by Maren Smith
On the second day, management took the girl working next to me and dragged her, kicking and wailing, from the floor. In my ignorance, I first thought she’d been given the sack. I later found out that her fate had been much, much worse. That same phosphorous that cast us in that eerie glow by day’s end had also infiltrated through her cavity-ridden teeth. Phossy jaw they called it, though it acted more like leprosy of the bone. The poor girl was taken to the company dentist and all her teeth were extracted in a futile attempt to arrest the disease before it ate through her face. God forbid that the effects of the phosphorous give the matches we made a bad reputation.
That was the end of my career as a match girl. I am vain as a peacock. I wanted to keep my face as it was.
So on my third day, instead of going to work, I bought a meat pie for half a penny and a morning newspaper. And that’s where I found the advertisement that changed my life.
Companion sought for invalid young lady. Experience required. Salary dependent upon references. Inquire at Hawkhaven, Derbyshire.
I had just enough of my two pounds left to book a third-class seat on the train. After that, however, unless Hawkhaven was located right next to the train station, I would have to walk the rest of the way. Thankfully, everything I owned fit inside a single carpetbag suitcase and wasn’t very heavy.
The train had twelve stops, and it took me almost ten hours to get from London to Derbyshire. Although not a large town, Derbyshire did have a tavern so if worse came to worst, at least I might have some form of employment. I tried not to think about it, but I knew if that should fail too, well… I still had the watch, tucked away in the very bottom of my bag.
There were three roads leading out of town. I stopped at the tavern to buy a quick supper of bread and cheese and asked for directions. Two miles, was what I was told by the harried serving girl who worked there.
“And yer mind that yer don’t go off the road,” she warned. “Them bogs kin swallow a man ‘ole!”
I thanked her with my very last penny. The sun was already low to setting, so I took myself off down the road in the quickest pace I could manage, eating as I went. It would be dark before I got there, I was already certain of that, and the last thing I wanted was to spend a night out of doors, surrounded on all sides by man-swallowing bogs.
Derbyshire was sheep country. The fields I passed were all sectioned out by a maze of short stone walls. Now and then, I glimpsed small shed-like structures on the hillsides, but never so much as a single house.
Being already late in the fall, the air was growing chilly. It must have rained in the last few days because the ground was still thoroughly soaked and as the temperature dropped with the setting sun, mist began to form. Already several inches of wisping white was rising from the damp pastures, building in the air to cloak my surroundings in an ever-thickening blanket of gray.
As accustomed as I was to running to and fro between Old Hodges and his customers, there was a distinct difference between walking on boards and cobblestone streets, and walking on wet ground. The road here was soft and my shoes became quickly bogged down with mud. Within the first half a mile, my legs were aching, but I could not afford to slow down. There was no moon in the sky tonight, and it was going to get dark very, very soon.
I developed a sharp stitch in my side, but I only pushed myself harder and my reward for that was in my first sight of Hawkhaven, rising out of the sea of white mist. The sun had fallen completely below the horizon, and the only light left was that cool white illumination of the fog. But distorted in the whiteness, I saw golden orbs of candlelight, burning at a height that could only be second- or third-floor windows. They were like welcoming beacons, drawing me in, and I was so very grateful to reach the long open-gated driveway before the failing light completely gave way to the night, and all I could see were wisps of gray swirling in a sea of black.
If I kept to the road, I knew I couldn’t help but reach the house. Still panic swelled within as I seemingly walked forever into nothing. The ground grew wetter and the mud deeper, and no house appeared out of the mist to meet me. Eventually the cold mud became so deep that I had to gather up my skirts to keep the hems from dragging and remove my shoes before I lost them in the muck. The last six hundred steps I took bare of foot, and I reached the marble steps of the great house nearly in tears. I tripped on the bottommost stair, that’s how I found it in the fog. My golden beacons were gone. All of the front lights had already been extinguished for the night, leaving me able to see nothing more than a foot from my nose.
I collapsed on the stairs, breathing hard both from nerves and exertion, and shivered. What was I to do now? Was anyone still awake inside to hear me if I knocked? As muddy and bedraggled as I must look, would they let me in even if they heard me?
Not wanting to leave the steps for fear I might get turned about and lost in the fog, I felt my way along the steps until I found the bushes. Six steps further down led my feet to grass, still damp from the same rains that had made a quagmire of the roads. In the dark, I did my best to clean my feet and then my shoes. They were as wet as the grass by the time I slipped them back on. Then, more feeling than seeing the mud on my hands, I bent back down and wiped them on the lawn as well. As presentable as I could make myself without a light, I fumbled my way back to the stone steps. Picking up my carpetbag, I drew a deep breath and slowly felt my way to the door.
What would I do if the position were already filled?
I quickly banished that thought and the panic that surged inside me along with it. I would not think like that. I wouldn’t. I was going to make the lady who lived here an excellent companion. I would be meek and biddable and would never give anyone cause to be cross with me. They would be glad I’d come, and I would never have to work another tavern for as long as I lived.
I reached with both hands to take the pull cord that hung beside the twin fortress-like doors and gave them a hardy yank. A heavy bell broke the quiet of the night, gonging three times but fading quickly within.
