by Lynn Morris
Valeria’s mouth twisted; she was certain that exquisiteness was not a word. Her mother gave her a warning look.
Just then Trueman appeared at the arched doorway and announced sonorously, “My lady, dinner is served.” He was a tall, barrel-chested man of forty-five, with a deep stentorian ringing voice. Valeria had never seen a single expression on his lantern-jawed face. He was the most impassive man she had ever known; he was so guarded that it seemed nothing at all could ever ruffle him, or impress him.
In Town, when guests for a formal dinner were carefully selected, it was imperative to follow a strict precedence in proceeding into the dining room. In the country, however, and with an informal party such as this, the rules were slightly more relaxed. It was customary for the host to lead, escorting the highest-ranking lady of the party, so Lord Maledon offered his arm to Lady Jex-Blake, who would be seated on his right. The others followed in a loose group, and selected their own seats. Colonel Bayliss quickly rounded the table to seat himself by Lady Jex-Blake; Mrs. Purefoy took her seat on Lord Maledon’s left, and Mr. Mayhew took the chair next to her. Regina would be seated at the foot of the table, and so this left Valeria and Miss Shadwell to pick their seats. Hoping that she wouldn’t be subjected to Colonel Bayliss’s greedy gaze, and callously not caring that her guest Miss Shadwell might be, Valeria tried to take the seat next to Henry Mayhew. But Miss Shadwell deftly stepped in front of her, and with resignation Valeria went to take her place by Colonel Bayliss. The two footmen got all the ladies seated, then held the chairs for the men, and lastly Trueman seated Lord Maledon.
“I must say, Maledon, that this room is grand enough for silver and fountains and streams,” Lady Jex-Blake commented. Valeria winced at her use of the familiar in addressing her stepfather, but her mother appeared not to notice.
The dining room was fine indeed. It was a long room with walnut wainscoting and deep-crimson wallpaper flocked in velvet with a highly stylized floral repeating design. The oak flooring was polished to a high sheen. The dining table was a long oval, covered with a gleaming white damask linen. The ornately carved William and Mary chairs had tall cushioned backs and plump seats, upholstered with Genoa velvet in a red-blue-and-black floral design. Over the table was an enormous crystal chandelier that cast a soft glow over the diners.
After all were seated, the two footmen began to serve the first course, a rich turtle soup. It was odd, Valeria mused as she surreptitiously watched them set the bowls in front of the diners with economical grace, that footmen’s livery was now the exact style that only gentlemen wore in the previous century. The Maledon livery was slate blue and silver, and the footmen’s long coats and waistcoats were heavily trimmed with silver cords and had large silver buttons. In the daytime they wore broadcloth knee breeches the same color as their coats, but in the evenings they wore white satin breeches, with white stockings and shoes with silver buckles. Their eighteenth-century attire was completed by powdered wigs, with a long queue.
The footmen were brothers; in fact, they were Joan’s brothers. There were many Davieses in the parish, as they were an old family with a tendency toward having many children. They also tended to be uncommonly attractive people. Though they were often mistaken for twins with their similar handsome features and broad shoulders, Ned Davies was twenty-three and an inch taller than Royce, who was twenty and an even six feet tall. Both had dark hair hidden under their wigs, as well as that most important characteristic of footmen—muscular calves.
It was customary at formal dinner parties for the hostess to control the flow of conversation. During the first course, she opened a conversation with the person seated to her right, and the table followed. During the second course, she “turned the table,” speaking to the person on her left, with the others following suit, and so on with each course. In this way no person was neglected by his or her partners.
But, Valeria disdainfully noted, apparently Lady Jex-Blake had not dined much in Polite Society. When Ned placed the bowl of soup in front of her, she looked up at him coquettishly and said in an over-loud voice, “Oh my, Lady Maledon, you do have such handsome footmen! You must be the envy of all of your acquaintance. I declare, I should very much like to steal them from you. What are their names, pray?”
