Hidden Currents

by Rowena Summers

  ‘Come and see me again when you can,’ she whispered hurriedly. ‘And give your uncle my best wishes.’

  ‘I will. I haven’t told you everything yet, and I wanted to warn you,’ he said. ‘But it’s not important, and you’d better get upstairs and see what Miss Barclay wants.’

  There was no time to be curious and demand to know what he needed to warn her about. She tore up the stairs to Miss Barclay’s room, knowing she’d be in for an ear-wigging at the very least. By the time she got there, she had a stitch in her side to rival Ma’s. She held on to it, willing the stinging to subside, as she rushed inside the luxurious room.

  * * *

  ‘Where have you been all this time, girl?’ Helen raged at once. ‘I was considerate enough to give you extra time off, and you abuse my kindness by taking half the day. You’ll forfeit your free times for the rest of the week to make up for it.’

  ‘Oh, but I’ll need to see that Ma’s all right, Miss Helen,’ Carrie gasped.

  Helen moved across the room towards her, and Carrie flinched, anticipating the slap of that surprisingly strong white hand. But it didn’t come. Instead, to her surprise, she saw Helen’s hands twist around the delicate lace hanky she held, and her face crumpled.

  ‘I needed you, Carrie,’ she said, her voice suddenly vulnerable. ‘I needed a sounding-board, and you weren’t here.’

  It was a dubious compliment, and Carrie gulped, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear before she was reprimanded for her untidiness. Helen’s moods were so changeable, she never knew what to expect. It was true that you had to live in the same house with somebody before you really knew them, she thought. She had never expected the outwardly serene Miss Barclay to be every bit as up and down as her friend Elsie.

  ‘I’m here now, Miss Helen,’ she said quickly. ‘Just tell me what I can do for you.’

  Helen’s pretty face grew more sullen. ‘You can tell me how to get it into my father’s head that I don’t wish to be married to a gentleman I have no feelings for, that’s what you can do! Well? Do you have any bright ideas about that?’

  ‘Is that what he’s got arranged for you now?’

  ‘Well, of course it is, ninny,’ Helen snapped, and then she brushed a hand across her forehead and sat down heavily on her dressing-table stool.

  ‘Oh Lord, I’m sorry, Carrie. I’m completely out of sorts because Papa’s given me an ultimatum now. He wants to see me settled, and since the Thornton fiasco, he’s decided on a safe and dreary oaf for my future husband. Mr Humphrey de Vere is one of Papa’s most important clients, and very well set up, so my future will be assured. He’s made an offer for me, and we’re to receive him at dinner this evening. If I don’t accept his hand, Papa refuses to fund me for the entire season next year. I shall be obliged to wear this year’s frocks at balls and soirées and I shall be a figure of fun.’ Her voice had risen despairingly, but she stopped sharply. ‘Are you laughing at me, you insolent girl?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Carrie said, trying to compose her face. But what a fuss it was, over having to wear last year’s frocks … some folk never knew when they were well off. New frocks of any sort would be a bonus for the likes of Miss Carrie Stuckey!

  And how dare the haughty miss be so concerned over a few bolts of material, when other folk were going hungry … her mirth changed to anger, and then dissipated as she saw the genuine distress in Helen’s eyes.

  ‘The awful de Vere simply repulses me, Carrie, with his great fat stomach and the stench of those horrid cigars he smokes. And the thought of having to endure the intimacies of the marriage bed with such a man fills me with horror.’

  ‘Well, haven’t you told your father how you feel?’ Carrie asked, quite able to understand and sympathise with such feelings.

  ‘He won’t listen. He thinks it’s a good match, and I should be very grateful for the chance to live the gracious country life. He lives even farther afield than the horrid Mr Thornton, miles from anywhere. But I shall hate it! I love the town, and I shall positively loathe living in the country with all those beastly insects and animals and nothing to look at but trees. And so will you,’ she added in passing.

