being good at things. She also liked—these days—doing her work in the hours when most of the staff was elsewhere. This early, the cook and scullery maid had just begun to prepare breakfast. Barely out of bed, and sullen with it, they didn’t speak. Not that there ever was much conversation in this house—and none of it the easy back-and-forth of the servants’ hall in Hampshire.
The Rutherford manor had been a very heaven compared to this place. Everyone below stairs got along; they’d gone together to church fetes and dances and formed up a kind of family. For certain, the old housekeeper had been a second mother to her. When Lucy’d arrived, sent into service at twelve to save her parents a mouth to feed, Mrs. Beckham had welcomed her and looked after her. She’d been the first person ever to tell Lucy that she was smart and capable and had a chance to make something of herself. Thinking of her, and of that household, comforted and hurt at the same time.
Lucy eased the iron around an embroidered placket, enjoying the crisp scent of starched cloth rising in the steam. She’d made a place for herself in Hampshire, starting in the laundry and working her way up, learning all she could as fast as she could, with kindly training. She’d been so proud to be chosen as Miss Charlotte’s lady’s maid eight years ago. Mrs. Beckham had told her straight out, in front of the others, how well she’d done, called her an example for the younger staff. It had warmed her right down to her toes to see them smiling at her, glad for her advancement.
And now it was all gone. The house sold, the people she’d known retired or scattered to other positions, and none of them much for letters. Well, she wasn’t either, as far as that went. But she couldn’t even pretend she’d be back in that house, in the country, one day.
Not that she’d ever leave Miss Charlotte alone in this terrible place. Lucy put her head down and maneuvered the iron around a double frill.
Mr. Hines tromped in, heavy-eyed and growling for tea. A head on him, no doubt, from swilling his way through another evening. Cook’s husband, who called himself the butler, was really just a man of all work. Lucy had seen a proper butler, and that he was not. What he was was a raw-boned, tight-mouthed package of sheer meanness. Lucy stayed well out of his way. It was no wonder Cook was short-tempered, shackled to a bear like him. As for the young women on the staff who might have been her friends, both the scullery maid and the housemaid were slow-witted and spiritless. If you tried to talk to them—which she didn’t, not anymore—they mostly stared like they didn’t understand plain English. And if that wasn’t enough, the valet Holcombe took every chance to put a sneaky hand where it didn’t belong. Him, she outright despised. Every word he said to her was obviously supposed to mean something different. The ones she understood were disgusting. She’d spent some of her own wages on a bolt for her bedroom door because of him. Couldn’t ask Miss Charlotte for the money because she didn’t need another worry, did she?
The iron had cooled. She exchanged it for another that had been heating near the coals and deftly pressed the scalloped sleeve of a morning dress. The rising warmth on her face was welcome, though the kitchen was the most tolerable room in this cold house. She had to pile on blankets until she felt like a clothes press to sleep warm.
The scullery maid brushed past her on the way to the pantry. “Mort o’ trouble for a gown no one’ll see,” she said.
Lucy ignored her. Any remark the staff made to her was carping, about her work or her mistress, though they’d eased up on that when they saw they weren’t going to cause any trouble. But they baited and humiliated Miss Charlotte something terrible. It still shocked Lucy after all this time. She couldn’t quite give up expecting him—she refused to name the master of this house—to step in and stop them. But he was a pure devil; he seemed to enjoy it. Lucy liked to understand a problem and find a solution for it if she any way could, but there was nothing to be done about this pure disaster of a marriage.