Valeria saw that Ned and Royce looked startled, and their cheeks colored slightly. It was hard for her not to react herself to the crass mistakes in this little speech Lady Jex-Blake had made. First, she had called down the table to make herself heard to Lady Maledon; second, she had noticed the footmen, which was a grave breach of etiquette and offended and embarrassed them. Their pride was in serving quietly, without any intrusion whatsoever on the diners. Truly quality service was such that the food seemed to appear magically. It was understood that the lady of the house was never obliged to make any signal to the butler or footmen, or to take any notice of them at all.
But the most egregious error that Lady Jex-Blake had committed was asking Regina to name the footmen. This was unheard of, and Valeria observed, with a sort of vexed amusement, that one of Trueman’s eyebrows shot up slightly, though he was as stony-faced as always. This was equivalent to anyone else’s throwing his hands up in the air and shouting, and Valeria had to stifle a smile.
Unruffled, Lady Maledon politely answered, “Yes, they are very handsome young men. The footman serving you is named Ned Davies, and the other is his brother Royce. I would ask you not to steal them away from us, however, for they are very valuable members of our staff.”
It was unusual for the lady of the house to call the footmen by their real names; it was crucial, in the status of the nobility, to have “matched pairs” of footmen, and so they were often renamed James and John or Will and Thomas. Lady Maledon had no use for such callousness—she also abhorred some women’s insistence on simply calling their cook “Cook.” Valeria was certain Lady Jex-Blake would comment on the names, but instead she said, “Very well,” with a deep mock sigh. “But I’m sure I shall never be able to find such a fine matched pair. Mmm, this soup is delicious! Wherever were you able to find such good turtle this time of year, Maledon?”
By now the natural order of conversation was ruined, of course. Miss Shadwell was talking animatedly to Mr. Mayhew, but Lord Maledon was much taken up with Lady Jex-Blake, which stranded Mrs. Purefoy. But it wasn’t such a bad thing, Valeria decided, because after a perfunctory greeting to her, Colonel Bayliss had turned to compete with Lord Maledon for Lady Jex-Blake’s attention. At least his lecherous gaze wasn’t crawling over her. Happily she started talking quietly to her mother.
“Mamma, you look absolutely stunning,” she said. “I think that deep green suits you as no other color, but then again I think that with every dress that you wear. You’re so fortunate, with that lily-and-rose complexion, that you can wear any shade and it flatters you.”
“Thank you, my darling,” she murmured. “I must admit that green is my very favorite. It might have something to do with the fact that of all jewelry, I most prefer emeralds, and I particularly love these.” She gave a small secret smile to Valeria.
Valeria’s father had given her the emerald necklace and earrings. Regina rarely mentioned her first husband, believing it was disloyal to Lord Maledon. She did tell Valeria things about Lord Segrave as her father; but she hardly ever referred to anything about him as a husband. Valeria returned her smile with a rapturous one of her own.
As the meal went on, Valeria and her mother spoke very little, for Regina was much distracted by the questions Lady Jex-Blake persisted in half-shouting down the table to her. Valeria had ample opportunity to observe all the guests, and her stepfather, and she learned much.
First of all she studied Lady Jex-Blake, as she was avidly curious about her. She presented odd contrasts, as her speech and dress were refined and tasteful, but her manners were crass. Valeria wondered how she had learned the refined diction of the upper class; she recalled that Craigie had told her that before marrying Sir Henry she had been his serving-maid. Always
there was a clear distinction between the servants’ accents and that of the gentry and nobility. How was it that Lady Jex-Blake had learned to modify her speech but obviously hadn’t learned the simplest rules of etiquette? Valeria reflected that perhaps Mrs. Banyard was right, Lady Jex-Blake was very good at “apin’ her betters.”
It was with some envy that Valeria observed Lady Jex-Blake’s dress. She was wearing a rich satin gown of a dark orange-red, the color of cinnamon, and it went very well with her rather sallow complexion. In spite of all Lady Jex-Blake’s protestations, Sophie had done her hair very well. She had a braided bun, with three small braids descending in loops from the back, and small ringlets and curls all around her face and neck. A satin ribbon, the same color as her dress, made a bandeau high on her forehead and was intricately entwined in the braids. Diamond stars glittered in her dark hair, and she wore a heavy gold necklace with square-cut diamonds and small baguettes. Valeria reflected moodily that she would look very well in that color, and she wouldn’t wear such oversized and ostentatious jewelry.
