Mrs. Clarke was as good at ignoring protests as her master. “Won’t take me but a minute. You just sit there and warm up. Master Francis’s chef is a stuck-up Frenchman, but he does know how to make cinnamon toast and a good strong up of tea. My girl’s bringing it up—won’t take but a moment. Just rest, Miss Harriman. You look like you need it.”
Indeed she did. She couldn’t remember when she’d last had a full night’s sleep. Her mother had a tendency to wander—just a week ago she’d found her two streets away, dressed only in her nightgown, babbling something about being late for a rout. She’d brought her back and slept sitting up on the corner of her bed, just to make certain her mother didn’t wander again. If she’d had any sense she would have tied the woman up, but Lady Caroline made such distressed noises when they did that it was almost worse than the worry.
A moment later Mrs. Clarke was back. There was steam rising from the tray she carried, and she could smell the cinnamon and butter from where she sat. “There we are,” the housekeeper said cheerfully, setting the tray down beside her on a slightly battered table. “All nice and cozy, are we? I’m going to find a throw to put over you—that’s a nice enough fire, but you look like you’ve got yourself a chill.”
She didn’t deny it. She was so cold and disoriented that she wanted to weep. What had happened to her? Had he managed to drug her? There were rumors that he and his band of degenerates did that to unsuspecting young women, but the brief glance she’d had of the half-clothed women parading around the château told her that he had no need of a plain, over-tall spinster with a nose.
A moment later a thick cashmere robe was tucked around her, at odds with the shabby furniture. “You poor thing!” Mrs. Clarke said. “I’m just going to forget about manners and sit right down beside you. You don’t look like you’ve got enough strength left to pour yourself a decent cup of tea. And Master Francis has never been a man who pays much attention to ceremony. You don’t look like you do either.” She plopped herself down in the chair beside her, pulled the hand-knitted cozy off the earthenware teapot with capable hands.
“You’re looking at the teapot, aren’t you?” Mrs. Clarke said as she proceeded to pour her a cup of tea, with lashings of heavy cream and sugar. “I brought that from England when I came here. I thought Master Francis would need something to remind him of home. So young he was, poor boy, to have lost his family, his home, his country.”
Elinor wasn’t going to ask. She’d heard rumors, but the vagaries of the titled émigré population of Paris had never been of particular interest, and even in the best of times her mother seldom talked to her. “Indeed,” she said in a noncommittal voice.
“Indeed,” Mrs. Clarke said cheerfully. “You don’t want to talk about him, and I can understand that. He’s a very bad boy, he is. But he has reason.”
“I cannot think of anything that would excuse his—” she was going to say “licentiousness” but thought better of it “—his behavior.”
“No, I suppose not. You’re too young to remember.” She shook herself. “We’ll get you warm and fed and taken care of and back home right as rain,” she said firmly.
It took all Elinor’s self-control to keep her mouth shut. Too young to remember what? What reason might he have for an exile that was far from voluntary? Some scandal? But none of it mattered, she reminded herself. This wasn’t her world.
“You look like the kind of girl who’s been drinking her tea black,” Mrs. Clarke continued, “but right now I think you need some sustenance.”
The housekeeper was right—she’d given up sugar and milk more than a year ago, insisting she preferred her tea undiluted. In fact, she preferred her tea just as Mrs. Clarke was making it, but of late it had become more important to ensure that her sister got enough to eat and drink. Any cream and sugar they could afford went to Lydia.
The tea was ambrosia. Manna from heaven, milk and honey—the biblical terms danced through her foggy brain. It was so wonderful that she would have happily trampled over her sister’s delicate body for it.