by The Impostor
Once she passed the tricky section of hall, she breathed much easier. The few servants that the Trapps employed were long in their beds on the third floor. As long as she was careful, they were not likely to wake for anything but a furious ringing of the call bell or their mistress’s demanding bellow.
Still, they were paid well and seemed happy enough with their service, unlike poor little Rose.
Clara checked under the cloth in the basket she carried over one arm. The beef rolls were no longer warm, unfortunately, but the crockery flask full of chocolate was still hot. And she’d managed to save a few teacakes back from the twins.
Anticipating Rose’s delight with a great deal of pleasure, Clara made her way up the final narrow set of stairs to the attic. She fished the key from her pocket and unlocked the door. As far as she knew, no one had missed this key in the year and a half that she had been making this trip, likely because no one in the sedentary Trapp household wanted to climb one more stair than was necessary.
The attic was even darker than the hall, but Clara didn’t light her candle. By now, she knew every trunk and box by heart, and could whisk her way through the long narrow attic without a single stumble.
At the far end, she stopped before a bare plank wall—all that separated her attic from that of the adjoining house. She tapped her knuckles softly on it three times, then stepped back.
Before her, one of the widest planks shifted to the side, swinging on its last remaining nail. A small hand holding the stub of a candle came through, and Clara blinked at the sudden radiance as she took the holder and set it on a nearby trunk. Rose wasn’t nearly as comfortable in the dark as she was.
Then a small head covered in a large cap emerged, and the rest of a slender young chambermaid slipped sideways through the narrow hole.
“Hello, Miss Clara!”
“Hello, Rose,” Clara replied warmly. “I’ve brought your payment. And this time, there’s lemon seed cake.”
The girl’s thin face lighted at the mention of the sweets, but she politely waited for Clara to sit down and begin spreading the contents of the basket before she sat herself.
When Clara had first met the next-door housemaid, she had been putting the last of Bentley’s things away in the attic after his death. The sound of muffled crying had been very startling, especially as she had been shedding a tear or two of her own at the time.
At first, she thought Beatrice had come upstairs to help her after all. Then she’d realized that the quiet, secretive sobs were coming from the wrong direction, not to mention they in no way resembled Bea’s theatrical wails.
She had followed the sound to the far wall of the attic, where she had remembered that the Trapps’ house was one in a terrace of connecting houses around the rather exclusive Smythe Square.
She’d never heard a sound from the houses on either side before, but the walls between were thick stone and quite impenetrable. For some reason, this wall had been left unfinished and planked over instead.
The sound of weeping was growing more desperate, but eerily no louder. Her heart moved by the sad sound, Clara knelt beside the wall and knocked softly.
“Hello? Are you ill? Is there anything I can do for you?”
The sobs cut off immediately, and there was only silence from the other side of the wall, but somehow Clara knew that the weeper was listening. She sat down on the floor with her back to the wall, unwilling to leave someone alone in such pain.
“I’ve been crying myself,” she said to the wall, leaning her cheek against the rough wood. “I know being sad is harder when you’re by yourself.”
She heard nothing for a long moment, then came a mighty sniffle. Encouraged, Clara continued. “I’m sad because someone has passed away.”
There came another sniffle, then a small voice. “Who?”
“My husband. He is—was a soldier, fighting on the Peninsula.”
“Napoleon got ‘im?”
Clara shook her head ruefully. “No. No heroic finish for Bentley. He slipped in the mud and broke his neck on the way to the latrine.”
There was a long moment of silence. Then Clara heard a muffled snicker. It was a terrible moment to laugh, Clara knew that, but she couldn’t help a giggle of her own. Then her pent-up sense of the ridiculous took over and she laughed with the stranger on the other side of the wall until more tears tracked her cheeks.
When her helpless half-tearful giggles finally died down, Clara wiped her eyes, trying to feel bad but truthfully feeling a good bit better.
“Did you love him?”