I waited.
Behind me, beyond the moonless quiet and the mist, the countryside went about its business. A very soft breeze filtered through a wooded landscape that I could not see, though I could hear the rustling of the leaves. A hunting dog bayed twice in the far distance, and somewhere in the fog a flock of sheep bleated in protest to a minute disturbance of their sleep. It was quite a change from the sounds I was used to: the cacophony of busy city streets and babies crying through thin apartment walls.
After what seemed like an eternity, a glint of golden light began to grow in the windows nearest to me and on the other side of the door I heard the scrap of a turning lock. One of the mammoth doors swung open and inward, and a wrinkled old woman peered suspiciously out at me. A mass of curling gray hairs peeking out beneath the lacy brim of her mobcap, fluttering in the breeze that whistled past us as she fixed me in the light of her flickering lamp.
“Who are you?” she asked, her withered mouth a moue of disapproval. She flicked her gaze upon my worn dress and wrap and her features became even more pinched. She did not offer to let me inside. Indeed, her sturdy girth blocked the door completely. “What do you want?”
“My name is Ella Rayette.” I shivered, the cold of the eerie mist and my wet shoes beginning to sink into my bones. “I apologize for the late hour. I have come about the position in the London Times. The companion’s position.”
The woman drew back, a flicker of surprise mingling with the open suspicion in her gray eyes. “You’re a lady’s companion?” There was more than just a little disbelief in her tone.
I drew myself up just a little bit straighter, trying not to shiver. “I am.”
She looked at me, unmoved and unmoving, for several long minutes. I had thought my interview with Old Hodges nerve-wracking, but this old woman had him beat all to pieces. She stared at my clothes and my uncovered hair. Although I had pinned my long curls up earlier that morning, a long day spent on the train and the wet mis
t were combining to undo my attempt at a neat appearance. I could feel the frizz tickling around my ears and the nape of my neck as the wind whispered about me. A proper woman would have worn a kerchief or a hat, but I hadn’t owned one in years.
Finally, the old woman bent her head and stared deliberately down at my feet. When she harrumphed, I couldn’t help but look down too. I hadn’t been entirely successful at keeping my dress from dragging in the mud.
With a sniff, she straightened with obvious disdain. “Wait here.”
Then she closed the door.
Setting my carpetbag on the porch, I reached down to raise my skirts and, in the fading light of her retreating candle, I looked at my still very muddy shoes. This was not going quite as well as I had hoped.
Stifling a sigh, I dropped my skirts and turned to look out at the blanketing mist behind me. That hunting dog bayed again, although this time it sounded much closer than it had before. And much more chilling, made so, I’m certain, by the distorting qualities of the fog. There shouldn’t have been anything scary in the sound. Certainly, I had seen my share of hounds in the city, and a dog was a pretty much a dog no matter where you lived.
Unless, of course, it was a wolf.
The animal howled again, nearer this time. It fairly curdled the blood in my veins. The hair along my nape prickled as I shrank back against the door. My eyes scanned the churning sea of wisping whiteness for anything moving, but the wolf or dog or whatever it was was not quick to present itself, and I was nowhere near bold enough to go strolling out to meet the beast. I was not deaf; I had heard the tales. Wolves preyed on people.
Gathering my bag back to me, I hugged it to my chest and huddled back against the door, praying that unfriendly woman would hurry back and let me in. I don’t know how long I stood there, clutching my belongings so tightly that my knuckles turned a ghostly white. A second eternity, perhaps. But, oh, the tricks my mind played upon my foolish soul. I swore I could hear the padding feet of that hungry beast as it approached the steps, then stopped at the mist-obscured bottom. There was a long, low growl. I swallowed hard, certain that I had not imagined that.
“Please do not come up here,” I whispered into the dark.
Very definitely not my imagination now, the beast growled again.
“Oh my goodness.” Flat against my back, the door suddenly flew open and I all but fell inside, bumping into the broad chest of the glowering maid. I quickly leapt myself back off her. “I am so terribly sorry!”
“The master will see you,” she sniffed, and held open the door for my to enter. “Come in, but next time use the servant’s door round the back.”
I hardly needed a second invitation. I fell past her into the house, begging, “Close the door! Quickly, quickly! Before it gets inside!”
Somehow I doubt that old woman had ever been given to a flight of fancy in all her born days. She not only did not close the door, but she walked boldly outside, her candle held high. “Brewster? Brewster, what are you do—oh Lord, the stink! You’ve been rolling in the sheep’s paddock again, you naughty puppy!”
My wolf and her puppy were one and the same figment of imagination; a full-grown basset hound, with ears longer than its legs and a fat belly that nearly dragged the ground. It trundled in, skirting both the old woman and myself, with its long tongue lolling and its tail eagerly wagging.
“Oh no, you don’t!” Dropping her candle on a nearby table, the old woman launched herself after the beast, barely grabbing hold of him before Brewster could reach any of the rugs and roll. “Don’t you move from that spot!” she ordered me over her shoulder, and began to drag the instantly chastened dog away. “And you—” Stopping abruptly, she spun to fix me with a very stern glare. “Don’t you dare touch anything!”