As they made their way through the first course, which was the soup and entrées of light meat dishes and fish and shellfish, Valeria was relieved to see that though Lady Jex-Blake was a crude woman, at least she was intelligent enough not to openly flirt with Lord Maledon, even if she used the over-familiar “Maledon” to address him. She smiled too much and laughed too loudly, but her attentions did seem to be divided evenly between him and Colonel Bayliss.
The footmen took away the soup bowls and began serving the meat and fish. Ned brought a silver platter heaped with veal fricandeau and unobtrusively bent over to offer it to Lord Maledon, while Royce began at the foot of the table, offering Regina curried lobster. They then served the guests. Next Ned brought around stewed mullet, and Royce brought fillets of salmon.
For perhaps the dozenth time Lady Jex-Blake called down to Regina. “I see that you are at the very forefront of fashion, Lady Maledon. In London it is all the rage to be served à la russe instead of à la français,” she said with a supercilious air.
Her French accent was atrocious. She was correct, however; for many years among all but royalty, dinners had been served by the footmen’s placing the dishes on the table, aligning them exactly along the sides. Whichever gentleman was sitting closest to the meat courses was expected to carve, which presented a difficulty to many men, for it was a skill that only experienced cooks were really good at. The diners helped themselves, usually from whatever dishes happened to be next to them, for it was considered boorish to call up and down the table to ask for dishes.
Service à la russe was when the food was placed on sideboards, the butler carved, and the footmen served each dish separately to the diners. It took longer, but it was decidedly more elegant and made for a more graceful table. Now, instead of great platters of meat and roasts in the center of the table, beautiful arrangements of flowers or fruit were set. Instead of each place setting’s having a clutter of silver, different plates, and several different glasses, the footmen placed the correct dish, silver, and wineglass for each course.
As they were served the fish, Valeria again noticed something odd about Lady Jex-Blake, or rather she saw a peculiar furtive exchange between her and Mrs. Purefoy across from her. Mrs. Purefoy picked up the two fish forks and in a jerky movement held them up for a mere second, frowning. Lady Jex-Blake started, then set her dinner fork down and picked up the second fish fork. Apparently she hadn’t known that instead of using a knife to cut up the fish, one used two forks to separate the soft flaky pieces. After this little exchange Valeria watched Mrs. Purefoy more closely, and saw that she did indeed signal Lady Jex-Blake each time to indicate the appropriate way to use the silver. It gave Valeria a perverse delight to see this further proof that Lady Jex-Blake was not only ill-mannered; she was ill-bred.
But all the while she was watching Lady Jex-Blake and her gaffes, Valeria closely observed her stepfather. By the time the dessert course was served, she was beginning to think that perhaps Craigie had been right. Her stepfather did not seem to be a healthy man.
He ate hardly anything at all, except the soup, and he ate two bowls of that. He took a small portion of each dish offered, but Valeria saw that he ate only a bite or two of the mullet, none of the lobster, none of the veal, and only a tiny bit of one of the meats of the second course, a roast rabbit. He didn’t touch the vegetables, and used no sauce at all.
When giving formal dinners, her mother kept a sumptuous table, serving a different wine with each course. The footmen filled up the glasses of the diners, and it was up to them whether they wished to partake or not. Valeria never drank wine, for early on she had found that if she drank only one glass it gave her a headache, and if she drank two glasses her head swam. She drank either water or lemonade, which were also served.
Normally her stepfather heartily drank of the good wines served at his table, but on this night Valeria noted that he didn’t touch a single drop of wine, yet he drank glass after glass of port. As the meal progressed, Lord Maledon’s face grew redder, his voice louder, his conversation more reckless.
As Valeria was watching him, he laughed raucously at something Lady Jex-Blake had said. Then in a loud coarse tone, his words slurred, he said, “You are one wicked wench, Mavis! Oh, yes, a man must watch himself with you, get too close and he might get his eyes clawed out!”
