Justine Elyot (13 page)

‘It’ll shock you, I’m sure, but it would shock you more if you found out another way – I have a little dalliance going on with Charles. It’s nothing serious. And it’s none of your business. So if you see him in my chambers, you’ll know to turn a blind eye, won’t you, dear?’

‘Y-yes, ma’am.’

‘Good girl. Oh, dear, you really are shocked, aren’t you? Don’t be. There’s only five years between us, and I doubt there’s a married noblewoman in England who hasn’t taken a lover at some time or other. I’m sure Hugh has some tart on the go in St James’s. His club seems to have an awful lot of functions lately.’

‘Did Sylvie know?’

‘Oh, dear me, yes.’

‘Aren’t you afraid she’ll …?’

‘She knows better than that. Who’d believe her? It would look like sheer malice, a nose out of joint. And she would never work again. I know it makes me sound awful, but I’ve lived my life surrounded by male attention. I miss it, Edie. You can’t imagine what it’s like … I hope you won’t judge me too harshly. Not that I care if you do. Anyway, Charles seems to have taken a shine to you and I don’t care for rivals. I like to keep them where I can watch them. What a way to earn a promotion, eh? But I’m sure you’ll be super. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d really like a bath. Could you be a dear and run one for me?’

Edie followed her downstairs to her suite and did as she was bade. The bathroom was relatively new, all its fixtures and fittings of shiny copper pipe. Hot water steamed from the tap quickly. Did she have to do anything about towels? Soap? Laying out a bathrobe?

She found most of what she needed in various hampers and cabinets.

This is what I wanted. To be close to her. How much closer than this? Running her bath, attending to her intimate needs?

Why did it feel so hollow, and so frightening?

‘I think it’s ready, ma’am,’ she said, poking her head around the folding door once she had turned off the taps.

‘You think it is? I’ll have to see. Could you lay out my clothes for the day? Something suitable for driving, I think. I’m considering a visit to the Chudleighs at the Grange.’

She left Edie with this mystifying instruction. What was suitable for driving and visiting? She stepped into the vast walk-in wardrobe and breathed in the luxury that surrounded her. Silks and furs, satins and velvets, yards of bugle beading and sequinned hems. She put her face against them, gathered handfuls of them, feasted her eyes on the rainbow of colours. But none of them seemed suited to driving.

A little further back she found daywear, along with tweeds and riding habits and all manner of more serviceable garments. She decided on a matching skirt and jacket in navy and white with a pearl-buttoned blouse.

But what to wear underneath? Drawers full of underwear had to be consulted, and this was an embarrassment to Edie, who had never had charge of another woman’s smalls before. It seemed so indecent to rifle through the piles of knickers and stockings. She chose silk, to keep Her Ladyship cool, in a dull gold colour. As she laid it out, she wondered if she would be called upon to attach the suspenders and tighten the bodice. Why on earth couldn’t she dress herself, as Edie had to? After all, she must have spent decades wrestling with costumes. It was not as if she was a helpless little human ornament, like some of the fine ladies one heard of.

She still held the knickers in her hands when the door opened again.

Edie turned to see Sir Charles, freshly washed and dressed and smelling rather strongly of an expensive cologne, on the threshold.

‘Oh, so it’s true,’ he said.

‘Go,’ whispered Edie in a panic, flapping the knickers at him. She could hear Lady Deverell’s bathwater sloshing about, but this still seemed absurdly risky.

Charles did not care about risk, though. She should have known that by now.

‘She wants to keep her eye on you. Be careful.’

‘Listen, perhaps we shouldn’t …’

‘Oh, no, you don’t.’ He came closer.

She tried to step away, but he caught her by the wrist and pulled her to his chest.

‘You don’t get out of it that easily,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘This makes things a little awkward, yes. But it can still be done, believe me. Tonight, Edie. Tonight’s the night.’

‘How can it be?’

But he sauntered away without another word, leaving Edie fit to faint.

Her hands still shook when she brought Lady Deverell’s warm towels into the bathroom.

‘Oh, don’t be shy,’ said Lady Deverell, placing a fortunate misconstruction on Edie’s nervousness. ‘You’ve seen a naked woman before, I suppose?’

