Page 48 of The Housekeeper's Secret

It always surprised Susan that Eliza and Abigail didn’t know these things. But Eliza had grown up in a town, not a village like the one Susan had left, where half the stones in the churchyard had her surname on them and the seasons flowed to the rhythm of ancient sayings and superstitions.

‘It’s like a curse,’ she explained. ‘If you bring peacock feathers into a house, it’s said that any unmarried women there will stay that way. Old maids, on the shelf forever.’

Eliza’s mouth snapped shut. There was a pause.

‘What a load of nonsense,’ she said, but before she turned away Susan saw the fear on her face.

On the last night of August, it rained.

Kate was woken by the sound of rushing water and cool air moving across her body. For weeks she’d slept with the sheets pushed back and the window by her bed open. Now, as the black heavens unleashed their pent-up fury, the gutters filled and overflowed and a waterfall cascaded onto her windowsill. Instantly awake, she wrestled with the window, trying to shut out the deluge, but the wood must have warped in the warm weather. Giving it a frantic pull, the metal latch came away in her hand.

She lit the candle and stared at it stupidly. At the same moment, as if engineered by some unkind deity, the rain doubled in strength and the pool on the windowsill began to fall in a steady stream onto the corner of the bed.

She yanked the bed away from the wall and snatched her wash jug to catch the flow. Still it came. In desperation she ran out into the corridor and through the summer dark to the back door.

Outside the night was loud with water. Dawn was close enough for the sky to have lightened to gunmetal grey, against which the rain was a silvery cascade. The air smelled green and teeming, and within seconds she was drenched. High above her bedroom window a broken gutter channelled the rain down with particular force, and attempting to ram the window shut from outside, as she had intended, meant standing directly beneath it. She hesitated, then—taking in a breath—stepped into the stream of water and pushed at the jammed window.

‘Here—let me.’

Jem was there, his hand beside hers on the stuck window frame. ‘I heard you go out,’ he said, close to her ear. Her strength had been inadequate to shift it more than a fraction, but with two sharp shoves he closed the gap. Shielding her from the onslaught with his body, they ran together back to the door.

He shut it quietly, sliding the bolts back across, then turned to look at her. They were soaked through, though he was wearing trousers and a shirt and could still make some claim to decency.

Unlike Kate. Her wet nightdress stuck to her like a second, transparent skin and rain dripped from the end of her plait. After the weeks of stifling heat, the change in temperature was dramatic, but it wasn’t just the cold that made her shiver.

‘We do seem to be unlucky with the weather,’ he murmured, turning his head away, trying not to look at her.

‘Come with me,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll get you a towel.’

They slipped through the shadows to her parlour as silently as ghosts. She shut the door softly, carefully, and went into the bedroom to pick up her keys from the bedside table. The candle still burned, but its glow didn’t reach Jem, standing in the shadows by the parlour door. She sensed him, though. Awareness of his presence shimmered through every cell in her body as she unlocked the linen cupboard.

He took the towel she held out and shook out its folds, but he didn’t use it for himself. His gaze was soft as he took her face between his hands, drying her gently, squeezing the water from her hair, the towel a caress against her neck, her cheek.

‘I’ll go. You need to take that wet nightdress off before you freeze.’

That was what did it, what snapped the last gossamer thread of her resistance. His tenderness. The way he looked after her, like no one else did or had ever done. The way he made her feel as if she mattered.

‘Don’t go.’

She rose onto her toes to press her lips to his, lightly at first. Hesitantly. She had no right, she knew that, not after the way she had spoken to him on that morning in the laundry. His mouth was motionless beneath hers, and then he pulled back, his sigh fanning her cheek.

‘We said this mustn’t happen…’

‘I know.’

He took the towel and wrapped it around her, drawing her to him with its edges, close enough to rest his forehead against hers.

‘We can’t, Kate—’

‘But we can’t not, can we?’

She had tried. All these weeks, she had tried, and it had taken so much effort that she feared it would break her. Turn her mad.

‘It’s dangerous… You could lose your place—’

He was repeating her own argument back to her. Their mouths were so close together their words were little more than exhalations of breath. She took his face between her hands, and water dripped from his hair onto her skin.

‘I know, and it scares me. But what scares me more is the thought of still being here as an old woman with an empty life behind me. A life of service… Being invisible.’

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