Clara didn’t reply right away, because she truly didn’t know. “I liked him. He was a bit light-minded, and not terribly responsible, but he was kind. Perhaps if we’d had more than a few months together I would have come to love him. But he was called up soon after the wedding.”
Before, actually, which was why she’d married him in an uncharacteristic bout of romantic and patriotic fervor. Your typical wartime marriage, she thought. The stuff of jest and ridicule. Poor Bentley. All the most important moments of his life had been a series of hackneyed japes.
She wiped her eyes again, then turned back to the wall. “Why were you crying?”
“Me back. It hurts.”
“Your back? Did you injure yourself?”
“No, miss. ‘Twas the whipping.”
Clara was horrified. “You were whipped?’
“Oh, it ain’t so bad,” the little voice quavered. “Not like the time I spilt tea on the master’s guest.”
“You were whipped for spilling tea
“Well, it were real hot, miss. And I’m terrible clumsy. But I never spilt tea again,” the voice went on to assure her. “This time it were for leavin’ dust on the newel post.”
Clara couldn’t bear it. Here she’d been pitying herself, thinking her life so terrible now that she was dependent on Bentley’s sister and brother-in-law. She was ashamed as she recalled her spacious new room in Beatrice Trapp’s comfortable home, where she had no duties more onerous than helping Bea watch over two quiet girls.
She shifted uncomfortably at the thought, and felt the plank behind her wobble loosely. That gave her an idea. “Listen—what is your name?”
“Me name’s Rose, miss.”
Clara was startled. “Why, so is mine! Clara Rose.” Then she bent to the wall once more, tapping softly. “Rose, I want you to push on this plank.” She tried to edge her fingers around it, but could get no purchase. Then a shove from the other side moved the plank out enough for her to gain a grip on the sides. Disregarding the splinters that sank into her fingertips, Clara gave a mighty yank. With a screech of dry wood giving up its long relationship with old nails, the plank swung inward and sideways.
The wavering light of a tallow candle shone through the gap, then was blocked by a floppy white mobcap and a starveling little face.
“Hullo, miss.”
Seeing the tear-streaked visage and thin cheeks, Clara could only hold out one hand. The girl took it gingerly and let Clara pull her through the gap.
When the maid stood upright, Clara was a bit surprised to see that she was much the same height. In fact, they were much the same in many ways. The girl was of a similar age, and had nearly identical coloring to herself. And there was the matter of her name.
Struck by these odd similarities, Clara had a moment of odd displacement, as if she were looking at another self, a girl she might have been had she not had the few advantages she’d been born with.
“‘There, but for the grace of God, go I,’ “she whispered.
Rose blinked at her, rubbing one wrist beneath her nose and giving a great sniff. “What’s that, miss?”
Clara shook her head and smiled. “It doesn’t matter.” She tugged on Rose’s hand. “Come down to the kitchen. We’ll have a nice cup of tea, and Cook will tend your back.”‘
Rose pulled back. “Oh, no, I dasn’t! ’Tis a kind offer, and I thanks ye, miss, but if I don’t get back to me duties, I�
�ll be whipped again, or sacked!”
“Well, let—” Clara almost said. Let them sack you, then realized how unthinking that was. If the girl had other options of employment, she’d hardly stay in such an untenable situation in the first place.
The poor creature must go back to work, even in pain as she was, or be mistreated further. Clara couldn’t bear the thought.
“Let me take your place,” she had blurted.
And that had been the beginning of it all. She persuaded Rose to allow her to don her uniform and cap, and had seen for herself the awful conditions in which the girl existed.
Her room was a bare pallet in a corner of the attic, one much colder than the Trapp attic. The master of the house, Mr. Wadsworth, was a skinflint of the highest order and only allowed a single fire at a time—in whichever room of the house was occupied by him, naturally.
Rose’s dinner was often nothing but a crust, and she was worked from before dawn to long after the sun set.
