“Yes, Aunt.”
“And I hope you are properly grateful.”
“Yes, Aunt.” I’m grateful that I haven’t lost my temper with you yet.
“Excellent. I believe that we have reached a good understanding.” Arachne rose; the slight tug on her chair by the footman warned Marina that she should do the same. “As I said, I have tasks to complete; I suggest that you improve your mind with a book in your sitting room before bed. I will see you at breakfast, Marina.”
“Yes, Aunt,” she replied obediently, and Arachne flowed off in the direction of the office in which Marina had first found her, leaving Marina to her own devices.
Chapter Ten
WITHIN an hour, Marina learned that she had more than one ally among the staff.
The second one appeared once the formidable Mary Anne had undressed her with the same ruthless efficiency she showed when getting her dressed, and left her, dressing-gowned and night-gowned for the night, with her hair in a comfortable braid, and instructions to ring for one of the downstairs maids “if you need anything.” The tone implied that there was nothing she should need, and her attitude was quite intimidating, except for one thing. Apparently, Mary Anne was above being summoned once her mistress was put to bed for the night, and on the whole, at this point Marina was inclined to take her chances with anyone that Mary Anne considered an inferior.
Once Mary Anne was gone, Marina moved into the sitting room, with a single book of poetry she had found on a table there for company, until the corridor beyond the door was very quiet indeed. Then, barefoot (because the slippers that had been supplied to her had very hard leather soles that would have clattered on the parquet floor) she tiptoed down to the library, ascertained that there was no one there, and retrieved those books of etiquette that she had hidden there. And as an afterthought, collected some real reading material, as well as some duller books that she could use to hide her studies in. Somewhere in her rooms were the books she had brought with her; when she’d arranged these on the shelves, she’d look for her own things, and with any luck, there’d be enough books there to make looking through them too tedious for the very superior Mary Anne.
Moving silently, her feet freezing, she quickly made her way back to her rooms, where she put her finds on the shelves in the sitting room. She worked quietly among the ornaments she found on the shelves, putting the books up without disarranging them, in the hopes of making it appear that the books had always been there. She guessed that no one in Arachne’s household realized that all the books had been collected in the library; Mary Anne had seen her using books there this afternoon, she would assume that the books were still there and not look for them here. She was still setting back vases and figurines when the sound of the door opening made her jump and turn quickly, guiltily.
But the person in the door wasn’t her aunt, nor the supercilious Mary Anne; it was a young woman in a very much plainer version of Mary Anne’s uniform—the black skirt, but of plain wool, the black shirtwaist, unadorned—and a neat white apron, rather than the black silk that Mary Anne sported. A perfectly ordinary maid—with a round, pretty, farm girl’s face, and wary eyes.
“I come to see if you needed anything, miss,” the girl whispered, as if she was not quite sure of her welcome.
In a response that Marina could not have controlled if she’d tried, her stomach growled. Audibly.
And the little maidservant broke into an involuntary grin, which she quickly hid behind her hand.
“I suppose it wouldn’t do any good to ask for something to eat,” Marina said, wistfully assuming the negative. “I don’t want you to get in any trouble with the cook or the—the housekeeper? I guess there’s a housekeeper here, isn’t there?” She sighed. From what she’d heard from old Sarah, the housekeepers in great houses held the keys to the pantry and kept strict tally of every morsel that entered and left, and woe betide the staff if the accounting did not match.
The girl dropped her hand and winked. “Just you wait, miss,” she said warmly, and whisked out the door.
Marina finished shelving her books, hiding the ones she didn’t want anyone to find. By the time the maid returned, she was in a chair by the fireplace with a book in her hands, having mended the fire and built it up herself, warming her half-frozen feet. The girl seemed much nicer than Mary Anne, but there was no telling if she was just another spy for her aunt. Let her think that Marina had only been looking for something to read.
The girl had left the door open just about an inch, and on her return, pushed it open with her foot. She carried with her a laden tray, which she brought over to Marina and set down on the little table beside her. Marina stared at the contents with astonishment.
