by Abigail Agar
‘What’s wrong with it? It seems alright.’
‘No, Mr Fielding. It is the dullest of places. There are no men to dance with but Caruthers and the gardeners, and now you of course.’ The girl blushed a little but laughed as if to make a joke of it all. ‘It is so far from the nearest place a girl can go to buy ribbons and buttons and things. The whole place is beastly dull. I liked the grounds enough when I first arrived. I saw a deer; I’d never seen anything but cats and dogs and horses when I lived at home. The only real animals were pigeons and rats but out here there are all sorts. There’s a badger set down in the dell. Have you ever seen a badger, they’re awfully mean creatures!’
Vera was having trouble keeping up with the deluge of words from poor Helen, who having had no real friends of her own age in the household staff was clearly excited to get acquainted with the new young man.
‘So tell me about yourself, Mr Fielding.’
‘Please, call me Fidel. I think we shall be very good friends.’
‘Oooh, Fidel. I’ll have you know I am an honourable woman. So I won’t brook any truck with your flirtations.’ Something in her tone told Vera that in fact, Helen would very much enjoy brooking truck with Fidel’s flirtations.
Best not risk getting too close with the people here, Vera thought.
‘It was lovely to meet you, Miss–?’
‘Oh, do call me Helen, Fidel.’
‘Helen. I really must be going to bed. It has been a most exhausting day.’
‘Of course,’ said Helen looking a little put out at having this young man so clearly try to escape her company. ‘Yours is just down the corridor. Mr Caruthers put your bags in there and your bed is made. You best be awake by first light. Caruthers said I was to show you to the stables, which means I will get none of my own work done tomorrow, but Caruthers doesn’t care. He’s beastly dull too. Oh please don’t tell him I said so.’
Helen looked a little alarmed, but Vera tried to smile kindly and said, ‘Not a word from me. Now, my dear Helen, I must retire.’
‘Good night, Fidel.’
‘Good night, Helen.’
Chapter 6
Vera could not find any matches in her room from which to light a candle or lamp and so struggled into her bed in the dark by what little light came through the window. She tripped on her bag and hit her shins on the low wooden bed.
Her fingers struggled with the unfamiliar ties and buttons of her manly attire. Unbinding her chest allowed her to breathe properly for the first time since that morning.
She didn’t even find the nightshirt of young Peter’s which Mrs Plimpton had packed for her, instead simply sliding naked beneath the covers.
Even the hard slats of the bed, which pressed up through the uneven stuffing of her mattress, couldn’t keep her from sinking almost immediately down into the strange and dark dreams which had dogged her.
She woke to the red light of morning streaming through the curtains which were slightly offset. She struggled up, her bladder straining. Beneath the bed where there should have been a chamber pot, she found instead empty space.
She used one of her new masculine expletives and struggled to her feet, grabbing her bindings, pulling the nightshirt over her head, and slipping out into the corridor.
It was a little long and dragged along the floor as she walked along the corridor looking for a way to the outhouse.
Unable to find her way, she returned to her room through the kitchen, and thoroughly embarrassed seized a cooking pot from a shelf and returned to her room to complete her morning toilette in privacy.
Instead, she found Caruthers and Helen waiting at her door knocking loudly. Caruthers was shouting, ‘Wake up, boy! You have work to do, you slugabed!’
While Helen was chuckling and providing encouragement to him that sounded more mocking than truly supportive.
‘I am sorry, sir. There was no chamber pot in my room. I was searching for the outhouse but became lost.’
Helen blushed deeply. She was a very pretty girl, thought Vera, and she wondered why Caruthers seemed to show her no attention.
Caruthers appeared to have lost the ability to speak for a moment, and it was not until she looked down at the pan in her hand that she understood the horror on Caruthers’ face.
After a silence that seemed to last forever, he stepped forward, looked cautiously into the pan, took it from her and said, ‘We have a number of water closets in this house. You may use the one at the end of the corridor. I will see you in the kitchen dressed and ready to begin work in ten minutes. Not a moment longer.’
***
And so Vera returned to her room dressed quickly and rushed to find Helen for instructions on which clothes His Lordship would be using to ride and where the stables could be found.
It turned out that the stables were a good long way from the house, and by the time Vera had found them, sorted the horses with the stable boy, and returned to lay out His Lordship’s riding clothes, it was nearly eleven.
