Page 56 of The Housekeeper's Secret

Love.

For all these years he had focused only on hate. He hadn’t seen it coming; hadn’t recognised the signs. And now it was too late.

The atmosphere in the kitchen was like a pot coming up to the simmer. The weather might be cooler (and the Lord be thanked for that), but with only one day left until Sir Randolph and Lady Hyde’s homecoming, the range was roaring from dawn to dusk and the list of tasks—sauces to make, steak to mince, fish to fillet—never seemed to get any shorter. No wonder, with only two of them to manage it all. Clarys Gatley had trained as a cook, not a ruddy magician.

Which was why she wasn’t in the best of tempers when Mrs Furniss appeared in the kitchen doorway and asked, in that la-di-da way she had, if she might have a word.

Mrs Gatley peered through the briny steam above the fish kettle.

‘A word?’

‘When you can spare a moment.’

She couldn’t help but laugh, though the housekeeper didn’t appear to be joking. ‘I can’t see that I’ll be able to “spare a moment” until hell freezes and pigs fly over the park,’ she snapped, prodding the salmon poaching in the kettle, then clanging the lid down. ‘Not without another pair of hands to take on some of the work. Have you found anyone?’

‘That was what I wanted to talk to you about.’ Mrs Furniss glanced at Susan, who was forcing rabbit liver through a fine sieve for pâté. ‘Shall we go to my room?’

Mrs Gatley certainly couldn’t spare the time, but the thought of the housekeeper’s parlour with its little velvet armchair (a bit too little for Mrs Gatley’s frame, but welcome nonetheless) was too tempting to resist. Following the swish of Mrs Furniss’s silk skirts along the passage, she wiped her hands on her apron and, stepping into the rose-scented cool of the parlour, subsided into the armchair with a huff of relief.

‘So—you’ve found someone?’ Her feet throbbed painfully, and she strained forward to ease a finger under one shoe strap. ‘I hope whoever she is, she can start soon, because with Sir Randolph and a new her ladyship—’

‘I’m afraid not.’

She was an odd one, Kate Furniss. In all the years they’d worked together Mrs Gatley felt she’d never quite got the measure of her. She’d come to Coldwell as a stillroom maid, though you wouldn’t know that to look at her now. Sitting there at her neat desk, the cook was suddenly reminded of the interviews she used to have with the last Lady Hyde, up in the Yellow Parlour, discussing menus and dining arrangements. There was definitely something of the upstairs about Kate Furniss, with her elegant hands and porcelain complexion. The way she kept to herself, in her pretty parlour, and never talked about where she’d been before she pitched up at Coldwell. Where she’d come from.

Everyone had the right to a bit of privacy, Gatley said; nothing odd about wanting to keep your business to yourself. But that was men for you—no curiosity. Women were different. They talked. Unless they had something to hide.

The housekeeper straightened the silver chains of her chatelaine, not meeting Mrs Gatley’s eye. ‘You know what it’s like, trying to get staff here… Especially these days, when the girls would rather work in a shop or serve in a tearoom. I always thought it was the location that put a lot of young ones off—being so cut off and not having much to do on half days and so on—but yesterday I mentioned in Pearson’s that we were looking, and I got the distinct impression that there was something else.’

She lifted her head and looked at Mrs Gatley directly. Very blue eyes, she had—like one of the china dolls up in the nursery. Unblinking.

Mrs Gatley felt her own eyes narrow, her lips tighten.

‘Well, if there is, I wouldn’t know it,’ she said shortly, gripping the arms of the chair in preparation for hauling herself out of it. ‘If that’s all, I’ll be getting along—’

‘There was a woman—another customer—who implied that something had happened here in the past. Something involving Sir Randolph, and that’s why no one local wants to come here now. People round here have long memories. That’s what she said.’

Mrs Gatley was a great one for trusting her gut on all matters, from boiling an egg to seasoning a steak pie. Right now it was giving her the same sense of misgiving as a rabbit that had been hanging too long and smelt wrong. She tugged her rucked-up apron smooth. ‘People round here love a gossip, more like,’ she said tartly. ‘That’s all it is—gossip. Nothing was ever proved. Folk like to sit in judgement, especially of them that are better off and—’

‘What was never proved?’

Oh, she was a sharp one, and no mistake. Mrs Gatley could have bitten her own tongue for letting that slip, but Mrs Furniss wasn’t the only one who could play her cards close to her chest.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It was a bad business with a visiting servant, that’s all. In them days there was parties all the time, strangers trooping through the servants’ hall—not surprising one of them turned out to be a wrong ’un. The police came up, gave the place a good going over, and found nothing amiss. But folk don’t care about that, do they? They’re more interested in a fanciful story, like that daft ghost nonsense, than facts. I’d have thought you’d know better than to listen.’ She threw the housekeeper a withering look. ‘Now, if you’re quite finished, some of us have got work to do, and not enough hands to do it.’

Mrs Gatley’s poor arches protested as she marched back to the kitchen, but her conscience needled her just as sharply. The lad’s face swam into her mind. Skinny thing, he’d been, like Joseph… Nice enough manners from what she’d seen and she certainly hadn’t pegged him as a thief. But what did anyone know of the folk that passed through a house like this? It had been an unfortunate business and it had left its mark on them all, none more than old Sir Henry. There was nothing to be gained by raking it all up now.

And the fact was, she didn’t know what had happened that night all those years ago, at the Indian banquet in the temple. It could very well have been just as Mr Henderson had said, exactly what he’d told her to say to Sergeant Timmis. Whatever the truth of it, they’d all agreed not to speak of it again. Given their word, and been paid a bit extra to keep it.

Loyalty, she thought with a sniff, was a fine quality in a servant. Mrs Furniss, for all her airs and graces, would do well to remember that.

In the scullery Susan was peeling apples at the sink, and the autumnal sweet-sharp scent of them made Eliza’s mouth prickle with saliva. She had no business to be in there really; she was supposed to be sweeping the main staircase but was using the excuse of fetching more damp tea leaves to have a rest. She was so tired she could sleep on a clothesline these days.

‘I wonder if Sir Randolph will carry his new wife over the threshold when they arrive,’ Susan said with a giggle. ‘Can you imagine?’ She threw a quick glance over her shoulder, making sure Mr Goddard wasn’t nearby before performing an impression of someone staggering under a great weight. ‘He’d never manage it.’

‘Sir Randolph never carries anything himself,’ Eliza remarked. ‘He’d get Thomas or Jem to do it.’

This sent Susan into gales of laughter, though Eliza felt a sharp kick of envy at the image of Jem, effortlessly scooping Lady Hyde into his arms and striding into the hall with her. Her mind was playing these tricks a lot lately: sudden flashes of longing or terror or despair that could set her heart at a gallop. Dreams too, so startlingly vivid that she woke up gasping or with tears streaming into her hair.

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