Page 43 of The Housekeeper's Secret

At the head of the table, Mr Goddard sucked in a sharp breath and peered at Abigail as if she’d just committed some indecency. ‘I’ll thank you not to imagine anything of the sort.’

Kate’s face was numb with the effort of keeping her expression blank. Sweat prickled beneath her corset and she reached for her glass of water. As she picked it up her eyes met Jem’s. His smile was so brief, so slight that she wondered if she’d imagined it.

Thomas—always the one to smooth over any awkwardness—summoned a bright smile and directed it down the table: ‘So—what’s gone on here then, Mrs Furniss?’

‘Nothing,’ she said curtly, brushing fallen crumbs into her hand. ‘Really, nothing at all.’

Eliza huffed out a dissatisfied sigh. ‘Nothing ever does.’

In fact, there was plenty happening at Coldwell that summer.

Too much for Abigail’s liking. After London she would have preferred things to be as quiet as they had been in Sir Henry’s time, to give her poor feet a chance to recover, but no sooner had Mr Kendall and his men completed the installation of the bathrooms (and she and Eliza had finished clearing up the mess they’d left) than the decorators arrived to paint and wallpaper, leaving dusty boot prints along the upstairs corridors and the smell of turpentine hanging in the hot air.

Sir Randolph’s wedding date had been set for mid-September, so there was a rush to get everything finished. Mr Goddard was very miserly in the details he shared, but then the wedding itself sounded like a pretty miserly affair. Abigail had got most of her information from Margaret, one of the parlourmaids in Portman Square, with whom she’d struck up a friendship while Eliza was busy making eyes at Walter Cox. Apparently Miss Addison had wanted the wedding to be held at Coldwell and include local villagers and tenants, but Sir Randolph had flatly refused. Instead, it was to take place in London—a private ceremony at St George’s in Hanover Square with a small wedding breakfast afterwards at the Savoy. Discussing it up in the sewing attic (where they couldn’t be overheard by Mr Goddard), Susan said Miss Addison deserved a much more extravagant celebration than that, to make up for marrying an old windbag like Sir Randolph. Eliza pointed out that marrying an old windbag like Sir Randolph was no cause for any celebration at all.

Beggars couldn’t be choosers, Abigail thought, though honestly—Miss Addison might have improved her prospects with the help of a lady’s maid who was a bit more proficient at hair styling than that Miss Dunn.

The old windbag himself had remained in London to squeeze the last drops of pleasure out of the Season, but as the city emptied at the end of July he returned to Coldwell for a few nights, before travelling up to Scotland for the start of the shooting season. Instead of being collected from the station by Johnny Farrow, Mr Goddard received a letter from Mr Dewhurst to say that Sir Randolph would be arriving in his brand-new motorcar, driven by his brand-new chauffeur.

‘Stanley Twigg showed me the room that’s been made for him above the new motor house,’ Thomas said the afternoon before their arrival, as he polished the dining room candelabra in the servants’ hall. Glancing furtively round to make sure Mr Goddard wasn’t in earshot, he let out a low whistle. ‘Very cushy. I reckon he’ll be thinking he’s a cut above the likes of us, this “shuvver” chap.’

‘Well, if he is, he won’t last long out here,’ Eliza sniffed, half-heartedly rubbing silver polish off a coffeepot. ‘Why would anyone want to leave London for a place like this?’

Even so, Abigail noticed her checking her reflection in the silver surface and practising the smile that showed her dimples. She’d been in a foul mood ever since they’d left London, where she’d flirted herself silly with Walter Cox. Trust her to perk up at the prospect of a new man at Coldwell.

If the motorcar symbolised the modern age, it turned out they were quite unprepared for it. Davy Wells would have had to sprout wings to be fast enough to get down to the church in time to warn them when it turned through the gates, and so the first they knew of Sir Randolph’s arrival was the crunch of tyres on gravel and the blast of a horn, which sent Thomas sprinting upstairs to fling open the doors to receive him while Mr Goddard was still struggling out of his post-lunch snooze and into his tailcoat.

Eliza dragged a chair across to the servants’ hall window to peer out. Standing behind her on tiptoe, Abigail saw a man in a sleek uniform (quite unlike the footmen’s ancient livery) get out from the shiny green motorcar and walk round to open the rear door. His face was shadowed by the peak of his large cap, but a strip of neck, as thick as a rolled gammon joint, showed above the collar of the tunic stretched wide across his broad shoulders. His arms swung slightly as he moved, giving an impression of swagger, like a fighter entering the ring.

‘Crikey, look at that.’

Eliza sounded dismayed, and no wonder. The uniform might be fancy, but even she wouldn’t waste her dimples on a man with a neck like a Sunday joint. (Mind you, Abigail would have thought she wouldn’t waste them on loudmouth Walter Cox either. It seemed there was no accounting for taste.)

‘I wonder where on earth Sir Randolph found him?’ Abigail said.

‘Not from a respectable servants’ registry, I’ll bet,’ Eliza muttered, swiping the mist of her breath from the glass.

Sir Randolph got out of the motor, his dog bounding in his wake. His white flannel trousers were creased from the journey and he had loosened his striped tie, which gave him the appearance of an overgrown schoolboy, home for the holidays. His braying voice reached them through the inch of open window.

‘Ah—there you are, Goddard! Caught you napping, eh? So what do you think? Rolls-Royce! Quite a beauty, isn’t she?’

Pausing to light a cigarette, he waved it in the general direction of the chauffeur, standing by the car’s shiny flank. Abigail just about made out ‘This is Robson’ (at least she thought it was Robson) before Eliza suddenly ducked down and scrambled off the chair.

‘Bloody Henderson’s seen me,’ she hissed.

Abigail had been too taken up with the spectacle of the motorcar to notice the figure in the front seat. Sir Randolph’s valet was just a shadow behind the glinting glass, but in five minutes he’d be a very solid presence in the servants’ hall, and the atmosphere would feel entirely different.

Another of the changes at Coldwell that summer. And this one was definitely for the worse.

The kitchen passage was empty when Kate went downstairs after seeing that Sir Randolph was settled in the library. Everyone had gone out to the stable yard to admire the new motorcar, and she couldn’t begrudge the girls their curiosity. Going to the stillroom, she checked that water had been set to boil for Sir Randolph’s tea and the trays were laid, then retreated to the sanctuary of the housekeeper’s parlour.

She smelled his hair oil before she saw him.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Furniss.’

‘Mr Henderson! What are you doing in here?’

He was standing by the fireplace with his hands in his pockets, looking entirely at ease. With a shrug of his shoulders, he rocked on his shiny heels. ‘It’s been a long journey. Very trying, travelling in this heat. I was just thinking how nice it would be to have somewhere to relax at the end of a journey like that—a nice armchair in which to take tea—and I remembered how comfortable you’d made it in here. I hope you don’t mind…?’

---