  Carrie’s heart leapt. ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, parrot, you,’ Helen said irritably. ‘You don’t think I would contemplate leaving here without you by my side, do you? As my personal maid, of course you would accompany me. So if you hate the idea as much as I do, you must think of a way of helping me to change Papa’s mind. Now, you may leave me while I lie down and rid myself of my miserable head-ache. Draw the curtains and go away and put your thinking-cap on. You people are far more devious than we are, so I shall be relying on you.’

  Carrie tightened her lips. Young ladies had such pretty manners when they were at their social best, she thought savagely, but could be as rude as old Harry when it suited them. And most of the time they never even noticed it.

  She swished the curtains across the bedroom windows and went out of the room noiselessly. She had plenty to think about, and the most important was to find a way of changing Mr Barclay’s mind from marrying off his daughter to the oafish Mr Humphrey de Vere.

  Carrie remembered him, and she didn’t like him either. On the several occasions she had seen him at the house, he had looked her over in a way that seemed to have stripped her of her clothes. She shivered, knowing she wouldn’t trust him as far as she could throw him … and she certainly had no intention of moving out of the city to live in a country house where any young servant girl would be at his mercy.

  She slipped upstairs to her attic room to drag a comb through her still-bedraggled hair. But by then, there was a gleam in her eyes, and a daring plan was beginning to take shape in her mind. Not that she was at all sure if she would risk trying to pull it off, but if it worked, it would put Miss Helen Barclay into her debt once and for all.

  Chapter 12

  Carrie timed her plan carefully. She knew exactly when dinner would be over that evening, and when the gentlemen retired to the den to drink their port and smoke their horrible cigars, while the ladies sat drinking coffee in the drawing-room awaiting their reappearance.

  It was a ritual that the gentry rigidly observed, Carrie had once told Elsie grandly. And Elsie had snorted and said it was no wonder the upper classes got so bored with one another if they hardly ever got together, and it explained why they were so stiff and starchy when they did.

  The ritual would be followed as usual that evening, and when the group met once again, the Barclay parents would tactfully leave Mr Humphrey de Vere and their daughter alone at the far side of the long drawing-room room while he made his marriage proposal. And they fully expected their dutiful daughter to accept.

  By now, Carrie knew that Helen had raged a tearful protest in her mother’s boudoir, but all to no avail.

  ‘She won’t hear of my turning him down,’ Helen almost wept as Carrie tried vainly to keep her still long enough to do up the row of buttons at the back of her evening gown. ‘If I do, she’ll wash her hands of me, I know she will.’

  Carrie was becoming exasperated by now. ‘Why don’t you find somebody you fancy yourself then? It ain’t impossible to find some fellow who ain’t a chinless wonder, is it?’

  ‘It’s all right for you.’ Helen scowled in a way that would have her Mama throwing up her hands in despair. ‘It makes little difference what kind of fellow you find to take care of you, but things are different in our circle.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Carrie said woodenly, trying to keep her face straight at the sheer snobbishness of the remark.

  Helen didn’t even notice, which just went: to show something or other, Carrie thought vaguely, too wrapped up in her own plan to waste too much time on the complaints of her silly young mistress. She had always envied and admired Helen Barclay so much, but sometimes she wondered just what she had in her noddle for brains. But the plan was necessary, for herself, as well as for Helen.

  ‘How do I look?’ Helen said finally, t
wirling around for compliments. ‘I wish I dared go down looking as plain as a pikestaff, and that might put Mr de Vere off for good!’

  ‘You know you could never look plain,’ Carrie said, knowing that this was the expected answer, and being rewarded by the quick flash of a smile.

  She was so transparent, Carrie thought. How could any gent with eyes halfway open not know she was repulsed by him? And how could any gent with any gumption at all still want such a reluctant bride? And how could any so-called caring parent keep trying to force her into such an arrangement? Respectability seemed to be all as far as the Barclay parents were concerned, and providing a suitor had no breath of scandal attached to him, he would do.

  Indignation on Helen’s behalf overcame the growing derision she felt far too frequently for the girl these days. Even if her own eyes were opened to the ways of the gentry now, and she admitted that she despised more than one of them, she still felt a sense of loyalty towards Helen, and not for the world would she see her condemned to a loveless marriage. Her resolve hardened.