Clara didn’t learn all that in one night, of course. That first encounter was merely the inspiration for a permanent bargain with the willing Rose. Clara “paid” Rose to let her take her place once a week or so, thus overcoming the girl’s unwillingness to take charity, and in return Clara had the priceless opportunity to view the underbelly of “good” Society.
She’d tried to draw her brother-in-law’s attention to the problems that Rose faced, hoping to get her hired away from Mr. Wadsworth, but Oswald Trapp had only patted her head and chuckled that she ought not to think about such unfortunate things, for he surely never allowed himself to.
So Clara had taken her cause to the London Sun, submitting her first scathing drawing of Mr. Wadsworth under the facetious nom de plume Sir Thorogood.
The cartoon had been printed immediately, as had every one succeeding it. Eventually it had occurred to Clara to ask for payment.
She’d donned a servant’s simple dress and had hand-carried the next packet of drawings to the news-sheet herself, along with a note from Sir Thorogood naming his fee. She’d thought perhaps there would then be a process of bargaining down, since she doubted that the drawings were terribly valuable.
Instead, Gerald Braithwaite had paid without protest and had sent a note back stating that if Sir Thorogood was of a mind to do so, the paper would be happy to buy the drawings in greater quantity, enough to print one every other day.
Now, as she watched a much-improved Rose enjoying her chocolate and cakes, it occurred to Clara that she had almost realized her dream. Under her bed there was a box brimming with banknotes, someday to be enough to live on comfortably, if not luxuriously, for the rest of her life.
It was an intimidating goal, one that she often despaired of reaching. Then she would remember the people that she had helped with her investigations, such as the children in the orphanage that Lord Mosely had been systematically cheating. And dear Rose, who would be the first person she would hire should she ever reach her goal.
“Well, I must be getting to work,” she said cheerily. “I’ll be late, so do sleep here where it’s warm. I’ll wake you when I come back.”
Rose nodded. “Yes, miss. I thanks you for the seed cakes.”
“Nonsense, you’ve earned them. I could never do my job without your help.” Clara rose and squeezed her way through the gap. “Keep the candle, I do fine in the dark,” she called through the hole, then fitted the plank back into place.
At the far end of Wadsworth’s attic was the trunk where Clara hid her costume. She dressed by the faint gleam of light that came from the street lamps of the square through the large window in the eaves.
Thankfully, the window was far too grimy to see through, she thought. Then she laughed at herself.
The attic was four floors up. There would scarcely be anyone out there to see!
Dalton found himself clinging to the highest ledge of Wadsworth’s house, grinning fiercely at the night and thinking that this was much more the thing. This was what he had wanted when he’d stepped down from the Royal Four—this feeling of being completely alive.
Around him, the quiet square slumbered but for a few lighted windows, and the incoming fog turned those into blurred rectangles of gold. He could likely dance a reel on the rooftops and no one would ever spot him.
Swiftly he crept along the ledge. There was a large square of glass panels set into the first slant of roof. The center panel would open, he’d noted from the street this afternoon as he’d leisurely strolled the square.
The panel did have hinges and a latch, but it was fixed from the inside with a simple drop hook. Reaching into his jacket pocket while clinging to the fog-dampened ledge one-handed sent his heart racing and made his grin stretch wider.
The rush that danger sent through his blood made him long for more of this sort of adventure in his life. At that moment, he wished that he might never be forced to total a ledger book or examine a law proposal again.
He closed his eyes and slid the flattened blade of the tool through the invisible gap between window and frame by feel. The blade slid freely upward for a moment, then caught in the drop latch.
If he was lucky, the latch would simply flip up and unlock the window. If it was even slightly stuck, he would be looking at a very dangerous climb down the slippery stones of the building.
The blade would not go further. Patiently, Dalton jiggled it, first slanting it this way, then that. The latch gave suddenly, and the window released toward him with a slight creak.
