Page 18 of The Maid's Secret

Mrs.Mead kept a small, thatched-roof cottage on the estate, given to her by my father when her husband, Franklin, a pilot in the war, was shot down by enemy fire. After Franklin was killed, Uncle Willy became his sister’s chief protector. He’d lost his own wife, Prudence, to tuberculosis a year earlier, leaving him with a young son to raise on his own. I can see now the burden of grief Uncle Willy must have carried, but I had no sense of it when I was a child. He’d lost his wife so young, and his brother-in-law. He’d been left with a child to rear by himself.

Uncle Willy kept a room in town, but on his days off, he could be found at Mrs.Mead’s cottage, tending to her garden or her chickens, picking apples in the orchard or sitting down to a homemade shepherd’s pie with his son and sister by his side. He never seemed more comfortable than when he removed his butler’s uniform—a crisp black suit with a neat bow tie—to don his weathered overalls. It was as though he’d shed a disguise to reveal his natural skin.

As for Uncle Willy’s son, who was about my age, I thought little of him when I was a child, didn’t even care enough to recall his name. He was a brooding brown-eyed boy with broad shoulders like his father’s. That lad lurked in the shadows of the estate and barely said a word. The truth of the matter, which I can see now, is that I ignored the boy out of petty jealousy. I wanted to be the only child Mrs.Mead and Uncle Willy fawned over, the only child they loved. Early on, I convinced myself there was something about that boy I didn’t like—the way he carried himself without apology, as if he had every right to visit the manor when in fact his presence was a special privilege granted by my father.

It is a sad truth that as children we take on the prejudices of our parents without even realizing we are doing so, and I internalized Mama and Papa’s belief that the children of domestics were below my station, so unremarkable they were easily forgotten.

I despised seeing the boy loitering about the grounds while at the same time believing it was my God-given prerogative to go whereverI wanted and do as I pleased. Though strictly speaking I wasn’t supposed to, I would visit Mrs.Mead’s cottage almost every day, finding in its rubblestone walls a comfort I never felt within the confines of my parents’ posh manor house. Mrs.Mead let me read or do schoolwork on her worn kitchen table. It was there, in her kitchen, that I learned to embroider and quilt, to bake bread and pies, and to brew a perfect cup of tea.

On rare occasions, after running out of the manor to the lawns and through the garden gate, then ambling down the stone paths, past the pond and farm fields, I would arrive at the squat, arched door of Mead Cottage and let myself in without so much as knocking.

“What’s for tea?” I’d demand of Mrs.Mead, who was usually toiling away at the stove or huddled under a lamp with her embroidery ring.

“Fresh biscuits and clotted cream,” she would reply, her green eye and blue eye crinkling with joy at the sight of me. “Hot out of the oven for the little missus in ten minutes’ time.”

Never once did Mrs.Mead make me feel unwelcome, nor did she ever order me back to the manor house, where I belonged. It was her job to tend to me all day long, and then, after her shift was done, she found herself looking after me again in her very own home. I still recall the times when I’d swing the cottage door open to find that tousle-haired intruder occupyingmychair at the kitchen table. Mrs.Mead would take the boy by the hand and lead him out the door.

“Go find your father in the garden. Tell him we’ve got a visitor again,” she’d say, and lickety-split, the brooding boy would be gone. I’d gloat the second Mrs.Mead closed the door on his back and she’d lavish attention on me once more.

What became of that boy I didn’t know for several years. At some point, he simply vanished, rarely to be seen on the estate grounds. So all-consuming was my selfishness that it never occurred to me to ask Uncle Willy or Mrs.Mead where he was or even to consider they might be capable of loving this child even more than they loved me.

When I was seventeen, sharing the good news with Uncle Willy about my admittance to prep school, I learned where his son had been all those years.

“You may very well find yourself in classes with him soon,” Uncle Willy revealed. “My boy’s back from boarding school, and he’s about to attend your class.”

At first, I was confused. How could the butler’s son be attending a private prep school for the wealthy and privileged?

Uncle Willy explained without me having to ask. “Your father granted him another scholarship,” he said. “So you’ll see him at school.”

“I’m not sure I’d recognize him after all these years,” I replied. “And besides, I doubt we’ll run in the same circles.”

Molly, it hurts my soul to commit those words to paper, and it hurts even more to remember the pained look that crossed Uncle Willy’s face when this classist quip so casually spilled from my mouth. But I was a parrot echoing whatever I heard at home, repeating it ad infinitum, lest anyone forget my family’s God-given superiority.

“I’m happy you’ll be studying, Flora,” Uncle Willy said, ignoring my callous remark. “And I know you will achieve great things one day. Just don’t forget your ol’ Uncle Willy and Mrs.Mead.”

“I won’t,” I replied. “I promise.”

Just then, I heard my name, a familiar voice calling me from somewhere deep within the manor. “Yoo-hoo, Flora!”

“That’s my sister,” said Uncle Willy. “She’s been looking for you. Your gown arrived, and she needs you for a fitting.”

“Right,” I replied. “I better get to it. Thank you, Uncle Willy.”

“For what?”

“For everything,” I answered.

I made my way through the graceful front corridor filled with gilded portraits of Papa’s noble ancestors—gloomy men holding fountain pens or cocked rifles and pale-faced women in corsets sotight they appeared on the verge of fainting. I walked past the banquet room, with its long claw-foot table, and then past the parlor, with its brocade settees and the ominous grandfather clock ticking time in one corner. Up the grand staircase I went, hearing the creak and groan of the antique oak under my feet as I climbed each perfectly polished step.

Once upstairs, I passed my father’s office, then the library (my favorite room in the mansion), two lush and roomy bathrooms, and several guest rooms. I kept walking until I passed through the glass French doors leading to the west wing of the manor, which was mine and mine alone. I pushed through the ornately carved double doors to my vast bedroom, with its Queen Anne four-poster bed and throw pillows plumped perfectly by some hardworking, invisible maid.

“Mrs.Mead?” I called out. “Are you here?”

I found her in my en suite vestibule, lined with floor-to-ceiling mirrors on one wall and an antique vanity handed down to me through generations on my paternal line.

“There you are,” Mrs.Mead said the moment I crossed the threshold. “I’ve been calling you. Your father got cross and dressed me down for yelling in the hallway. Your mother will be here any minute. She wants to see you in the gown. Is it true what she said? Am I a step closer to calling you a scholar?”

I nodded. Mrs.Mead smiled and pinched my cheeks with her dry hands.

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