by Carole King
“Dr. Beame visits once a month, Miss Thackeray. It is imperative that he find my mother composed. Otherwise, he threatens to take her back to New York for treatment. Win runs Belle Vue, a woman’s sanitarium in the city. I am told it is a pleasant place, but mother is terrified of being confined there. So you see, it is most important to me that she be prepared for his examination.”
“When will he visit next?”
“He arrives tomorrow,” answered Cain Byron. “It is with some urgency, then, that I ask you to make this commitment to me.”
To me! “Of course, Dr. Byron,” Autumn said, standing and smiling. “I shall see that your mother is arranged most appealingly for Dr. Beame’s visit. Should I be fortunate enough to deserve the position.” Clearly the man needed her, but Autumn took no chances. His arrogance was such that he might send her packing out of spite. He had apparently run off others and selfishly had consequently left his household in a despairing state of disorder.
Cain Byron took a last draw on his cigar and then snuffed it out. He took in the confident figure before him, and Autumn realized that her confidence might imply a strong will. Her smile faded and her shoulders fell just a note, and she lowered her eyes. “You have the position,” the man informed her.
“Thank you, sir,” Autumn said with a small curtsy. She even allowed a bit of relief into her expression. “May I take it that my things will be brought up from the road?” Cain nodded.
“I am curious, Miss Thackeray,” he said after a pause. “You are obviously a lady of some quality. Why would you seek out such a position?”
Some quality! “As I mentioned in my first letter to you, Dr. Byron, my family has suffered financial reverses. I would rather not discuss the subject, however, for it is most embarrassing.”
“So you have been forced to take this position,” he stated.
Autumn nodded, then attempting lightness, she said, “But you mustn’t think I am not prepared for subservience. I have been around servants all my life—”
“In the posture of mistress,” he mentioned quietly, finishing her unspoken thought.
“Of course,” agreed Autumn. “But, it is precisely because of that exposure that I am capable of understanding the obligations of those in service.” For the second time that evening, a smile threatened Cain Byron’s stern countenance. His black gaze seemed to absorb her as the black hearth tiles absorbed the firelight. In his eyes, she saw herself reflected: The neat dimensions of her brown velvet carriage suit, the arranged upsweep of her pale tawny curls, the tilt of her bonnet, and the small plumes that decorated it. She perceived, moreover, the slim dimensions of her form and realized her own vulnerability in the face of this man’s towering conceit. She swallowed audibly, covering the sound with a small cough. “Might I be shown to my room?” she asked. Lifting her chin in defiance of her abrupt realization, she regarded Dr. Byron evenly. “My long travels have exhausted me, sir.” The man’s returning gaze might have signaled admiration, but he turned abruptly and savagely pulled at a long brocaded cord.
“Mrs. Inman will see you up to your room,” he said. “I shall see that your bags are brought in.” With the words, he withdrew.
Autumn felt her whole body relax. She could barely credit the tension she had been feeling. She took a long breath and came to the realization that a posture of servility was going to be more difficult to maintain than she had imagined. It was one thing to be humble if one’s employers were kind—as she had been to her servants, when she’d had them—but it was another to be expected to shrink into submissiveness in the face of deliberate hostility and intimidation.
“Will you follow me, miss?” Autumn turned to find Mrs. Inman behind her. She held a lantern. “You’ll be up on the third floor.” Autumn followed the woman from the room, glad to be quit of its lavish decadence. The two passed along the corridor, around a corner, through a gallery off which was the kitchen, buttery, and several other rooms, and finally, up a narrow wood staircase. This, Mrs. Inman assured the younger woman, was the staircase she was expected to use at all times. The front staircase was never to be utilized by the servants. Autumn took in the footworn steps and the small fluted gas fixtures that brushed the wall with the barest illumination. At the second floor landing, they passed beneath a huge overarch of ornamental fretwork, the same decoration that adorned all of the archways, both upstairs and down. They crossed a wide, carpeted gallery where tall pocket doors closed off what Autumn could only imagine were exceptionally beautiful chambers perhaps facing the sea and ascended a second flight of stairs to the third floor of the mansion. “Your room is up here,” Mrs. Inman told her, “next to Mrs. Byron’s. There’s a connecting door, don’t you know, for you must be available to her at all times.” The woman moved aside as she pushed open a thick door. Autumn stepped into the room. As Mrs. Inman lit the candles that stood in tall pewter holders about the room, the meanness of the chamber was revealed. The ceiling was low and slanted, and there was only one window—a small darkly tessellated one, at that. At Autumn’s stricken expression, Mrs. Inman offered, “I know it don’t seem like much, but the tester’s clean, the bed ropes have been tightened, and I had one of the boys air the mattress and the carpet this very morning.” An unaccustomed sympathy crept into the woman’s tone. “’T isn’t easy, is it? A girl like yourself having to come to this.”
