Page 35 of The Housekeeper's Secret

What had happened at Coldwell to disrupt that natural order?

He walked on, sweat soaking the back of his shirt, despair thickening in his throat, weighting his limbs. He was weary. Tired of watching his words and always being on guard. Tired of being an outsider. Tired of being alone with his demons and the corrosive hatred that coloured everything. Tired of scrabbling around for the most meagre crumbs of evidence to lead him to a truth that everyone seemed determined to obscure and erase. He had come to Coldwell for answers but found himself surrounded by walls of secrets and suspicion and silence. The harder he tried to break them down, the more he felt them close in on him.

The music of the brass band faded as he left the festivities behind and made his way back to Coldwell alone.

It was not a good day for making jam.

Kate had stoked up the stove in the stillroom, but the thick walls held in the heat and made stirring the simmering pan unbearably uncomfortable. She broke off frequently to run cold water over her wrists and hold a damp cloth to her cheeks, but her back ached from standing, her belly ached from cramping, and every inch of her felt sticky with sugar and sweat.

The silence was as thick and sticky as the jam. A wasp ricocheted around the walls, maddened by the sweetness, its buzzing loud in the empty basement. Kate’s thoughts bounced around inside her head, as jerky and agitated as the wasp, rebounding between the celebrations currently underway in London and Howden Bridge, the present coronation and the last one.

For all these years she had trained herself not to think of that time, but over the past couple of weeks, the mounting excitement, both below stairs at Coldwell and in the wider world, had stirred the embers of memory.

In Bristol, King Edward’s coronation had been marked by a parade during the day and a grand dinner at the Merchant Venturers’ Hall in the evening. Alec had been invited, of course; he always managed to insinuate himself into the right places, to rub shoulders with the right people (often by paying wedges of cash to very much the wrong people) in his perpetual quest to secure his reputation amongst the city’s respectable businessmen. He expected—required—her to be at his side, to squash any unsavoury rumours and banish any lingering suspicions about his past. As the daughter of the Haven Master of Bristol Docks, she had been the decorative seal of respectability on his new-minted good character.

She had been a gullible little fool.

And on that occasion, she had not been able to fulfil her obligation, because she had not been pretty or pleasing or an object of pride. With her black eye and his finger marks on her neck, she had been a blemish on his reputation. A walking reproach.

He hadn’t even been sorry that time. She had crossed a line, and for a moment, when his hand had closed around her throat, she thought he meant to kill her. Afterwards, there had been a new coldness in the way he’d looked at her, even as he was reminding her that he loved her.

Too much to ever let her go.

She poured jam into the jars, her aching back protesting at the weight of the pan. Her hands were shaky, and it slipped in her grasp, knocking over one of the jars, so jam spread in a dark, glistening puddle over the table.

She gritted her teeth and swiped damp hair back from her face. The swooning silence of the house carried an echo of that day: the brass-band, flag-fluttering clamour of it, muted and muffled by the closed blinds and thick carpets in her luxurious prison. That day, the seconds had been marked by the throb of pain in the side of her head where his fist had struck her, all of them leading up to the moment in the evening when he had come downstairs, dressed for the dinner, and paused in the hallway to check his reflection and straighten his white tie.

Don’t do anything foolish like try to leave, will you? I’d find you, and it would be difficult to forgive such… disloyalty.

A wave of nausea broke over her at the memory.

He had gripped her chin as he’d bent to kiss her goodbye, his fingers hard on her bruised jaw.

For better, for worse, remember? Till death do us part.

By the time she had cleared up the spilled jam she was hotter than ever, and the stickiness seemed to have coated every inch of her skin. She had set water to boil for washing the pans, but she had a sudden urge to be clean—to sluice away the sweat and cloying sugar; the memories that crept and seeped and stained her mind like the strawberry juice on her fingers.

In her parlour she rolled back the rug and dragged the slipper bath out from beneath the table in the corner. Fetching water was heavy work, usually done by Joseph or one of the girls; and by the time she had hauled two cans from the scullery and a kettle of hot water from the kitchen she almost groaned out loud with the relief of finally unbuttoning her blouse, unhooking her corset, letting her skirt and petticoat fall to the floor. She unclipped her stockings and slipped out of her chemise, peeling back layers of decency, constraint, and bloodstained femininity until she was naked.

And then, from the kitchen passage, the jarring jangle of a bell.

Alarm crackled through her. She recognised the sound immediately as the front doorbell, though couldn’t think why anyone should be ringing in the late afternoon when no one was at home. It was coronation day—surely any visitors would know that the servants would be at the celebrations in the village?

For a second she couldn’t move. Then, stumbling through to the bedroom, she grasped the housecoat hanging on the back of the door and thrust her arms into it. Her fingers tangled in ribbon and caught on a lace cuff as she went out into the passageway. The bell had stopped ringing, but the sound still bounced around her head, making it impossible to hear anything else. She waited, feeling the knock of her heart against her hand as she clutched the front of the housecoat together.

Another jolt of panic as the bell was pulled a second time.

Her legs were shaking as she went up the steps to the hall, her bare feet soundless on the stone. She slipped through the green baize door and edged forwards, shrinking into the shadows of the staircase as she peered through the ornate banisters. Terror tore through her as a face suddenly loomed at the window, hands cupped against the glass, and she darted backwards, pressing herself against the wall.

Her heartbeat echoed through the stillness. Panic swelled and shrank with every rasping breath. From beyond the heavy front door, she heard the scuffle of movement, and then—after what seemed like an eternity—footsteps retreating. Over the drumming of her own blood, she could just make out voices on the gravel below.

She slid down the wall until she was crouching on the cold floor. The tiger stared down at her from behind his bared teeth, but for the first time she saw the terror of the prey in his glassy gaze, not the aggression of the predator.

This is what it’s like to be hunted, she thought. The second baronet’s heavy-lidded eyes gleamed dully in the afternoon light, his red lips parted in that secretive smirk, as if he was enjoying her fear. Excited by it.

Tucking her knees up against her chest, she tried to recall the face at the window. It wasn’t familiar, but that was scant comfort. Her husband didn’t need to dirty his own hands with the more unsavoury aspects of his business, as she’d discovered. He knew people who would do anything and keep quiet about it if you paid them enough.

She pushed the heels of her palms into her eyes until patterns danced in the blackness. The grandfather clock ticked away the seconds. She waited, trying to steady her breathing to its rhythm, and then—when she was sure the man wasn’t returning—got unsteadily to her feet. Going back downstairs slowly, she clung to the stair rail, like an invalid out of bed for the first time after a long illness, and was almost at the bottom when a noise made her freeze.

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