She waited by the bed until the clock struck then reached out to shake him awake. Her hand hesitated just above the skin of his shoulder, his warmth radiating up from the hard lean muscles into the palm of her hand. Something made her hand retreat; she felt flustered and nervous. The clock finished chiming, and still she hesitated. Then rather than risk the electrifying action of touching the sleeping man, she cleared her throat loudly. ‘Awake, m’Lord. It is gone eleven now.’
The man groaned, half-rolled over, and continued to breathe the deep even breathing of sleep.
She tried again, louder this time. ‘Excuse me, sir.’ Then repeated herself, this time shouting. Still nothing.
Here goes nothing. She reached out, seized his shoulder and shook him. Suddenly his hand shot up, gripping her wrist. He twisted pulling her half onto the bed and turned so they were face to face.
‘Confound it, Fidel,’ he roared. ‘I asked you to wake me, not frighten me out of my skin.’
Vera noticed the damp of sweat on her palms. She could only be sure it was his and not hers because of the shine on his forehead.
‘Bad dreams, m’Lord?’
He loosened his hand, and Vera felt sad he had let go. She moved back, aware of every inch that increased the distance between their lips which had been so close that she could feel his breath on her a moment ago.
Get a handle on yourself, Vera. You are meant to be a boy, not a fluttery hearted girl.
‘Are the horses ready?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And my clothes?’
‘At the end of the bed.’
‘Excellent, you might just work out in this role.’
Lord Stanley threw the covers off and stood to reveal that he wore simple woollen underwear to sleep. His legs were long and strong, and Vera could hardly take her eyes off this semi-clothed specimen.
‘Help me dress,’ he said. And Vera set to work attempting to fasten, button, and buckle all the clothes that were so alien to her just the day before. She found it easier to tie them off on someone else. Even if her heart was jumping the whole time as he stood impassively allowing her to dress him in that glorious state of undress.
With the food, drink, and rest, he was looking much better. Some of the pallor had gone, replaced by the dark tan of someone who spent much time outdoors.
As she clothed him, her hands would brush his skin, and she would thrill. He had the smell of a man, fresh from bed, a slight tang of odour, perhaps.
‘Make sure to bring wine in your saddlebag, and let’s go exercise the dogs.’
So her first day attending to Lord Stanley began. Despite his apparently debauched life, Lord Stanley rode hard and with an impressive stamina. The hounds on which he appeared to dote far more than on any human companion bounded along beside the cantering horses as they did several laps of the grounds.
At one point, he showed Vera the sett of a badger, which he carefully led the dogs away from. Each moment in which she was called up
from her position following the hounds and her new master, Lord Stanley seemed to be almost over-welcoming of her.
It was unusual for someone of his station to be quite so familiar with his servants and have them ride alongside him like this. Perhaps he gets lonelier than he lets on?
But a more sinister thought suggested itself: that he found friendship with his servants because his exile from his own class had not been voluntary.
After the ride, they turned the horses over to the stable boy.
When Vera left the stables she found Lord Stanley stood outside looking at the East Wing of the house with an expression that seemed oddly melancholy. The sun glinted off the glass, but Vera was sure she could see movement behind one of the windows.
‘Are they cleaning the East Wing?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said Lord Stanley with that faraway look in his eye. ‘Yes, that must be it.’ Then he seemed to brighten; he smiled a wide smile. ‘Come my boy. I will need you to run some messages into Bathcombe for me tomorrow. I feel it is time for a ball.’
The first thought to flash through Vera’s mind was, but I haven’t got a dress for such an event. The foolishness of the idea almost made her laugh out loud, but unsure that she could keep the girlishness from her chuckle she bit down on her tongue to stifle her mirth.
‘You will need to speak with Patrick Fitzwilliam, my boy. He loans me his staff for such occasions. They gripe terribly about having to work to keep two houses clean, but I pay awfully well, don’t I?’
‘I don’t know, Your Lordship. I haven’t received my first week’s wages yet.’ She paused.
‘You signed on without knowing your pay? You’re a bold man, Fidel.’
‘My uncle assured me you were a fair man.’
‘Yes, which is more than can be said for that old crook. Your uncle is a charming rogue, but a rogue nonetheless.’ There was a tone in Lord Stanley’s voice that suggested to Vera that Fielding and Stanley had more going on with their relationship than just agent and employer. But she decided not to ask.
‘You mentioned a Fitzwilliam, Lord Stanley. Is he a relative of the head of the Bathcombe constabulary?’