“Mister Reginald, he likes a bit to eat around midnight, so the pantry’s not locked up,” the girl said cheerfully. “My Peter, he told us downstairs about your luncheon. And supper. And Madam’s special cook—” she made a face. “Miss, we don’t think much of that special cook. Only person that likes his cooking is Madam; it isn’t even the kind of thing that Mister Reginald likes, so he’s always eating a midnight supper. So I thought, and Peter thought, you mightn’t like that cooking much either, even if you hadn’t got more than a few bites of it.”
“You were right,” Marina said with relief at the sight of a pot of hot chocolate, a plate of sliced ham and real, honest cheese—none of that sad, pale stuff that Arachne had served—a nice chunk of hearty cottage loaf—and a fine Cox’s Orange Pippin apple. “I feel like I haven’t eaten in two days!”
“Well, miss, I don’t much know about yesterday, but according to my Peter, you haven’t had more than a few mouthfuls today at luncheon and dinner, and no breakfast at all. Just you tuck into that! I’ll wait and take the plates away.” She winked conspiratorially. “We’ll let that housekeeper think that Mister Reginald’s eating a bit more than usual.”
Since Marina was already tucking in, wasting no time at all in filling her poor, empty stomach, the little maid beamed with pleasure. “If you really don’t mind waiting,” Marina said, taking just long enough from her food to gulp down a lovely cup of chocolate, “You ought to at least sit down.” She paused a moment, and added, “I’m sure I oughtn’t to invite you, according to Aunt Arachne.”
“Madam is very conscious of what is proper,” the maid said, her mouth going prim. But Marina noticed that she sat right down anyway. She considered Marina for a moment more, then asked, “Miss, how early are you like to be awake?”
Oh no—surely Madam wakes up before dawn, and I’m supposed to be, too, she thought, already falling into the habit of thinking of her aunt as “Madam”—”Oh—late, if I’m given the choice,” she admitted, shamefacedly. “No earlier than full sun, seven, even eight.”
“You think that late?” the maid stifled a giggle. “That Mary Anne, she won’t bestir herself before ten, earliest, and Madam keeps city hours herself. We—ell, miss, what do you say to a spot of conspiracy between us? Just us Devon folk—for we can’t be letting Mister Hugh—” and here she faltered, before catching herself, and continuing resolutely. “We can’t be letting Mister Hugh’s daughter fade away to naught. I’ll be bringing you a proper breakfast sevenish, and a bit of proper supper after that Mary Anne has took herself off of a night. So you won’t go hungry, even if that Mary Anne has got a bee in her bonnet that you ought to be scrawny.”
Marina was overwhelmed, and couldn’t help herself; this was the first open kindness she’d had since she’d been kidnapped—was it only yesterday? She began to cry.
“Oh miss—there now, miss—” The maid plied her with a napkin, then ran into the bedroom and fetched out handkerchiefs from somewhere, and dabbed at Marina’s cheeks with them. Very fine cambric they were too, her aunt certainly wasn’t stinting her in the matter of wardrobe. “Now miss, you mustn’t cry—Mister Hugh and Missus Alanna wouldn’t like that—”
For a moment, Marina was tempted to tell her the truth, all of it; but no, this girl wo
uld never understand. “I’m—alone—” she managed, as the maid soothed her, sitting beside her and patting her hand. That was true—true enough. Not the whole truth, but true enough.
She didn’t cry herself sick this time, and perhaps it was the best thing she could have done, though it was entirely involuntary, for by the time that she cried herself out, she knew that she had friends here, after all. She also knew, if not everything there was to know about the “downstairs” household, at least a very great deal. She knew that the maid was Sally, she was going to marry the footman Peter one day, that Arachne had dismissed the upper servants—the chief cook (replaced by her “chef”), the housekeeper and butler, her own personal maidservant, the valet.
Of course, the maidservant and the valet were still stranded in Italy, poor things. The other servants weren’t even sure they would be able to get home, for Arachne had left orders that Marina’s parents were to be buried in Italy where they had died.