  * * *

  Although she was under curfew not to leave the house for a week, she could still find out how Ma fared through Billy, and she had reconciled herself to that fact. And tonight it was useful to eat the evening meal in the kitchen with the rest of the servants, and to drop in the necessary bits of poison during the usual kitchen gossip.

  Cook piled her plate with sliced mutton and cabbage, and Jackson relayed the fact that Mr de Vere had arrived in his carriage, looking every bit the swell, and that they would probably be hearing a special announcement very soon. Carrie gave a snort that was worthy of Elsie.

  ‘I’m sorry for the poor young lady then,’ she said, more coolly than she felt as all eyes turned towards her. Cook almost dropped the serving spoon and Jackson spoke sharply.

  ‘It’s not your place to feel sorry for your betters, miss, and you had better explain yourself.’

  ‘You had too,’ Cook said. ‘Bless my soul, how could anyone feel sorry for that lovely young lady, with her Ma and Pa doting on her the way they do?’

  ‘Well, so they might, but I wouldn’t want my Pa pressing me to marry a gent with an eye for the servants, and a ready hand for a quick fumble whenever he gets the chance.’

  She knew she had gone too far when she heard the scrape of Mr Jackson’s chair as he got to his feet and came around the table towards her. As he yanked her up by the scruff of her neck, she gave a screech of protest.

  ‘We don’t want any of that talk here, my girl,’ he shouted, as the skivvies and the other maids looked on in astonishment. The younger ones giggled nervously, not sure what to make of it all.

  ‘Why not, if it’s true?’ Carrie yelled back. Her face had gone a fiery red, because as far as she knew, none of it was true — but she’d wager a pound to a lump of manure that it was so. She’d seen the gleam in old de Vere’s eyes too often to doubt it.

  Cook spoke up indignantly. ‘Has he been trying it on with you, duck?’

  ‘I’m not saying no more,’ Carrie muttered, keeping her eyes downcast as befitted a shame-faced servant. ‘I just wish Miss Helen wasn’t being pushed into marriage with him, that’s all. And I wish more than anything that she didn’t expect me to go with her when she goes.’

  There was silence in the kitchen while they all digested her words and put their own interpretation on them. After a moment, Jackson patted her back awkwardly.

  ‘I daresay you’ll feel differently about things if you’re offered a position with the new Mrs de Vere, Carrie. I’m afraid young servants do sometimes have to put up with a modicum of — uh — unwanted attention, but it’s a secure post and you’d do well to look after it and do your best to ignore the rest. Now I suggest that we all forget the last few minutes and get on with our meal.’

  Carrie bent over her plate, her face flushed in triumph. If there were ever questions asked about the lecherous Humphrey de Vere, then everyone here would back her up … she hardly knew why she was going to these lengths, but it seemed like a good piece of insurance.

  * * *

  Much later, she went to the den where Helen’s father was preparing to entertain his guest with port and cigars after a sumptuous dinner. Her heart pounding, she tapped gently on the door and went inside, and Mr Barclay looked around in some surprise.

  ‘Yes? What is it?’

  ‘Sir, I’m told to say there’s a message for you downstairs.’

  ‘Well, why couldn’t you have brought it with you? Oh, never mind,’ he said irritably, when she stood in apparently dumb confusion. ‘Out of my way, girl, and I’ll be back directly, de Vere,’ he threw over his shoulder.

  Carrie stood where she was, her heart thudding madly now. The large man blew smoke rings into the air, where they hung in blue circles above his head. In no way could they be compared to angels’ haloes, Carrie thought darkly, as she saw his oily smile.

  ‘What do they call you, my pretty?’ de Vere asked.

  ‘I’m called Carrie, sir. I’m Miss Helen’s maid,’ she said with a perky bob, the way she had been taught to do. Instead of leaving, she moved into the room, and for such a large man it seemed to take no time at all for him to be beside her.

  ‘Miss Helen’s maid, eh?’ he said, his eyes calculating. ‘And should Miss Helen marry, will Miss Helen’s maid be accompanying her to her new abode?’