Autumn glanced at her.
“You know my circumstances?”
Mrs. Inman nodded sagely.
“’T is easy to see, miss, you’re not servant stock. Why, just look at yourself.” She led the younger woman to a darkly veined standing mirror. “It isn’t only in the dress, though that’s patrician enough, it’s the whole picture.” Mrs. Inman pronounced the word “pitcher.” “’Tis easy to tell you’re an aristocrat.” Autumn did not feel much like an aristocrat as she gazed at the distorted, lantern-washed reflection. “You’ve got good bones—fine bones, I like to say. And that hair of yours might’ve spun out from an autumn moon. And them eyes, miss! They’re like the topaz crystals that hang from the chandelier in the front parlor. Wait’ll you see that! It’s something to behold.”
Autumn smiled. “Why Mrs. Inman, you are waxing positively poetic.”
“I’m a poet and don’t know it, but my feet show it,” said the woman gleefully. “They’re lo-o-o-ng fellows!” It was a popular joke about the poet who had reigned over a good part of the mid-to-latter half of the nineteenth century and was in currency in prim drawing rooms and taverns up and down the eastern seaboard, but it became for Autumn an almost drowning release. She doubled over with unrestrained laughter, and Mrs. Inman, happy that her little jest had been so well-received, joined her. Together, the two women fell into the thickness of a small sofa near the hearth and enjoyed for some moments the pleasure of their amusement. It was in this unguarded pose that they were found by a young groom who brought Autumn’s luggage to her room. The fellow halted just inside the door and smiled.
“Having a party, Mrs. Inman?” he asked. Mrs. Inman repeated the joke, and the young man chuckled. “That’s an old one,” he observed. “Still, if it brings you a smile, what’s the harm?” He divested his broad shoulder of the largest of Autumn’s trunks, and set down another.
“The harm,” said a voice from the dark hallway, “is that all this hilarity is bound to disturb my mother.” The people inside the room sobered, and Cain Byron stepped across the threshold. He regarded them all coldly, his arms filled with hatboxes, cases, and baskets. He dropped his burdens unceremoniously where he stood. “Had you planned, Miss Thackeray, to relocate your entire household to mine?” Autumn stood.
“I only brought what I felt might be necessary for my entrance into an important household, Dr. Byron.” She had no desire to inform him that his household had, unfortunately, become hers. She had nowhere else to go.
“I can assure you,” the man returned icily, “your society will be with my mother only. There will be no dallying for you, miss. You will spend yo
ur time in this room or in my mother’s. So you might as well have left most of this frippery in Philadelphia.” He turned and stalked from the room. Autumn heard the echo of his booted feet long after he had passed from the hallway, and she remained speechless. Her silence, however, masked a roiling anger. Mrs. Inman touched her shoulder hesitantly.
And the young man, who followed his master from the room said solemnly, “This won’t be a party for you, miss.”
“I’ll fetch you a tray,” Mrs. Inman said as she, too, left the room.
