she could stop guessing and simply know.

  But do I truly want to know the truth if it isn’t a happy one? she thought as she waited for Jacob to close the door. They climbed the steps from the basement entry to the street level, and when she reached the sidewalk, she waited for him again. As he reached the top, she held
her breath, not knowing whether to speak first, and if so, what topic to pursue.

  Instead of deciding, she busied herself, slipping the coins and shopping list into her apron pocket, purely to have something to do with her hands. That action was followed by smoothing the wrinkles from her apron and feeling her bun for any loose hairpins.

  None of that took long, and soon Jacob stood beside her. If nerves had sound, a veritable shrieking symphony would have been playing from Sarah’s middle. Fortunately, he spared her the awkwardness of knowing what to do or say next by holding his arm out to her.

  “Miss Jenkins,” he said with a sly grin, the kind he used when he was being deliberately facetious. This was the Jacob she knew and had eagerly anticipated being with again.

  Thank the heavens above, she thought, slipping her hand through the crook of his arm and resting it by his elbow.

  How long this version would stay around, she didn’t know, but she’d enjoy every moment for as long as it lasted. She hoped that the evasive, distant version of Jacob from before had been nothing but an anomaly—the result of spoiled liverwurst or a poor night’s sleep.

  They walked for a block or so and turned a corner, all in companionable silence. At least, she thought so and hoped he didn’t think the quiet was strained between them. But perhaps he felt awkward and was waiting for her to speak first. They’d never wanted for conversation, and in past summers, the few times they’d lapsed into silence had been warm and comfortable—and perfectly natural. But she no longer knew whether she could trust her judgment on such things.

  After they’d left the affluent part of town, Sarah decided on a topic, something they’d written about extensively over the intervening months: books. “Have you read the other Dickens I mentioned in my letters?”

  She’d come to enjoy anything she could find written by Charles Dickens, and she’d mentioned a particular book in her last letter. Not for the first time, she was grateful that they could both read. Neither of them had much education, but knowing how to read and write allowed them to remain in contact over the nine months they were apart. Sarah deliberately worked on improving those skills in the hopes of one day becoming a schoolteacher.