  Carrie gritted her teeth at his ingratiating manner. But she had to see this through now, and prayed that Giles Barclay would return soon … she simpered and smiled and flirted with her eyes, and saw the instant response. He moved even closer, and she could smell the mixture of cigar smoke and hair oil and scented body lotions on him. It was nearly enough to make her sick.

  ‘I might,’ she said sweetly.

  De Vere gave a sudden laugh, and swung his arm around her waist. She was pulled close to him before she could think what was happening, and it was all so exactly as she had planned it in her mind that it all but stunned her. She could see the sweat on the man’s brow now, and hear the quickening of his breathing, and she suddenly panicked, because Mr Barclay must surely return at any second now, ready to denounce him for playing with his daughter’s affections, and showing him the door.

  * * *

  ‘What the devil’s going on here?’ Helen’s father suddenly roared from the doorway.

  De Vere dropped his hold on Carrie as if she was a red-hot poker, and she almost fell. She turned tearfully towards Mr Barclay, and rushed towards him.

  ‘Sir, thank goodness you’ve come. He — he —’

  ‘Good God, man, what kind of riff-raff are you employing here?’ she heard de Vere snap, as cold as ice. ‘The scruff threw herself at me, promising that if things go according to plan between us, and she accompanies your daughter to my home, she’ll give me her favours.’

  Carrie felt as if her heart plummeted to her boots as she gaped in horror at the man. She should have known such an oaf would be up to this. It probably wouldn’t be the first time he’d had to get himself out of a sticky situation. She spoke shrilly.

  ‘No! It wasn’t like that at all! It was all his doing —’

  Giles didn’t even look at her. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, girl. No gentleman of Mr de Vere’s stature would associate with the likes of you, especially not in my house. You’re dismissed. Get out of my sight and back to your hovel.’

  ‘Oh, please no! You can’t do that!’ she said in a panic.

  She had thought this plan to help Miss Helen out of a jam was so clever, and all she had done was to get herself dismissed, losing the wages her family so badly needed, and probably doing herself out of any other position among the Clifton families, since word would certainly get amongst them all as fast as lightning.

  ‘May I put in a plea for mercy on the girl’s behalf, Giles?’ To her utter humiliation, she heard Humphrey de Vere speak up. ‘Perhaps I was a little hasty about her intentions, and it could be that she merely stumbled against me, and my arm naturally wen
t out to save her from falling. If Helen is quite satisfied with her services, then let’s give the girl the benefit of the doubt. It will be strange enough for Helen to enter her new life, without having to find a new maid to suit.’

  He was smooth and plausible, but it was as clear as daylight to Carrie that he’d got an eye to the main chance now, and thought there was a fine bit of kitchen sport to be had with his new wife’s personal maid in the future. She looked down at the floor, wondering how the devil she had ever got herself into such a fix.

  ‘Are you quite sure about this, sir?’ Giles Barclay said, frowning.

  ‘Quite sure. Shall we say no more about it?’

  Carrie looked from one to the other. ‘Can I go then?’ she said in a cracked voice.

  ‘For now,’ Giles said coldly. ‘Though, since the message you mentioned seems to have miraculously disappeared, I intend getting to the bottom of this later.’

  She fled from the room, her cheeks scarlet, and furious with herself for ever thinking she could outwit someone of de Vere’s type. And how anybody could ever think Giles Barclay a doting father for wanting his daughter to marry such a man, she couldn’t think. Money overcame every other consideration, apparently.

  She reached her own room, still shaking at making such a mess of things. She hadn’t done a single thing to help Helen, and she had put herself under dire suspicion in Giles Barclay’s mind, and left herself wide open to the unwelcome attentions of Humphrey de Vere. She had one other option, of course. She could simply quit the job of her own accord … but that would be another disaster.

  * * *

  A long while later, she jumped as the bell above her bed rang out imperiously. She leapt up too soon, feeling her head spin. Helen required her, and her nerves were at fever pitch, knowing only too well now what the outcome of this evening’s dinner had been. The gent would have made his proposal, and Helen would have felt bound to accept, because of her father’s ultimatum. And Carrie was probably in for a blistering tirade now.