‘Of course,’ said Edie, willing herself to stop dithering over that dreadful man.

All the same, now Lady Deverell mentioned it, it did seem rather odd to be in the same room as her naked body, even if was mostly concealed beneath the milky, soapy surface of the bathwater.

She was magnificent through and through, thought Edie with a flicker of pride, glancing at her swan neck and elegant collarbone. Below it, her breasts were full and high, sloping down to the water, beneath which they disappeared long before her eye reached the nipples.

Not that she wanted to see them. The thought made her hot with embarrassment, especially when she considered that Charles had seen every scrap of that fragrant skin. The back of her neck began to crawl and a wave of nausea almost made her stagger so that she had to put a hand on the side of the bath for support.

‘I say, you look quite green. Are you all right?’

Lady Deverell sat up straight, water ploughing and plunging around her.
Nipples. Don’t look.

But she couldn’t tear her eyes away and the sight of them made her obscurely angry, choking her words of reply.

‘I’m a little …’

‘I daresay you haven’t had breakfast, have you?’

‘No.’

‘Well, that’s no good, is it? I’ll have something sent up for you when I go down. Go and sit down in the bedroom. I can dry myself.’

Edie was in the little bedside chair, her forehead on her knees, when Lady Deverell walked back in, wrapped and turbaned in towels.

The events of the morning had defeated Edie and now her head and heart were a horrible stew. She was not at all sure she could pursue her plan any more. It seemed to have reached its crisis, much more quickly than she expected and too soon to show her hand. If she did it now, she would be laughed out of Deverell Hall, or worse.

But, if she stopped and thought, coolly and collectedly, she could see that she had the best chance of all now. She could find a way into Lady Deverell’s affections. At the very least, she could maintain a modicum of her attention. And wasn’t that, after all, the only thing she asked? Why spoil it with mistimed revelations?

She sat quietly and swallowed her panic and let her confidence reassert itself at its own pace.

Just don’t think about Charles. Just don’t think about it and it’ll go away.

‘You still look ghastly,’ said Lady Deverell cheerfully, inspecting the clothes Edie had set out for her. ‘Oh, that old thing. I haven’t worn it in months.’ She picked up the skirt and sneered at it, but she did not demand it be exchanged for another.

‘I think it would suit you,’ said Edie, risking a look up.

‘Well, perhaps you’re right. No, don’t get up. I can manage. Just this once.’

Edie put her forehead back on her knees while Lady Deverell attended to her own costuming.

‘Goodness, I hope it isn’t morning sickness,’ she said, a little sharply.

‘Absolutely not!’ cried Edie.

‘All right, calm yourself. You’ve heard what can happen to maids in this house. It’s not completely beyond the bounds of possibility, is it? I wondered if my stepson had made a very early impression on you, that’s all.’

Edie couldn’t answer this without lying, so she remained silent.

‘He
is
terribly attractive, after all,’ Lady Deverell continued, her eyes on Edie as she fastened her stockings. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘If you like that sort of thing,’ said Edie.

‘Oh, I think we all do, don’t we, dear? Dashing man, full of charm, dripping with compliments. And an absolute genius between the sheets –’

‘Oh, don’t!’ Edie couldn’t help herself.

Lady Deverell stood tall, a glamorous amazon in dull-gold underwear.

‘I’m so sorry. I mustn’t drive you into his arms, must I? That’s not the idea at all. Never mind. Admire from afar, if you must, but it can’t ever go any further. He’s heartless, Edie, that’s what he is. Completely heartless.’

And are you not?

The tip of Edie’s tongue quivered with it.

‘Poor Hugh,’ said Lady Deverell, speaking for the first time of her husband. ‘If he knew he was surrounded by vipers.’ She sighed. ‘I’ve tried to be a better person, but it isn’t who I am. We are none of us perfect, are we, Edie?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘But the least perfect of all is Charles Deverell. Well, now, this skirt looks rather marvellous, I must say. You have a keen eye, Edie. I’d forgotten how it flattered my figure. Do you think you might help me pin up my hair?’

She tried, but her skills in this area were so miserably lacking that Lady Deverell excused her the task.

She was ordered back to her seat while Lady Deverell went down to breakfast.

