Just Like Magic (7 page)

“Well—I suppose so, miss.” He stared at the teapot for a few seconds longer, then clumped back out into the garden.

I was arranging a pretty tray for Stepmama’s lunch. Tea and toast, with a little salad and a hard-boiled egg. Once Henry had returned with the lettuce, still sulking, I carefully balanced the tray upstairs. Stepmama was reclining in an armchair in the sitting room, curtains drawn against the heat.

“Stepmama,” I said, carefully putting her tray down on a side table, “you know, summer will be over in a month!”

“Well, thank goodness for that,” she replied in quavery tones, looking up from an old
Country Digest
. “This heat! We weren’t made for it, you know.”

“But with summer ending, the Little Season will be starting soon,” I continued inexorably.

“That’s true,” Stepmama replied, brightening. “Invitations have started to arrive already, you know. Of course,” and she sank lower in her chair and reached for her tea, as if for a fortifier, “it means a lot of work! But the girls—it’s all for them! Perhaps we’ll have to give a party ourselves—really we should—but the expense! I haven’t the least head for it all—oh dear—”

“And that means,” I interrupted, leaning forward, “that I will be making my debut, doesn’t it, Stepmama? Because you said—”

“Making your debut?” Stepmama sat up straighter, startled. “Why, I hadn’t really thought of it. The girls need new dresses, and—”

“We certainly do,” said a voice from the doorway. It was Lucy. She and Gerta had been walking Mon Petit, and he bounced about at their feet as they folded their parasols. Lucy handed the leash to Gerta with a look of disgust and added, “And we really ought to think about hiring more servants, besides Ella. I could certainly use a ladies maid.”

“Servants
besides
Ella? Don’t you mean
instead of
Ella? And where on earth would we get the money?” I was stunned.

“A maid could run errands. I hate walking,” said Gerta, sinking into a chair and bending to undo Mon Petit’s leash. “Only for you would I do it, you dear little fuzzy doodlums—” She rubbed her face against his, and he squirmed, wriggled out of her hands, made a dash for Stepmama’s tray and started sniffing at it.

“We’ve already discussed this with Mama,” said Lucy, stripping off her gloves and slapping them onto a table. “It’s so sad to have to postpone it, Ella, but it simply won’t be possible for you to debut this fall.”

“There, you see?” said Stepmama, patting my hand. I snatched it away and backed up.

“There’s no reason why I couldn’t make my debut except that Lucy and Gerta don’t want me to!”

“Oh, now, Ella,” moaned Stepmama.

“You’re upsetting Mama,” said Lucy, facing me squarely. “Hadn’t you better go back to your room?”

“My room! You mean the kitchen?”

“Yes,” said Gerta from the depths of her chair. “Then you could get me some tea. I feel quite faint.”

“And we’ll need you to go to Little Owlthorpe this afternoon and get a box from Merton Manor,” added Lucy coldly. “It has our riding habits and things. I spoke to the butcher when we were out, and he can take you. It’s right on his way.”

“Butcher! You expect me to travel in a butcher’s cart?”

“It’s that or walk.”

“Let the butcher get the box, Lucy! Why would I need to go?”

“Mama, I think you need to talk to this girl!”

“Oh Ella, please, no arguing!” Stepmama was holding her handkerchief over her eyes. “I can feel a headache coming on! Just a little trip, dear! The butcher wouldn’t know which box was the right one! Then next year, perhaps—”

“Perhaps—it’s always next year—perhaps!” I choked out.

“I do my best, dear!” Stepmama’s chins quivered. I turned away with my hands over my face. How could I fight all three of them?

“Don’t forget my tea! I’m parched!” Gerta added from behind the
Court Gazette
.

“I hope you die of thirst!” I snapped, my voice breaking, and I fled from the room.

The kitchen had never seemed so hideous before. I grabbed my hat and parasol and slammed my way out the back door, ignoring Henry’s cry of “Miss? Are you all right?”