The door closed. Autumn’s repressed fury exploded. She tore at the pins that held her bonnet and hurled them and the hat to the floor. She ground her heel into its soft velvet, crushing the little plumes and rendering the once pretty accessory shapeless and mashed at her feet. Tears came to her eyes as she muttered an inarticulate curse. She turned in search of something else to fling to the floor, into the unlighted hearth, or at the wall. She gulped sobs as she picked up a candlestick, intending to hurl it at that ugly excuse for a mirror, but halted abruptly as she saw her own mad reflection, glowing ghostlike, arm raised, teeth bared, eyes hollowed, in the candlelit distortions of the glass. She realized with a crushing horror that she had no right. She had no right to destroy someone else’s property, no right to feel resentment. She had no right . . . to feel. Her tears unchecked now, Autumn slowly, cautiously, set down the candlestick and sank back onto the sofa. Hopelessness encased her like a shroud as the realization of her circumstances overwhelmed her. She put her head into her hands, aware of the ache of a horrible truth. Autumn Thackeray, the once-proud heiress of a once-proud family, was nothing more than a servant. She had no home now—no place to think comfortably about “going back to.” She had put herself willingly into this circumstance—never mind that she’d had little choice in the matter. And now, the consequences of her decision must be faced. Autumn Thackeray must live and think and feel—or rather not feel—as a humble, grateful recipient of the benevolence of others.
She pushed herself to a standing position and moved, suddenly overwhelmed with fatigue, to the bed. Without drawing back the counterpane or removing her clothes, she sank into its feathery softness. Lying there, eyes heavy with tears, she drifted, her anger exhausted, in a liminal wilderness somewhere between reality and dreams. Beyond her room, the sea thundered somewhere, a cadent lullaby. A foghorn murmured, one- two- three times. And Autumn slept . . . at last.
The little girl, golden and pink, is wakened gently by sun-scented breezes and birdsong. She stretches lazily, idly reflecting, with the confidence of the deeply cherished, on the day’s anticipated joys. She tumbles from her bed, slips into cozy slippers, and splashes her face with cool water from the flowered ewer. Refreshed, she scampers into her pinafore and hurries down the great staircase to a breakfast of scones and tea. She is spoiled, well nurtured, and loved.
Chapter 2
Autumn hearkened abruptly, her eyes popping open, to the restive tolling of a bell. She sat up with a start, wondering where she was. And that bell, its merciless resonance destroying her slumber, kept up its clamor. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and swung her legs over the side of her bed—or was it hers? She scanned the low-ceilinged room. The hearth glowed with the dying embers of some fire she did not remember making. What had once been perhaps a wealth of heat was now only a tepid reminder that she was in some cold, unsympathetic climate. A parti-colored light that glimmered through the dark mosaic of the only window in the room told her it was morning.
The bell’s insistence unnerved her. Observing that she was dressed only in a chemise and bloomers, she wrapped the counterpane carelessly about her and drew herself from the bed. Rushing to the door, she flung it open to find herself peering into a dark uninhabited corridor. She glanced back over her shoulder. The only other door in the room caught her attention. She bolted to it and slung it wide. She found before her a cavernous chamber, heavily draped against the morning light. Stepping barefooted into the shadowy room, Autumn suddenly recalled her mission. The ragged edges of denial evaporated and she padded to the huge silhouette of a tester bed, thickly curtained, which was situated at the center of the room. Parting the hangings, she saw the partially prone figure of the lady she’d met last night. Mrs. Byron was, with lean fingers wrapped around the handle of a bell, tolling her little instrument of torture furiously. Its relentless jangle sounded even louder within the confines of the velvet canopy.
“Mrs. Byron,” Autumn ventured. “Please stop.” The lady might have awakened from a dream. Her eyes, closed till now, opened abruptly.
“I have a headache,” she complained, still tolling the bell. Autumn placed her hand gently on the older woman’s, and both hand and bell fell to the thick folds of the coverlet. A merciful silence ensued.
“Mrs. Byron,” Autumn repeated with concern, for as bell and hand relaxed, the lady’s head lolled sidewise, and she issued a small sob. “Did you say you have a headache?” The graying head nodded lethargically. “I shall get some help,” Autumn assured her. “Just . . . don’t ring the bell, Mrs. Byron,” she added hastily. “It will only make your headache worse.” Autumn’s own head throbbed now with the urgency of the past moments and the roughness of her awakening. She gathered her uncertain covering around her and hurried from the room. Racing down the stairways, obediently taking the back flight to the first floor, she made her way to the kitchen. Wrapped haphazardly in her counterpane, hair pouffed and tousled, Autumn burst into the room and winced at the sudden glare of sunlight. Blinking away the unexpected morning glitter, her eyes tearing, she stopped in the doorway.