Even Lady Jex-Blake had the grace to look embarrassed at this outburst, and the table grew silent. But Lord Maledon didn’t seem to notice, as he began telling Colonel Bayliss about Lady Jex-Blake’s superior horsemanship.
Valeria glanced at her mother. Regina gazed down as she delicately took a spoonful of cherry ice. When she looked up, only an expression of polite interest was on her face. But Valeria could now clearly see the sorrow in her eyes.
Chapter Four
WHEN VALERIA HAD FIRST COME to Bellegarde Hall as a child, she had thought that it was an ancient, rather peculiar castle. Since then she had learned from Mr. Chalmers, who was interested in architecture, that Bellegarde was barely a hundred years old, and that the style, which had been short-lived, was called English Baroque. In 1710 one of the premier architects of the time, Sir John Vanbrugh, had designed it for the first Earl of Maledon.
A corps de logis, or central block, which held the principal state and living rooms, formed the center block of a three-sided court, with two flanking wings. The house was of grim gray stone, with an octagonal tower at each corner and square towers on the east and west sides that enclosed the great spiral staircases that went from the basement kitchen all the way up to the nursery floor. The towers were crowned by balustrades and pinnacles, which Vanbrugh had said gave the Hall his “castle air,” so it was understandable that Valeria had seen the resemblance.
The east wing held the magnificent stables and the coach house on the ground floor, with quarters for the grooms, coachmen, and gardeners on the first floor above. The west wing held the office of the estate agent, and quarters for the house servants. Joan had told Valeria that this was another reason that many young people were eager to go into service at Bellegarde Hall.
“We all of us have our own rooms, you see,” she said, when she learned that Valeria had never been in the servants’ wing. “Instead of being all crushed up into the attic cheek by jowl. And there’s even a kitchen, so we can do hot water and morning tea for the upper servants instead of having to come back and forth from the Big House.”
“What do you mean, hot water and tea for the upper servants?” Valeria asked curiously.
Joan seemed incredulous that Valeria didn’t understand. “Why, the lower servants do hot washing-up water, and tea and toast, for the upper servants, miss. Ned wakes Mr. Trueman, I wake Mrs. Lees, Sophie wakes Mrs. Banyard, Royce wakes Mr. Thrale. Us maids clean their rooms too, and Wes does their boots and shoes and carries their coal and kindling.”
“Who is Wes?”
“He’s the hall boy.”
“Good he
avens,” Valeria said. “I suppose I just thought that you all sprang up, in perfect livery and uniform, and set to work.” Joan giggled.
Valeria finished dressing and went downstairs to morning prayers in the Great Hall. Though the interiors and decor in the rest of Bellegarde were reflective of the somber Jacobean early eighteenth century, the Great Hall was modeled after more ancient times. It was Elizabethan, with a high table and heavy ornate chairs. The great clerestory windows soaring above made it the lightest room in the house.
The servants were already gathered in orderly lines at one end of the table. Regina and St. John stood at the other end, and Valeria was surprised to see Mrs. Purefoy there, for none of the guests had come to morning prayers on the previous day. Quietly she took her place next to her.
Between them, Mr. Chalmers smiled and began.
“Today is the day of Saint Dominic. This was a man after my own heart, for he believed, and taught, so much of what I see as of vital importance to us as Christians today. First, he believed that each person could, and should, have a personal relationship to God, that we should know God Almighty as our Father, Jesus Christ as our own Savior and as ‘that friend that sticketh closer than a brother,’ and the Holy Ghost as our Indwelling Comforter.
“Saint Dominic also believed deeply in charity, every kind of charity. He taught that we must always be generous in giving to those less fortunate; but this is not always a matter of material gifts. Spiritual charity, which is love, should also be given freely to all, even to our enemies, for this is indeed the Love of Christ.
“He also stressed two very important aspects of a devout Christian’s life: we should strive to learn, to educate ourselves, to understand the foundations of our beliefs and how they apply in our day-to-day lives; and, with this precious knowledge, we should be eager to share it. Dominic himself stayed up all night in an inn, talking to a man of the pagan sect of Albigenses. By dawn the man became a Christian. Saint Dominic regarded this as one of the greatest joys he ever experienced in his life.