Chapter Six
Clara shed herself as she shed her own gown, and settled into the persona of Clara Rose.
Clara Rose was not the real Rose, of course, for Mr. Wadsworth’s battered chambermaid was entirely too mild and fearful to suit Clara’s mission.
Her Rose was a bit on the saucy side, at least in her own mind. She worked hard, but owed no loyalty past that of paid servant. She was brisk and opinionated in the way that Clara had never dared be. Rose would laugh in the face of Beatrice’s demands, and make faces behind Oswald’s back when he waxed overpompous.
Clara felt the irreverent confidence of Rose seep into her bones. She needed to affect the scuffling fearfulness of the real Rose when others were around, of course. But that Rose would never dare to climb into a cupboard to overhear the master’s private conversations, nor would she make free with the drawers of his lordship’s desk.
Only Clara Rose had the confidence to sneak a stub of pencil and a scrap of paper into her pocket to make a quick sketch of a visitor, or the crest on a carriage—though most of Mr. Wadsworth’s familiars came in anonymous hackney coaches in the dark of night.
With quick motions, she tied her apron round her back and turned to dig in the trunk for her cap, searching by feel in the darkness. With her head deep in the trunk, she could hear nothing but her own scuffling movements.
But the tingle of cool night air across her neck—when had she felt that exact sensation before?—caused her to jerk upright from her search.
A man stood there, silhouetted against the dim light filtering through the grimy attic window.
For a moment, she couldn’t grasp the image. It was a trick of the night, a shadow. Just another dark flicker in the corner of her vision, as had happened so often in her attic hiding place.
But the shadow didn’t fade, didn’t transmute into an old hat-rack, or her own figure in a wavy looking-glass. It was a man, a very large man.
Clara’s pulse froze still, then raced. She was alone. No one knew she was here. And no one would hear if she screamed.
The man’s profile turned this way and that. He was listening for her, she realized. She made no sound, not even allowing her breath to rasp the way it most certainly wished to.
She almost stepped backward and rang her heel into the trunk, but stopped herself just in time. The empty trunk would have boomed like a cannon in the silence.
The empty trunk.
Before she even truly completed the thought, she’d hiked her skirts
and lifted one foot over the side. If he didn’t know she was there, if she could hide quickly enough—
She carefully lifted her other foot over the high side of the trunk and lowered herself inside, never taking her eyes off the silhouette that stood mere yards before her. The bottom of the trunk was lined with an old bit of wool and she made no sound as she settled herself within.
She’d oiled the hinges herself long ago, for she’d never wanted to alert any wandering servants to her presence in the attic when no one was supposed to be up there. When she slowly lowered the lid, not a squeak came from the old forged iron, not even when the lid settled home.
Clara curled up on the old blanket, which was clean if a bit mousy smelling. She was rather small and the trunk was rather large. All in all, she was quite comfortable. She’d no fear of small places. On the contrary, she rather liked them. Heights now, that was another matter.
She cocked her ears to the outside world, but not a sound made it through the thick wood. Had the man left—passed through the attic on the way into the house? Had he gone back through the window?
Then the lid creaked just above her ear and she started violently. He was opening the trunk!
Instinctively, she shut her eyes and shrank down, waiting to be dragged from her hiding place by hard hands. Nothing happened. The trunk remained closed. She heard a faint grating sound as if someone was idly shuffling their feet on the dusty floor of the attic. The lid creaked again above her head.
Was he sitting on her? Hysteria began to bubble up within her. Did he require a rest after his strenuous evening of breaking and entering? Even mad intruders needed to relax, apparently!
There came a very polite knock on the lid of the trunk. “Oy, there! Anybody ‘ome?” The voice was deep and not terribly loud, for all that it vibrated right through the heavy wood.
Did he truly expect her to answer? Oh, yes, kind sir, do come in. She held her breath for fear of him hearing her, then realized how absurd she was being. He obviously knew she was inside and was simply toying with her.