Her maid came scurrying down the stairs to clamber into the carriage while the driver stepped up onto the box.
Harriet chuckled and shook her head as she climbed the stairs to her floor. Mrs. Corning’s disdain didn’t matter, really. She had accepted long ago that she was meant for a lonely life.
She let herself into the apartment and set her basket down in the hall. Grace came bustling out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her long apron. “Miss Harriet! Your skirt is wet to the knees!”
Harriet looked down at her bedraggled skirt and the bits of meadow grass that clung to its muddy hem. She pulled off her hat, dislodging the few pins she had stuck in her hair, and found that it, too, was littered with pine needles and the odd wet leaf. She tried to push her hair back into place with one hand, but to no effect.
She gave it up and bent to begin untying her boots. “Do you know, Grace, I saw Mrs. Corning going into the courtyard. She wouldn’t speak to me, but she gave the most impressive sniff I’ve ever heard. I doubt if Queen Victoria could have outdone it.”
Grace, whose own red hair was pinned into a tight knot at the back of her skull, tossed her head. “Mrs. Corning! Never you mind her, Miss Harriet. That woman is no better than she should be, I can tell you.” She came to help Harriet out of her heavy jacket. “Her Patsy, the one that does for her three times a week, tells me all kinds of men go through that place when Mr. Corning ain’t there. Their cook lives in, and she says the same. And the parties she gives! Why, you wouldn’t believe the caviar and ices and champagne and…”
Grace rattled on with enthusiasm. Harriet nodded now and then, her usual way of dealing with Grace’s chatter. Free of her jacket and having wriggled her wet boots off her feet, she started down the hall to her bedroom.
Grace pattered behind her. “Now, Miss Harriet, you get out of that wet skirt and into something dry and warm. It’s only May, you know, not summer yet. We don’t want you catching cold or something.”
Harriet pursed her lips to prevent a smile of amusement. She had never, not once in their long relationship, caught a cold. Grace knew that.
She did as she was told just the same. As Grace went off with the wet skirt draped over her arm, Harriet settled into a comfortable shirtwaist and light woolen skirt. She tied an apron over it, a long one with deep pockets for the scissors and string she used for tying up swatches of herbs. Only then did she go to the mirror to try to do something about her disordered hair.
As she was trying to drag a brush through it, Grace tapped on her door and came in. “Your breakfast is almost ready,” she said. “Oh, Miss Harriet, look at that hair! Give me the brush, now. Let me do it.”
Harriet surrendered the hairbrush and settled onto the dressing table stool so Grace, a good head shorter than she, could reach. As Grace worked, Harriet mused, “I suppose Mrs. Corning has a point, Grace. I did look a sight. But then, I so often do. You would think she’d be used to it.”
“I expect she wishes she could look like you do,” Grace said. “She must have a devil of a time fitting herself into that corset, and here’s you not even needing one.”
“I have a corset,” Harriet said, amused.
“Do you, now?” Grace eyed her in the mirror. “You don’t never wear it, as far as I know. But never mind. Here’s your hair all better.”
“I’m going gray,” Harriet observed.
“Perfectly natural. That Mrs. Corning gets her color out of a bottle, believe you me, Miss Harriet. A little bird told me all about it. Besides, this nice touch of silver in your hair looks dignified, if you ask me.”
“You can say that, with not a single gray hair on your head.” Harriet gave Grace an affectionate glance in the mirror. Grace, as she well knew, was vain about her hair.
Grace’s naturally ruddy cheeks grew redder. “But you, Miss Harriet, don’t suffer from this flock of freckles!”
“No,” Harriet admitted. “It’s true, my flock is considerably smaller, despite my being so careless about my hat.”
“Yes, and you should do better,” Grace said. She began inserting pins into the loose chignon she had created on