Feeling very silly for having mistaken a basset for a wolf, I hugged my back and promised to wait where I was. And I held that spot with total diligence. Something told me my muddy footsteps were going to mar these marble floors as much if not more than Brewster’s did.
Hawkhaven was a huge and magnificent house, at least a hundred years old, and grand from cellar to rooftop. The marble floor, tracked with mud, still sparkled in places under the candlelight. There were rainbow splashes of color cast down upon both the walls and me from the chandelier’s light-reflecting crystal teardrops. Twin staircases wrapped up along the walls to the right and left of me, curving up to the balcony on the second floor. And as I looked about me, I felt a sting all the way to my soul. It was not fair that this luxury should be such a stranger to me. I sagged just a little.
“Did you touch anything?” the old woman demanded as she returned down that long hall, minus one very dirty dog.
“No,” I said softly, trying not to look or sound as depressed as I suddenly felt.
Her look remained disbelieving. “You just see that you don’t.” Her gaze flicked down to my muddy shoes and her mouth flattened in a tight disapproving line again. “Follow me.”
She picked up the candle and I fell into step behind her, but we had no more taken a half dozen steps across the Great Hall, past the winding staircases into the gaping black maw of a lesser corridor, when a woman’s bloodcurdling scream sounded from somewhere up above us. It was followed very quickly by the shattering of glass, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“What was that?”
“The mistress Deverell is not pleased,” the old woman said simply, and continued on down the hall. I quickly ran to catch up with her. She had the only light, and I suddenly found myself truly reluctant to be surrounded by the unfamiliar dark. “We don’t talk of it. And should you be retained here, you will not talk of it either.”
Another scream had me looking back over my shoulder until I accidentally bumped into a bric-a-brac table. I instinctively grabbed at a toppling figurine.
The old woman all but snatched it from my hands. “I told you not to touch anything!”
“I’m sorry!” I threw my hands up in the air and backed quickly away.
She harrumphed again, thumped the figurine back in its place and then snapped herself around. Her dark uniform gown blended her perfectly with the dark interior as she stormed off down the hall, leaving me to follow the spectral white bobbing of her white mobcap. When that finally came to a stop, it did so with the hem of the maid’s gown bathed in a splash of pale yellow light. The light itself came out from beneath the door that crowned the far end of the corridor, and it spilled around her feet, brightening the blood red carpet we walked upon.
One last time, the old woman glared at me, distrustful and without a hint of friendliness anywhere about her.
“I won’t touch anything,” I promised.
Her mouth a flat, thin line, she raised her hand to knock.
A voice as deep and rich as sun-sweetened honey answered back, “Enter.”
“You will be respectful,” my guide commanded, in tones that brooked absolutely no disobedience.
She needn’t have bothered herself. At that moment, my heart had begun racing and my palms to sweating. I doubt if I was capable of anything but the utmost humility; I needed this job too much to offer anything else.
The door swung open as the old woman pushed into the room, filling the hall with the amber glow of a roaring fire and several brightly lit lamps. “Miss Ella Rayette, sir,” she announced, brisk and no-nonsense.
My stomach all aflutter, I followed her meekly into the room and took my first look at the man I hoped would become my employer. I screamed, dropping my bag and falling back against the nearest wall. My hands flew up to cover my heart; they were the only things that kept it from bursting straight out of my chest. It was he! My angel was the master of Hawkhaven.
And oh, dear God! I had stolen his watch!
Chapter Three
My angel was not hard to recognize. It was the same shoulder-length golden blonde hair, tied back at his nape. The same blue eyes. The same knowing smile. Certainly, it was the same low voice. “Ella, with the beauti
ful name.”
I would have known that voice anywhere. But seeing him now for the first time in something other than shadow and the ghostly amber glow of a gas lamp, I found myself in a wholly different quandary. It was terrifying to see him again, and yet he looked good to me. He was built like an Adonis. His white silk shirt hung loose off of shoulders so broad they could have held up the world; his tan riding britches clung to his lean waist and amplified the muscular thickness of his thighs. Yes, he looked very good indeed, and I think that scared me almost as much as the theft that I’d surely just been caught for. My knees began to shake. My one-time benefactor; he wasn’t just wealthy, but nobility. People had been sent to the colonies for less than what I’d done.
Oh Lord… oh Lord…
“I wondered if I would see you again,” he said. He stood up, coming out from behind his desk. “Please,” he gestured to one of the chairs before him. “Come in.”
I could not for the life of me make my feet move. There was no way, no way at all that he could not have known I had taken his watch. All hopes of starting a new life somewhere outside of a tavern were gone. I sucked a ragged gasp of air, my eyes tearing. Was I going to spend the night in the mud somewhere between here and Derbyshire, or in prison?
“What is wrong with you?” the old woman beside me hissed. “Do not leave the master waiting! Do you want this job or not?”
“It’s all right, Bess,” Hawkhaven said, still smiling, his eyes locked on mine. “I have given Miss Rayette a fright. You see, we have met before.”