“‘Where they so loved to live,’ that was what Madam Arachne said. And it isn’t my place to say,” Sally continued, in a doubtful whisper, “But it did seem to me that Mister Hugh and Missus Alanna loved it here. This is where the family was all buried, and I know Mister Hugh felt strong about his family.”
But Arachne couldn’t replace all the servants—trained city servants weren’t very willing to move to the country, not without a substantial rise in wages. So a substantial number of the lower servants were the same as had served Marina’s parents, and they remembered their kind master and mistress. Although they knew nothing about Hugh’s sister, except that she’d fallen out with her parents over her choice of husband, that counted more against her than her blood counted for her.
And although they were very circumspect with regard to Arachne and her son, they were all very sympathetic to Marina, especially after seeing the ordeals she was undergoing at the hands of Arachne and Mary Anne. She was Devon-bred as well as born, almost one of them, even if she did come from over near to the border with Cornwall. If they didn’t know why she’d been sent away, at least she hadn’t been sent far; she wasn’t a foreigner, and she didn’t have any airs.
And one and all, these downstairs servants hated Mary Anne.
“Fancies herself a superior lady’s maid, she does,” Sally sniffed. “Too good to eat with us, has her meals with the butler and housekeeper, if you please. And it isn’t as if Madam Arachne doesn’t have her own maid, for she does, a French woman. Well, things have changed for us.” She sighed pensively. “But miss, we’ll take care of you, don’t you worry. If Madam Arachne wants you to be made a lady like her, we’ll help you out, till there isn’t nothing you don’t know. There’s Peter, he served with Lord Bridgeworth, and he knows all the right things—and it wasn’t as if Mister Hugh and Missus Alanna weren’t gentry. We’ll help you, for you’re ours, and we won’t ever forget that!”
Marina swallowed down another lump in her throat and a spate of hastily suppressed tears with her hot chocolate.
“Thank you,” she said, hoping she put the gratitude she felt into those simple words.
By the warm smile on Sally’s face, she did.
Morning brought Sally with a proper breakfast tray—the kind of hearty breakfast Marina was used to getting at home—from thick country bacon to hot, buttered toast. There was only one thing missing, oat porridge, which was just as well, since she would have felt homesick on seeing it, guilty if she hadn’t eaten it, and miserable if she did. Sally waited while she ate, and whisked the tray away, leaving her to go back to sleep again if she chose.
Which was a confirmation this was all being done in secret, abetted by a conspiracy among the lower servants, the ones who remembered her parents.
For some reason, they did not trust her aunt to treat her properly. Why? She couldn’t think of any reason why Arachne would mistreat her on purpose—she was clearly a very cold woman, but she seemed determined to do her duty to Marina. Even if her idea of her duty was not what Marina would have chosen for herself. She wasn’t stinting on wardrobe, that was sure. The clothing that she’d had made for Marina was of first quality and highest workmanship.
But servants saw and heard everything. Probably they were only worried that she was so unhappy and was being bullied. In any case, life was going to be much easier with the kind of help they had already offered, and she was not going to betray them by any carelessness on her part.
So she made sure that there was no sign that anyone had been in her rooms, and tucked herself back up in her bed, dozing until the odious Mary Anne appeared to wake her by pulling back the curtains and making a great clattering of noise with the breakfast-tray that she had brought.
It was breakfast for an invalid. A nauseated invalid. Or someone afraid of getting fat. Weak tea, and four pieces of cold toast.
With a silent prayer of thanks for Sally’s foresight, Marina drank a cup of the tea, but before she could eat more than a single piece of the toast, Mary Anne insistently dragged her out of bed and into her clothing. “Madam’s modiste is here, and miss must be measured again and select fabrics and patterns,” the maid ordered. “Madam is also selecting clothing, and miss must not monopolize the modiste’s time, nor keep her waiting.”
