The Rose Master (6 page)

“Just go in? Through the front door?” The thought of stepping onto what I was certain would be spotless, gleaming floors sent my heart pounding. My shoes were so crusted over in muddied snow they could have kept walking on their own. My father’s face would have paled in horror at my even considering such a thing.

Mr. Keery sniffed. “We don’t stand on too much ceremony here. Just go in. I’m sure there’ll be someone in the kitchen.” He turned and dragged his feet down a side path.

Bloody hell. I glanced around, but there was no one. It seemed I had no choice. Taking a deep breath, I broke every rule I’d ever been taught. I gripped the freezing doorknob and opened the door. The glare off the snow behind me made it difficult to see inside. I had to blink and wait as my eyes decided to get back to work. They cleared by slow degrees, revealing a strange room. It was large and almost empty, with only a chandelier that looked like a bouquet of dead branches, and a couple of the meanest-looking wooden benches I’d ever seen. Highly unusual furnishings for the day and age, when everything tended to be swaddled in silks and damasks, with ornaments teetering on crowded side tables.

And the cold. I turned to make sure I’d closed the door behind me when I realized just how much I was trembling. It was colder inside than outside! But it was a different version of cold, one that felt heavy in the air, like an endless shriek.

I had expected my footsteps to echo along the stone floors, but they hardly dented the silence. The kitchen. Where was the kitchen? I moved across the floor until I saw two other doors, both closed and peering at me while I stood hesitating between them. I chose the one on my left and opened it.

“Well, you must be Anne,” a voice said.

I stepped into the room and saw two women sitting around a stained and bruised table. One was young, about my age, with a head of flaming hair that was not tucked or pinned in any noticeable manner. Her features were too regular to be called pretty, but she had a bright look about her that set me at ease.

The other woman was a different matter. She was middle-aged and showed it, her face grooved as if someone had dragged fork tines over it while she slept. She was the one who’d spoken.

“Yes, ma’am, I am Anne.” I curtsied. She was probably the housekeeper, so I’d better be on my best behavior.

To my surprise, she laughed. “There’s no need to go bending your knees around here, except maybe in front of the master.”

I found my voice. “Yes, ma’am.”

The red-haired woman spoke up. “I’m Theodora. Isn’t that just horrid? I think so. Anyway, everyone calls me Dora, and this handsome place is my domain.” She winked at me, gesturing with her arms to the dilapidated kitchen around us. It was warmer, both in temperature and atmosphere, than the front parlor, but the dankness still seeped in through the gap under the door. The kitchen was passably clean, though I could see specks of dust floating in the air. I stared at some of the copper pots hanging like gilded snails off the walls and saw the white film of dust that had accumulated on them. Did they not use the pots?

“And I am Ms. Simple, the housekeeper.” She grimaced at the title and gave me a small smile. “You have been hired, as I’m sure you know, to be the parlor maid. Since you come from Lady Caldwell’s household, I doubt I need to go pointing out your duties?”

I swallowed. “I know my duties, ma’am. Should I ask one of the other girls to show me the different rooms? I fear I’ll get lost if I attempt it on my own.”

The two women eyed each other. Ms. Simple sighed. “Anne, there are no other girls. It’s just the two of us and the coachman. The master doesn’t even keep a manservant.”

My hands fluttered and clenched on my skirt. “But surely I’m not expected to maintain the entire manor on my own! It’s impossible!”

“Don’t upset yourself. We’d never expect that kind of sacrifice from you. No, we only use a small section of the place. Many of the rooms, as you will see, are locked. Just do what you can, and the rest, leave. We all manage. Dora here did not know how to boil an egg a month ago, but necessity is the best teacher.”

“And the cook, what happened to her?”

Dora’s blue eyes turned to me. “She left.”

“Why?”

Ms. Simple shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Let me tell you where the servant’s chambers are. Take the third door off the kitchen and follow the hallway until you see another door. You may pick whichever room you like past that point. No one sleeps in them, so they might be a tad dank, but they are clean. Dora has a room a few doors down, and mine is the last one on the right.” She nodded to me, stood and stretched—a good clue the conversation was over.

I turned and walked to the door. A thought formed.

“Ma’am, what about the roses?

“What about them?”

“Who tends to them?”

She glanced at me. “They tend to themselves.”

Even the servant’s quarters, folded deep into the corridors of the manor, were steeped in a mist of wild perfume. It was milder, thank God, or I would have feared suffocating in my sleep. The room I chose, the first one I entered, was designed for two people, with two narrow beds and two chairs upholstered in a salmon pink. I made a face at the room’s obvious femininity. I’d never been too fond of pinks and frills and everything else I, as a young woman, was supposed to coo over.

A small desk and a single night-table with a lamp comprised the rest of the furniture. I pulled the limp pillows off one of the beds, fluffing and beating the neglect out in a sandy sprinkle. I untucked the bedcover, a deflated, sad thing, and the bed sheets, sticky with disuse.