“Good morning, Miss Thackeray,” said a resonant masculine voice from somewhere in the room.
“Good morning,” she returned, her tone abrupt and mechanical. She realized to her horror that the voice came from the master of the house. He stood, leaning against the iron sink, holding a mug of coffee. “Please pardon me, Dr. Byron,” she said, “it is only that . . . You see, I would never venture from my room in this condition, except that Mrs. Byron has awakened—”
“Here’s her breakfast,” Mrs. Inman said, holding out a tray.
“I beg forgiveness, but Mrs. Byron is unwell,” Autumn blurted. The doctor’s brows furrowed.
“What do you mean—unwell?” he demanded.
“’Tis a condition of her daily waking,” Mrs. Inman put in. “She’ll be fine once she has her medicine.”
“She complains of a headache,” Autumn said in earnest. “And she seems quite . . . indisposed.” Mrs. Inman merely nodded. The doctor, however, set down his coffee and strode past both women.
Mrs. Inman shook her head sadly and said, “Just give her this.” She held out the tray. Autumn took it and hurried after the doctor. Making her way unsteadily up to the third floor with the heavy, unwieldy tray, Autumn at last reached Mrs. Byron’s chamber. She found Dr. Byron there, seated at the edge of his mother’s bed. He looked up as Autumn entered the room.
“This is appalling,” he said over the low sobbing of the older woman. “From now on, you are to attend my mother at the moment of her awakening, Miss Thackeray.” He chafed his mother’s wrist gently. “She is not to be for one moment without her necessary morning medication.”
“I didn’t know, sir,” Autumn offered, horrified at her own negligence. “I was not told of my responsibilities. I wasn’t even shown your mother’s room—”
“No more excuses, miss,” he interrupted. He looked back down at his mother and his black gaze softened. “I shall send up some headache powders, Mother,” he said softly. He rose and rounded on Autumn, saying in a fierce whisper, “You, lady, will attend me in my parlor as soon as you are finished here. And do try to have yourself properly appointed for our meeting.” He paused and regarded her keenly. “There will be no more chances for you, Miss Thackeray. Please try to remember why you were hired.”
Dr. Byron made a striding exit from the room. Autumn’s emotions were a mixture of guilt and resentment. How could she
have known what she was never told? Mrs. Byron’s sudden lamenting moan brought Autumn’s attention back to the problem at hand. The older woman was in great discomfort, and Mrs. Inman had said it was a daily condition of her awakening. Autumn resolved as she moved to the bed that from this day forward, she would be up and dressed before Mrs. Byron found it necessary to wield her desperate bell. Autumn lifted the offending instrument and set it aside. On this morning, at least, it had served its purpose, but its rude signal would not again be welcome—or necessary.
With trembling fingers, Mrs. Byron took the mug that Autumn offered her and lifted it to her lips. The liquid was eagerly consumed, and Autumn detected, oddly, the vague odor of spirits. Setting down the mug, Mrs. Byron seemed to relax visibly. Though Autumn encouraged her, the woman dawdled over her breakfast, insisting she was not hungry. She lay back against her pillows, newly fluffed by Autumn, and sighed. Within moments Mrs. Inman appeared. She skillfully poured liquid between two glasses and handed Mrs. Byron one of them. Wordlessly, the servant lifted the tray from Mrs. Byron’s bed and would have left the room had Autumn not detained her.
“Mrs. Inman,” she whispered, “would you come into my room, please?” The lady grudgingly obliged.
“What is it, Miss Thackeray?” she asked impatiently. “I really must get on with my duties.”
“It is my duty that concerns me, Mrs. Inman. I think I should have been informed that I would be expected to attend Mrs. Byron first thing in the morning and that she would be ill. You said the headache is a daily complaint. I was caught completely unawares.” The Irish woman stared at Autumn for some moments.
“I meant to inform you, miss,” she said quietly, “but you were asleep when I returned to your room last evening.”