Page 15 of The Midnight Secret

Peony giggled as Veronica threw a velvet cushion at Bitsy. Bitsy gasped and threw one back, her eyes wide. Within moments, a pillow fight had erupted; even Peony was roused from her languor to take part. Feathers and sheets of paper danced through the air. Effie watched, open-mouthed and smiling, as the young women jumped on the bed, squealing and laughing, suddenly alive. Were they really so very different from Flora, Mhairi and Molly? Their dresses were finer, the surroundings grander, but at heart, weren’t they also carefree young women waiting for their lives to start? It felt like the first spontaneous thing she’d seen them do.

Effie grinned, picking up a cushion on the chair beside her,and threw it at Bitsy – currently straddling Veronica and swiping wildly through the air – with a strong aim. A lifetime of snagging puffins in traps and cragging on sheer cliffs meant she had precise hand-to-eye coordination. The cushion hit her victim square in the face, knocking a tortoiseshell comb from Bitsy’s coiffed hair as she fell backwards on the bed, knocking her head on the headboard on the way down.

‘Oh!’ Effie squirmed as a horrified silence fell upon the room and she realized direct hits were not, in fact, the intention. ‘I – I’m so sorry.’

Looks were shared as everyone dropped their weapons. The game was over as suddenly as it had begun. Peony smoothed her dress as Bitsy replaced her hair comb with a look of irritation. Effie had the impression they were checking their tempers with her, holding back the words they always felt quite free to launch at one another as old friends; the fact they didn’t, with her, only made her feel more of an outsider.

‘Why don’t we go downstairs and have a rummage in the dressing-up box?’ Veronica said with forced cheer. ‘One of the characters needs an opera cape and I seem to recall Gladly had one last year.’

‘Who wears an opera cape during a war?’ Bitsy muttered, still smoothing her hair as they headed for the door.

Effie trailed after them, feeling chastened, her heart heavy in her chest as they wound down from the tower room to the castle’s imposing reception hall. Housemaids in black dresses and white pinafores fluttered like moths along the corridors, always just out of sight, slipping silently behind hidden doors that led back to the servants’ quarters. Effie caught herself wishing she could disappear into the innards of the castle too; only a few months ago, she had been a member of ‘below stairs’ herself. But now, wearing Sholto’s engagement ringwith a silk blouse and finely tailored woollen trousers, she belonged on this side of the castle walls and she was obliged to follow Bitsy, Veronica and Peony down to the old playroom.

Like all the other rooms in the castle, it was vast. Her old home could easily have fit inside it and still not touched the sides. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the walls, with wooden toys as well as books set along them. There was an oak desk and chair, several sagging sofas arranged in small groups, the fireplace unlit. The windows gave onto the east lawn and it was so cold that frost still sat inside the glass.

At the far end, tattered pea-green silk curtains were swagged above a small, low stage. A deep-red velvet Victorian chaise longue stood askew upon it beside a lamp table, left over from the last production. Naively painted panels of a drawing room created a backdrop that didn’t seem in keeping with Veronica’s plotline. Perhaps she could help paint a new one, Effie wondered. She wasn’t entirely hopeless with a paintbrush.

Veronica headed straight for a large domed leather trunk in the corner and opened it with intent; she seemed to know exactly what she was looking for, rifling through piles of old costumes. Then again, this was an annual tradition of theirs, old friends gathering here for the Dupplin house play in the weeks before Christmas.

Bitsy rang the bell. ‘It’s freezing in here,’ she said, shivering.

Peony idly set the stylus on the gramophone and music filled the room. Effie hovered again, unsure where to put herself. She was surrounded by bored women and careless beauty, and she realized again that she had become the girl she’d envisaged that night in the featherstore on St Kilda last spring, when Sholto had entered her life by just a few hours. She would never have believed she’d end up here, nor thatif she did, it would feel like this: empty and dull, everything somehow flat. If Flora were here, she would know just the thing to say or do, to somehow bring a sparkle to the group. But Effie had always been a creature of the outdoors, better suited to doing than to talking.

‘My ladies,’ a maid said, coming into the room and seeing with horror that the fire was laid but unlit. She hurried over and put a match to it, flames leaping into life and enlivening the room.

‘That’s hardly going to help us now, is it?’ Bitsy snapped at the girl. ‘It’s perishing in here. Why wasn’t the fire set hours ago?’

‘I’m sorry, m’lady,’ the maid stammered. ‘We didn’t think the room would be used today.’

‘Not used today?’ Bitsy was incredulous. ‘But we always do the show during this week. Everyone knows that. The preparations take days. Are we to rehearse in our furs?’

‘I’m so sorry, m’lady. It’s my first month here. I didn’t know.’

‘First and last, if you ask me.’

The maid gasped, horrified at the threat. Effie felt the same. She looked at the others: Peony was leaning against the back of a chair, looking more interested than she had been all day, and Veronica was still kneeling by the dressing-up trunk, trying on a Venetian mask.

‘What would the viscount think if I were to tell him of your negligence, hmm? We’re his guests! His oldest, dearest friends, and you’d have us shivering and catching our deaths?’

‘I’m so sorry, m’lady. Please don’t tell him,’ the maid beseeched. ‘Let me make it right.’

‘And how exactly are you going to do that? This room will take at least an hour to heat. That’s an hour wasted while we wait around for something you should have done hours ago.’

The girl stared down at her shoes, her face pale, as she awaited sentencing.

There was a long silence as Bitsy regarded her, seeing how she trembled. Her appetite for blood abated as quickly as it had come on. ‘...Oh, don’t look so feeble. Bring us some tea,’ she said finally. ‘At least we might warm our hands around our cups.’

‘Yes, m’lady. Straight away.’ The maid turned to leave the room.

‘...But before you go, what is your name?’

The girl swallowed. She was like a mouse caught under Bitsy’s sharp claws. ‘Matilda.’

‘I see.’ Bitsy nodded. ‘Hurry along then,Matilda.’

Effie looked away as the girl scuttled out. She could imagine her running through the passageway in tears, the other servants flocking to learn the cause of her distress. But would they condemn or console her? The below-stairs world was just as much a political maze as this one.

‘Here it is!’ Veronica’s triumphant cry made them all look over as she wrapped a black taffeta cloak around her shoulders and twirled extravagantly. She appeared oblivious to Bitsy’s heinous bullying. ‘It’ll be just perfect.’

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