‘The very man. Though I wouldn’t mention it to Patrick. The rift in that family is very deep and very old. I would leave it be if I were you.’
They walked on to the house in silence, each pondering their own troubles.
When they reached the house, Caruthers met them with some minor points about the upkeep of the library, and Vera found herself turned over to Caruthers to assist with planning the ball in a few weeks’ time.
Invitations were to be sent, staff to be brought up from the Fitzwilliam estate. Orders to be placed with vintners, flower sellers, bakeries, butchers, alehouses. Much of what would normally be kept in larders or storage was scarce at Avonside House isolated as a boat in the middle of its grounds, and manned by only a skeleton crew.
The afternoon passed in a welter of handwritten calling cards, and letters signed in His Lordship’s hand by Caruthers and sealed with wax. Once all the paperwork was in place, it was nearly dinner time, and Vera was dismissed to take vittles up to His Lordship’s room.
With the prospect of a ball now in Vera’s mind, the corridors seemed much larger and more empty than they had been in the morning. Her footsteps echoed and floorboards creaked in such a way as to make it sound as if others moved around in these corridors, just around this corner, or just behind this door –
Vera froze. She was passing one of the locked doors that led into the East Wing. The corridor was dark apart from the pool of light poured onto the floor and walls by her candle.
She stopped, but the echo of her footsteps continued. Far away, beyond the locked door, someone else was walking heavily through the corridors of the sealed off wing. Perhaps the house was not as isolated as she had originally thought.
The stories of superstitious Mishka and of the carter who consulted with a professed witch were recalled to her mind, and in the dark of that corridor, their foolishness seemed more worthy of consideration than during the day.
She stood breathing as quietly as possible until the sound had died away and all that was left was the creaking of a house at night.
It was just a trick of the ear, someone moving around in the servant’s quarters throwing their footsteps. Plenty more sensible explanations came with the immediate fear passed, and she continued on her way to her Lord’s chamber.
Even though the fear went, as she approached the chamber she found butterflies fluttering in her stomach. A little thrill of excitement ran up her spine at the prospect of seeing him again.
She saw him to bed and bid him goodnight early, for tomorrow she would return to Bathcombe.
Chapter 7
Returning to Bathcombe as Fidel stirred a great deal in Vera’s heart. She had a long list of tasks to keep her busy and drag her to every quarter, and even taking the journey at a decent trot she had used up most of the morning getting there.
Every minute she was within the city limits seemed to her like the roll of another dice. It would only take one person who knew her well, who might see through her disguise and drag her to the constables to pay for the crime of which she was the only living victim.
The horse she took from the stables was more ornery than expected, its meanness and wilfulness had slowed her progress no end, and it was only by a vicious use of the stirrups and whip that she could keep the filly on track.
‘Hurry up, damn you,’ she whispered at her steed again and again. ‘I have a job to do.’
She needed more time in Bathcombe. Because an important thought had come to her, as she rode along, legs tired from gripping and kicking the horse, arms tired from hauling on the reigns and her thighs rubbing raw in this their third day of wearing britches.
When Bathcombe finally appeared over the horizon she headed quickly to the coaching inn and left her horse. She would run Caruthers’ errands first, and then her own.
Time was not on her side, and no matter how she rushed from one shop to another, battling through crowds on the pavement and queuing to be served, she could do nothing to slow the inexorable movement of the clock, and the dipping of the sun.
By the time she had delivered all of the orders to the relevant businesses and got lost once or twice, or had to divert to avoid what might have been a familiar face, the sun was low in the sky. She would never make it back before dark.
Very well, if I must stay here a night I will make sure I complete my own errand at a leisurely pace. I shall miss taking Lord Stanley his dinner, and maybe reading to him, but it can’t be helped.
She was getting used to the feelings she had for Lord Stanley. He was charming, rich, attractive, and a little mysterious. It wouldn’t do any harm to nurse a fondness for him; it might pass the time to be a little in love.
She repeated the words: a little, again. Any more than that was dangerous. Besides, saying it made her feel that it really was just a little.
With that decided, she headed across the river towards the neighbourhood of The Worm in the Rose. The pub was oddly quiet when she arrived.
‘Too early for much custom?’ she asked Mrs Plimpton.
‘Aye, young man. What can I get you?’ She did a double take. ‘My goodness, you’re back rather soon. I thought you were staying out the way.’
‘I tried, but Lord Stanley sent me into town to deliver orders for a ball. I think half of Bathcombe are invited.’