Page 94 of The Maid's Secret

“Who took what?” he asks.

“The Fabergé,” I say. “And I might just know who returned it, too.”

—

Chapter 28

Dear Molly,

It is the prerogative of the young to rail against injustice, and it is the fate of the old to endure it. When you were a child, you railed against anything you perceived as unfair, wanting so much for the wrongs of this world to be righted. You had no notion that justice comes at a cost, one that is too often paid by those who can least afford it.

It will hurt you to know that Algernon never paid the price for anything he did. There was no further investigation into Mrs.Mead’s death. It was deemed an accident, and he escaped justice. As for everything else he did, it was swept under the carpet by his parents, who greased many a palm so their golden boy could slip through the loopholes they’d opened wide for him. I suspect Algernon Braun plundered and pillaged for the rest of his days.

When I asked Papa about everything I’d told him and what the consequences would be, he said three words—“Let it go.” And so I did, but I refused to let go of everything.

A few days after Mrs.Mead’s funeral, the Brauns were invited tothe manor yet again—life going on as usual, as if Mrs.Mead hadn’t died, as if a girl in our retinue had not been egregiously wronged, as if I was going to marry Algernon and enact my parents’ wishes.

I waited until after dinner, and when Penelope disappeared into the kitchen, I stood. “I have an announcement,” I said in front of both families. “Algernon, I’m not marrying you. Our engagement is off.”

“Is this a joke?” Algernon said, laughing. But he saw from my face that this was no laughing matter.

“I’m refusing a life with you. This marriage was my parents’ will, not my own, and I’m not going through with it.”

There were few words after that. My mother stuttered and stammered. She even begged for the Brauns’ forgiveness, claiming that I was out of my wits and would soon apologize. My father remained statue still, saying nothing. Priscilla and Magnus rose from the table and silently marched their son out of the banquet room, past the parlor, through the portrait corridor of our long-lost relatives, and out the front door of Gray Manor, which Uncle Willy held wide open.

My parents watched as Magnus and his family turned their backs on us. Once outside, Magnus stopped between two imposing Roman columns. He turned around, to address not me but my father. “You won’t get away with this,” he said. And with that, all three of them left for good.

The moment Uncle Willy closed the manor door behind them, I ran to my bedroom, for I knew if I didn’t move fast, I’d suffer the full wrath of Papa’s rage.

Uncle Willy and John had known ahead of time what I was planning to announce, and they were primed for the aftermath. Papa rushed up the grand staircase after me, and Uncle Willy followed, stopping my father before he entered the heavy double doors to my bedroom. Buried under my quilts, I heard words exchanged, but Uncle Willy, who’d always been a gatekeeper, now forbade his employer from entering his own daughter’s room.

My father’s heavy footsteps retreated down the hallway. Next, Iheard the slamming of his office door. Then came the bellowing roar as whatever rage he’d reserved for me no doubt befell my mother.

My bedroom door opened, and Uncle Willy’s face appeared. He nodded, and I got out of bed. He accompanied me down the servants’ back staircase, and I ran out of the conservatory, over the lawns, and through the garden gate to where John was waiting to take me to the safety of Mrs.Mead’s cottage. That night, I slept in her bed while my beloved John and dear Uncle Willy kept vigil by the cottage door.

—

The next day the sun rose, though in truth I had doubted it would. Uncle Willy went to work at the manor, and around noon, he returned to tell me it was safe for me to go home. Whatever he said to my parents I was not privy to it, but Papa ceased to be a physical threat. Still, when I walked into the manor, Mama and Papa were as cold as ice. They could barely look at me, said not a word to me, no matter how I tried to make amends. I’d lost my golden sheen; I was no longer their darling girl, and while my presence was tolerated, it was clear I was an impediment to their aspirations, living proof that a girl is but a burden.

As the days passed, when I wasn’t sneaking to the cottage to visit my beloved John, taking refuge in his arms and his love, I holed myself up in the library and read book after book. I knew Papa kept the Fabergé hidden in the filing cabinet in his office, and one day when he wasn’t around, before the Brauns could ask for it back, I took what was mine. I hid the egg behind a stack of my favorite novels in the library, and my parents, so distraught about losing the Brauns’ favor, failed to notice the egg was gone. Sometimes, I would shift the stack just to look at the beautiful, shiny object. At the height of my despair, I even talked to it. “Beware,” I warned it. “You may be a coveted treasure one day and pitched to the curb the next. I would know.”

It wasn’t long after that the men in black—Magnus’s henchmen, his corporate fixers—came knocking on the manor door. They broughtback the original divestment papers to be signed by Papa with a deadline of under a week. The merger between the Brauns and the Grays was officially dead, and my father’s firm would soon be dissolved, his assets stripped away.

Papa paced the hallways, rarely coming to the banquet room for meals. Mama perpetually smelled of vodka and lime. She stumbled about the manor, ordering staff around, except they were figments of her imagination—ghosts from a bygone era. Not even Penelope worked for us anymore. She simply failed to show up one day, and as for the other servants, Papa couldn’t afford them without the merger, so all but Uncle Willy left, with no thanks or pay.

I soon learned to cook my own meals, simple fare—egg on toast, or crumpets with tea. For the first time in my life, there was no one to serve me, and so I re-created from memory dishes that Mrs.Mead had made as I’d watched, my little legs swinging back and forth under her cottage kitchen table. Sometimes, I would sneak out to eat with John and Uncle Willy at the cottage, and on those occasions, there was something so sustaining about Mrs.Mead’s hearth, a pot of stew simmering on it, though it would never taste as good as hers.

I wasn’t very hungry in those weeks when everything fell apart. In fact, I had trouble keeping food down. At first, I chalked it up to stress—to being undone by grief and uncertainty about what my future would hold. It was as if a pox had descended on our household, a curse on the entire Gray family.

But it wasn’t this curse that soon concerned me most, for there was another causing great apprehension. In those days, that’s what we called a woman’s monthlies, Molly—the curse. It had been weeks since I’d bled, and at first, I’d ignored this lapse, until I could ignore it no longer.

One afternoon, when Uncle Willy was helping movers cart off antiques from the manor, I went to the cottage to break the news to John.

“I’m late,” I said.

“You’re early. Dinner’s at six.”

“You’re not following,” I replied.

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