Then I hurried off down the alley toward the butcher’s shop.

6

A Visit to Little Owlthorpe

The butcher's cart jolted along a country road under the hot August sky. I hung on to the board that was my seat and gritted my teeth.

“Going home for a visit, miss?” asked the butcher, turning and winking at me. He was a long, thin man wearing a faded black coat with a red handkerchief trailing out of one pocket.

“No.”

“Visiting some friends, then?” He peered at me more closely.

“No.” With any luck, I wouldn’t meet anyone I knew. I dabbed my forehead with a handkerchief and twirled my parasol impatiently.

The butcher pursed his lips and frowned thoughtfully. “Visiting a grave?” he finally suggested.

“No—” I paused mid-word. My parents’ graves were both in the churchyard in Little Owlthorpe. “Perhaps,” I said, staring out at the wheat field we were passing.

“Oh, so that’s it,” said the butcher, and he turned back to the road with a solemn nod. I rolled my eyes and said nothing.

We met few vehicles. Some farmers’ wagons lumbered by, filled with hay, and an elderly carriage with a few elderly ladies creaked by. We were once overtaken and passed by a young man in a gig. I did my best to sit straighter, turn my head away, and position my parasol to hide my face.

When the cart jolted past the first farmhouse on the outskirts of Little Owlthorpe, I had the butcher stop the wagon, and I jumped down and arranged to be picked up outside Merton Manor shortly after five. Then, looking around warily, I picked up my skirts, stepped over a ditch, and slipped through a hedge into a meadow. To the manor I would go, but not by the main road.

In half an hour I had circled the village and was stealthily sneaking through the back of the Cameron estate. I knew this land well; this was where Anna and I had played hide-and-go-seek years ago. Behind that screen of rhododendrons was a fountain, splashing coolly. Water! I wiped some perspiration off my face with my handkerchief and headed toward the leafy wall. But a sound of voices near the fountain made me freeze. Wait—could it be? That was my name! I slowly inched nearer.

“In a butcher’s cart?” Surely that was Anna’s voice. “That doesn’t sound like Ella.”

“I really think it was her,” insisted a young man’s voice. “I met her here once, back when your father invited me down and I first met you. She was visiting—I remember her.”

“How funny!” said Anna. “Was she coming to see you today, Mrs. Wilkins?” I froze, then tried to peer through the rhododendron leaves. Mrs. Wilkins was there, too?

“Not that I know of. She doesn’t visit me, you know.”

“But you’re her godmother!”

There was a slight pause. “She makes her own decisions,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “I’d like to visit her more, but she’s never comfortable with that.”

My face burned.

“I know she was always a little…grand,” said Anna uncertainly. “Of course I could understand it; she was so pretty and had everything! I always wanted to be just like her.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re not!” That was the young man again, snorting. “Grand? More like a snob, I should say.”

“Oh, James, hush! Perhaps now that they’re poor, she would appreciate a call, Mrs. Wilkins.”

Another pause. “I don’t think so, dear. I tried a few months ago, but—”

“Still too grand to say hello to her godmother?”

My face couldn’t get any redder, so my throat tightened up.

James continued, “I have to say, she seemed to have her nose in the air, even in a butcher’s cart.”

Mrs. Wilkins sighed. “It’s been very hard on her, all that’s happened since her father’s death. Sometimes I wish they’d picked some titled person for her godmother—that’s what she needs now, not me! But let’s talk about what I came for, shall we? How are your wedding plans coming along?”

Wedding plans!

“We haven’t set a date yet. Father wants us to wait a year; he says we’re still too young. But we will be having an engagement party next month, and I need a new dress for that.”

“Good! I brought some samples.”

“Then let’s go look at them on the terrace, where it’s cooler, and we can sit and drink some lemonade. James, can you stay?”

“Afraid not. I have to get back to the palace. The prince can’t spare his secretary for long, you know!”

The prince’s secretary!