‘Don’t bother about taking it in Mrs Munn’s room,’ she said. ‘I’ll have a poached egg sent up. Then there’s some mending to be done – Sylvie will have put it in the workbasket in her room. Oh, I beg your pardon – your room.’

She was as good as her word and a poached egg on toast with weak tea arrived on a tray a quarter of an hour later. The maid who brought it set it down on the dresser with a clatter and no word.

Edie ate and drank and felt a little better, though the persistent twisted feeling at the pit of her stomach did not recede. That was the Charles feeling and it could not go until he did. She knew it, and so did her body.

***

Lady Deverell did not come back to the room that morning and Edie was left alone to wrestle with needle and thread and try not to botch the job of mending more than a four-year-old might. She wasn’t entirely convinced of her success, and the possibility that Charles might sneak into the room at any moment made her fingers clumsier than ever.

In the event, he did not. When the maid came in to make the bed – Jenny, as luck would have it – she was alone with her thimble and her hunched shoulders.

‘Morning, Jenny,’ she said, longing for a friendly face, a smile, a word of comfort.

But it was not to be forthcoming from the parlourmaid, who sniffed.

‘Better for some than others,’ she said, plumping the pillows with a violent hand.

‘I didn’t ask for this. I know I am not suitable.’

‘Ain’t for me to pass comment.’

Edie could squeeze no advance on this from the tight-lipped Jenny, so she gave up and silently went to help her with the bed, only to be rebuffed.

‘Not your job,’ she snapped. ‘Leave it.’

So Edie left it.

***

Lady Deverell came back up after lunch for her gloves and hat.

‘I’m off on my visit now,’ she said. ‘I shan’t be back until after tea. I’ll need my dinner things laid out.’

‘What should I do?’

‘Do? Why, don’t ask me. Do what you please. Take a walk, read a book. It’s all the same to me.’

A walk, then, it was, in the stifling fever-heat of the early afternoon. Bugs settled in her hair and clammy warmth sheened her skin. It could hardly be called pleasant. The ground had still not hardened from the rains, and it seemed more storms were on the way. The heaviness of the air would have been unsettling enough in its own right, but it was almost unbearable combined with the fear and confusion in Edie’s mind.

From behind a bush, she observed Charles and Mary playing croquet on the back lawn – or at least, a very enervated, lazy version of it, each move interspersed with cigarettes and gin and tonics.

Languid as he was, there was an energy to his movements that signified optimism and high spirits. Was he thinking of tonight? But how could it happen, if she slept in that cubby above Lady Deverell’s room? How? Or would she be in Charles’s bed? But surely that was dangerous too.

There was no use thinking of it.

If Charles was lively, Mary was the opposite, her hair drooping along with her rather bohemian flowing gown. At least it looked cool in this weather, but her pretty face was permanently twisted into a scowl and she seemed to be regaling Charles with some list of slights or frustrations, taking it out on the croquet ball, which she whacked much harder than necessary.

They seemed quite close, as brother and sister, Edie thought. But what about the other brother? She couldn’t even recall his name for a moment. Tom, that was it.

She tore her eyes away from Charles, in his linen shirt and light trousers, and deliberately took the path that led away from that lawn.

The grounds were beautifully landscaped and each wind or twist seemed to reveal some new and lovely surprise. Fountains, pavilions, statues, cunningly concealed little rose gardens – all evoked startled pleasure, removing Edie from her troubling world and taking her to a wonderland.

Reaching the shores of the lake, she noticed a set of crumbling stone steps that led to some kind of grotto just at the level of the water.

She was halfway down before she heard strange noises, unrelated to the rushing water that seemed to pour in a continuous stream from the lake to the subterranean chamber. Mingling with its splashes were heavy breaths, grunts, moans – unmistakably human and male.

She retreated quickly back up the steps and waited by a tree to see who, if anyone, might emerge from the cavern. It couldn’t be Charles – he was with Mary. And His Lordship had been in the library with his estate manager when she left the house. As for the servants – when did they find time? Was it even a human? The sound had been so rough and bestial – could it be the coupling of a pair of animals? Or spirits?

She shivered.
Don’t be ridiculous
.

But this place was so quiet, so still, so like an unearthly garden transplanted to the Thames valley. Perhaps she had left reality and stumbled on an alternate universe.