This was said as Mary Anne was lacing up her corset, and as Marina suddenly remembered a trick that one of the ponies used to employ, of blowing himself up so that his girth couldn’t be tightened. And it occurred to her at that moment that if she could just manage the same trick, herself—
So she secretly took in the deepest breath that she could, and instead of trying to draw herself up, hunched herself over, sticking her stomach out as far as she could manage and obstinately tensing the muscles of her midsection against the tightening of the corset-laces. Mary Anne tugged and pulled, but to no avail; when she gave up and tied the laces off, tying a modest bustle on the back of the corset and pulling the first of the three petticoats over Marina’s head, Marina was able to straighten up without feeling as if she was going to faint from lack of air. Her corsets were only a little tighter than she would have tied them herself. Not as comfortable as no corset at all but not a torture either.
There was nothing to show that Mary Anne had been doing any rummaging about among the books that Marina had put on the shelves last night, but that was not to say that she wouldn’t later. For now, the modiste was waiting in the sitting room, a patient little woman with sad eyes and gray hair, done up in a severe, but impeccably tailored, gray wool suit and matching hat, modestly ornamented with a ribbon cockade. She had swatches of fabric piled up beside her on one side of the couch, and pattern books on the other. Her eyes brightened at the sight of Marina; perhaps she had expected another martinet like Madam, or someone so countrified as to be impossible to outfit, with freckles, gap-teeth, and enormous feet that had never seen anything other than boots. In the midst of this florid room, the modiste looked like a little pile of ashes.
For that matter, I probably look like an unburned bit of coal.
“I will leave you with Miss Eldergast,” said Mary Anne loftily, and turned to the modiste. “Miss Eldergast, you have your instructions upon what is suitable for the young lady from Madam, so I will return for you in one hour.”
Both of them looked reflexively at the clock upon the mantelpiece, which was just showing half past ten. Then, as Mary Anne sailed out of the room with a self-important air, Marina smiled at the modiste.
“Why don’t you show me what is suitable for the young lady, Miss Eldergast,” Marina said, with some humor, “And we’ll pick something or other out.”
“Well, you’re in deep mourning, of course,” the dressmaker said hesitantly, “So these are the samples I brought—”
“Black, black, and black, of course.” Marina sighed, picked up the stack of swatches, and sat down next to Miss Eldergast, putting them in her lap. She added bitterly, “And it matters not at all that I never knew my parents; the sensibilities of society must not be outraged.”
Of course, I could be in mourning for the happy life I had in Killatree.
Miss Eldergast hesitated, somewhat taken aback. “Yes, yes, of course,” she said hastily, clearly trying and failing to find some polite response to Marina’s bald statement. “Now, if you could choose from among these for a riding habit and walking skirts—”
It didn’t take very long to make her selections; although the choice of fabric was wider and the number of patterns Miss Eldergast was able to execute much larger than the dressmaker in Holsworthy was able to offer, there were only a limited number of ways in which to dress in “black, black, and black.” What was suitable for the young lady, at least according to Madam Arachne, was the strictest possible interpretation of mourning, without even the touch of mauve, lavender or violet that as a young unmarried woman she should have been able to don without offending anyone.
I shall look like Queen Victoria before this is over. Or one of those melancholy women who are would-be Gothic poetesses.
Still, there was no doubt that Madam was equipping Marina generously, and in the height of fashion, the only exception being that everything suitable had high necks and high collars. Not that this would be too onerous in the winter, but when summer came, black and high collars were going to be difficult to bear.
Time enough to worry about that when the time comes, she told herself. For now, heavy silk blouses and shirtwaists, unlike the very plain things that she’d been dressed in so far, were going to be made exactly to her measure and ornamented lavishly with lace, ribbon, and flounces. Beautifully soft skirts and jackets were getting braid, tucking, ruffles, beading—
It would have taken a harder heart than Marina had not to be enchanted by the clothing that the dressmaker had planned for her. Madam Arachne had only given orders as to the color and general design, not to the specifics, nor to the amount to be spent. So the modiste was going to create garments similar to the kind that Madam Arachne herself wore—lavish, and stylish.
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