I stood quite still as I listened to them strolling off down the gravel pathway, still talking; someone laughed at something James said. My cheeks felt hotter than ever, and after a minute I noticed there was a fly buzzing about my face. I automatically waved it away, turned around, and blindly struck out toward Merton Manor.

To this day, I don’t remember how I reached our old home and spoke with the servant who answered. I suppose he led me into the attics, and I know I found the box, because what I do vividly remember is finding myself on the drive heading back to Little Owlthorpe, clutching the box and wiping back my tears. Tears! How could I go back and meet the butcher like this?

I swallowed—it was hard to swallow—wiped my eyes, and looked around desperately. Off to the left, the spire of the village church rose out of a cool nest of green trees. The churchyard—the graveyard—my parents’ graves. I could be alone there. No one would wonder at me for crying. I left the box at the iron gate and walked with aching throat to my parents’ massive tombstone. It sat in a plot of neatly clipped grass, surrounded by flowers. Who had kept it up so? Probably Mrs. Wilkins, I thought, and started to cry again. Sinking onto my knees and covering my face with my hands, I leaned on the tombstone and sobbed.

When the church bell struck four, I was still kneeling in the grass, but the tears had stopped and my breathing calmed, though my eyes felt swollen. “Papa?” I whispered, staring at the stone. “Mama?” A tiny breeze bobbed some snapdragons next to the stone as I traced my parents’ names: Abigail Greenstreet Merton, beloved wife of Charles Merton, Esquire, of this parish; Charles Merton, Esquire, son of Sam’l and Ellen Merton, of this parish.

Of this parish. Yes, they both were. Mother was born on a farm just down the road. I looked in that direction, vaguely remembering being taken to see my mother’s parents when I was little—there was a warm, spicy-smelling kitchen with a huge scrubbed oak table that was taller than me. But they had died when I was six or seven, and the farm had passed to a distant cousin. I had never met my father’s parents, for they had died when he was a young man, but how many times had he taken me by the narrow half-timbered building that had housed his father’s shop? He had been so proud of it, and so had I as a tiny child. As I grew older, I got bored with the whole story—it seemed so far from my own life!—and after Stepmama and her daughters arrived, I hated the tale. But Little Owlthorpe was where my parents had lived, where the roots of their lives stretched deep. They were country folk. My mother had been a cook, for a few years. Mrs. Wilkins, first a farmwife, then a widowed dressmaker, had been her best friend.

But my father had wanted something else. So where did I belong? Even Mrs. Wilkins agreed that I didn’t need her now, but someone in society! And yet my stepsisters were fully convinced that the kitchen was where I belonged.

My head ached, and the more I thought about everything, the more I wanted to stay in the graveyard and cry, but I still had to catch the butcher’s cart back home. So I washed my face with cold water from the church pump, retrieved my box, trudged back to the road, and had a hot and weary wait for the butcher amid fading chicory, Queen Anne’s lace, and bumblebees.

The butcher finally drove up, fully half an hour late, mopping his brow with his large red handkerchief. I clambered up into the cart as he hove my box into the back of it. The smell of a raw side of beef assailed me.

“Have a nice visit at the graves, missy?” the butcher inquired.

“Very,” I said tightly, staring straight ahead.

“Ah,” he said. “That’s good, that is.” And he pulled his hat down over his forehead, picked up the reins, and clucked to the horse.

When I was finally home, when I had dropped the box on the hall floor and sunk down on a chair in the kitchen feeling stiff and numb, Archibald padded up to me and placed a paw on my knee. Then he laid his chin on my lap, his anxious brown eyes gazing up at me through tangled fur. And I leaned over, hugged him, and started crying again.

Next morning I felt drained, and my eyes were puffy. I washed slowly, staring into the little mirror I had appropriated from the dining room. The face that stared back at me seemed like a stranger’s. I dressed slowly; each garment I put on seemed to require strength I didn’t have.