A nagging unease followed my thoughts as I performed actions that were second nature. The whole situation in the manor was unusual, bordering on bizarre, but there was another layer to the strangeness I was experiencing—more visceral. I realized I felt watched.

Just nerves
, I told myself.
The isolation getting to me
. In a few days, I’d get used to the silence. I finished spreading out the bedcover, laying my troublesome thoughts down alongside it.

“I’m here. I’ll make the most of it.”

There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” I said.

“I brought you some tea. I’m sure you must be frozen from the trip,” Dora said, entering the room. She was not graceful—she waddled more than walked—but there was an aura of activity around her that was like a furnace, heating up the house’s sluggishness.

“Thank you, Dora.” I sipped at the tea. Weak, with too much milk and cooling. I held my breath and drank in large gulps. She watched me in frank curiosity. Apparently, her powers at dissembling were as weak as her tea.

“I heard you came from London?” she said.

I placed the teacup down on the desk. “Yes. From Caldwell House.”

She shrugged as if I’d mentioned a place in the middle of the Chinese wilderness.

“What’s it like, London?”

“Um, loud. Busy. The complete opposite of this place.”

“It must be wonderful to live in the center of everything, to be surrounded by different people every day.”

“It’s quite pleasant.”

“I’ve lived here my whole life.”

“It’s beautiful here,” I said.

She jerked her head up, a shadow darkening her face. “Yes, it is.”

If possible, the air in the room plunged a few degrees more, and I began to see my breath as I exhaled. I shuddered.

“The cold, though, is not pleasant. How can you stand it?”

“I’m used to it. So is Ms. Simple, and Mr. Keery stays over at the stable-house, so he doesn’t complain.”

“He sleeps there instead of in all these empty rooms?”

“He prefers it.”

“And what about Lord Grey? He must mind the chill. My previous employers would have fainted away in feverish delirium after a single night in these temperatures.”

She shrugged and evaded my question. “I can bring you extra blankets, if you want.”

I sighed. She wasn’t going to tell me anything important, at least not yet. “Yes, that would be wonderful, Dora.”

“Well, I’d best be going back to my kitchen. I have a bit of onions and carrots to chop up. We’re having stew tonight. I hope that’s all right?”

“Sounds delicious. Do you need any help?” As I spoke, I picked up the empty teacup and handed it to her. She extended her right arm and her sleeve peeled back, revealing a bracelet of deep cuts or scratches. The skin was raw and bruised. My hand twitched, and I looked up at her face. She had followed my eyes and smiled as she took the cup.

“No, that’s all right. I can handle it on my own. You just rest.” She turned and left. Questions filled my mouth.

SEVEN

I didn’t want to sit and wait until I was called for dinner, and I did not feel a shadow of sleep, so I decided to walk about a bit, try to get a sense of the manor.

The servant’s quarters were, as usual, separated from the center of the house. In most cases, that was not a negative thing, since the servants did not want to catch sight of their lofty employers when they were not on service duty. In Rosewood Manor, however, there was an extra hallway separating the rest of the house from the help’s territory. The kitchen was located a bit closer to the front of the main hall than was normal, but I doubted it held any charms for the house’s master. Most Lords and Ladies would rather crumble to ash with thirst than fetch themselves a glass of water.

The extra hallway had no doors or ornaments of any sort; not a single painting hung on the somber walls, their faces covered in a dark, gold fabric. I did not linger there and soon, I was out of our section of the house and into the main hall. I stared at the darkest set of stairs I’d ever seen, the wood the color of old blood stains, shining with such brightness I could not fathom how anyone could have scrubbed it so well.

Two other large rooms had entrances from the main hall: the dining room and the sitting room. I moved to the latter and peeked in. When I saw it was empty, I entered. There were white sheets on every piece of furniture, including, from its brougham-like girth, a piano. The sheets themselves had a thick coat of the same sticky dust I’d found everywhere, and I brushed my hand against my dress to remove it from my curious hands. How long had it been since the sitting room had been used? Months, at least.

I lifted the corner of a clammy sheet. The sofa underneath was dark, with arabesques of diluted yellow pirouetting through the fabric. Not ugly. And not nearly as blatantly extravagant as the furniture in Caldwell House. Maybe I could start in that room the following day, try to bring it back to life. Just getting rid of the white sheets would be a huge step in the right direction.

I left the sitting room and crossed to the dining room. There, at least, were signs of human influence. The long table was clean and polished, as were the chairs, and the mantelpiece poised over the large fireplace. But the room was not pretty. It had the same type of benches I’d seen as I walked into the manor, and the table was strange, its legs bent at all kinds of angles, as if getting ready to smash through the doors at any moment.

I turned and saw a gigantic mirror on the opposite side of the table, facing where the master of the house would sit each evening. The mirror was a curious one. It had no real frame, no carved wood or golden border; it lay naked, all edges plainly uncovered. I stepped up to it. Close up, it looked like any other mirror I’d ever seen.