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Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

D inner that night was lamb stew, one of Adelaide's favourites made better still by the inclusion of rosemary dumplings. She sat between her friend and fellow housemaid, Patty, and one of the footmen, Gregory. They were squeezed in unusually tightly, as they had been since the start of the week on account of all the visitors' servants taking their meals with them.

Adelaide did not begrudge them the elbow room, though she was less sanguine about sharing Cook's stew. When one of the newcomers—a wiry, middle-aged man, sitting across the table from her—observed that the food at High Brook was exceedingly agreeable, she began eating with unseemly haste, determined to secure seconds before it was all gone.

"But then, everything at High Brook is agreeable as far as I can see," he continued. "It must be a pleasant place to work."

Adelaide was too busy eating to do more than shrug, but Patty answered that it was .

"Being this close to the sea is delightful, I should imagine."

Adelaide glanced up, wondering why he was so intent on praising High Brook. If he was fishing for work, he would do better to charm the butler than a pair of housemaids. Then he smiled at her with a warmth that his gaunt face had not made him appear capable of, and she felt bad for thinking he was being anything other than affable.

"We don't get much time off to go to the beach," she said, "but you can smell the sea on the air some mornings, and that is refreshing, to be sure."

"Can't be the first time you've seen the sea," Gregory said to him. "The menservants I know get to travel all over, seeing things the likes of us can only dream of."

"It is true that my work has allowed me to see some interesting places," he replied. "Have you always worked at High Brook, then, young man?"

Gregory had put another forkful of food in his mouth, but it did not deter him from answering, unintelligibly, "Not always at High Brook, but always in Southampton. Patty used to work at Mottisfont Abbey, didn't you, Patty?"

Patty nodded enthusiastically. "And Titchfield Manor before that."

"What about you?" the man asked Adelaide. "Have you lived anywhere interesting?"

She shook her head. "I have worked at a few places, but none of them particularly memorable. Once you've seen the inside of one storeroom, you've seen them all."

"You have always been a housemaid, then? "

Adelaide had held all manner of positions and knew her way around a scullery as well as she did a dairy, laundry, and stillroom, but she could not imagine a stranger who was only attempting to make polite conversation would truly wish to hear about it. She replied, simply, "Yes. And you? Have you always been a manservant?"

"Not always, though I arrived at the position more quickly than some are able to thanks to the education my parents gave me." After a pause, he asked, "Did you receive an education?"

Patty shook her head. "Too many mouths to feed in our family for any of us to waste time with learning. As soon as we could work, we did."

The man smiled at her briefly, then returned his gaze to Adelaide and looked at her until she felt compelled to tell him something , if only to make him stop staring. She settled for saying she had never been to school, for it was always best to put as much truth into one's prevarications as possible.

"How many years have you been in service?" he pressed.

"Eight."

"You must have begun at a very young age, then, for you cannot be older than what—eighteen?"

Adelaide smiled but did not answer. In truth, she did not know her precise age, though it was probably nearer twenty.

He smiled back, wholly undeterred by her silence. "I was seventeen before I went into service, but I had to wait for my older brothers to find themselves positions first. Do you have any brothers or sisters? "

" I do," Patty answered, and tried valiantly to name them all, but the man talked directly over her, his attention fixed solely on Adelaide.

"But you? Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"Regrettably." Though why they should be any more interesting than Patty's, she knew not.

"Are they in service as well?"

She laughed cynically. The Booker children would rather starve than exert themselves to lift a finger. Indeed, they would have starved without servants—and an unlovable adopted sister—to do their bidding, for they had been brought up to be fashionably indulged and indolent. "No, sir, they are none of them in service."

A bell rang on the far wall, and Mrs Bunce called from that end of the table that it was for Lord Oakley's room. To Adelaide's dismay, the man who had been questioning her stood up, thanked them for the pleasant conversation, and left. She felt herself grow hot.

"That was Lord Oakley's man?" she asked, all agitation.

"It was, and he was mighty interested in you," Gregory replied.

Patty wrinkled her nose in displeasure. "It is always you they are interested in, never me."

"I do not think he was asking for himself. I think he might have been asking for his master," Adelaide said quietly—though not quietly enough, for she was overheard.

"I think so, too," came the booming voice of the butler from behind them.

With a scraping of chair legs, everyone in the hall rose to their feet. Mr Hardcastle looked down his perennially turned-up nose at Adelaide.

"And why do I think this? Because his lordship has just been asking after you upstairs, in the drawing room no less, wanting to know how long you have worked here."

"Why did he want to know that?" Mrs Bunce enquired, hastening around the table to join them.

Mr Hardcastle folded his arms across his chest and peered at Adelaide sternly. "Because he thinks he recognises her from somewhere."

Mrs Bunce's countenance reddened, and Adelaide's heart plunged. She knew precisely what the housekeeper was thinking—the same thing as every other person around the table, only they were all being less discreet about it, giggling and nudging each other suggestively.

"I assure you, that is not possible, for I have never met him before," she said firmly.

"What about before you came to High Brook?"

"Upon my word, sir, never."

"Then why is he showing such interest in you?"

"I do not know."

The butler narrowed his eyes. "Have you been leading him on?"

Adelaide stifled an enraged gasp. "No, I have not!"

"Thank you, Mr Hardcastle," Mrs Bunce interrupted. "I can deal with this from here. Sarah, come with me."

Wiping her damp palms on her skirts, Adelaide followed the housekeeper out of the hall and away from the two dozen pairs of eyes boring into her. The room erupted into giggles and lewd speculation behind them, but the sound faded as they trudged through the warren of service corridors to Mrs Bunce's sitting room. When they arrived, the housekeeper lit two candles on a little table and gestured for Adelaide to sit with her.

"Well then, my girl, you had better tell me. What has occurred between you and Lord Oakley?"

"Nothing."

"Do not lie to me."

"I have never lied to you, and I am not lying now," Adelaide said desperately. "I have not done anything."

"I never thought for a moment that you had. I am asking whether he has done something."

"Oh, I see. Well…" She sighed unhappily.

"Oh, my days, he has tried something!" Mrs Bunce cried, clutching her chest.

"No! At least, nothing like that . He only seemed interested in the colour of my eyes."

"Oh Lord!"

"But not because he was trying to flatter me, I do not think. At least, if he was, he went about it in a manner most unlikely to succeed. He was preoccupied with the notion that my eyes are the same colour as his."

Mrs Bunce shook her head almost violently. "Listen to me. He is trying to seduce you, and you must not fall prey to his schemes."

"I am really not sure he?—"

"Do not be na?ve. This is how they do it. He will try to make you feel safe, make you feel as though you and he are not so very different, that there might be a future in it, but you are different, Sarah. You are from completely opposing worlds, and it would come to nothing but disaster for you. You must not let him succeed!"

"I was not intending to."

"Not by design, I am sure, but if you deny him, he may take matters into his own hands." She pushed her chair back from the table abruptly and stood up, taking one of the candles with her and turning around to rummage in the drawer of her small writing desk as she continued speaking. "I ought to have seen this coming. I've always said, beautiful girls ought not to be chambermaids, but I broke my own rule with you, Sarah. You've always been such a hard worker! I shall find out from Mr Hardcastle what sort of man the viscount is, and whether we ought to be worried he might try something untoward. In the meantime, swap rounds with Patty, so you are away from his corridor." She turned back around and held something out towards Adelaide. "And I want you to take this."

"A knife?"

"No, dear, a letter opener. You'll not cut yourself carrying it, but it will stick a man just as well if the need arises. Keep it on you at all times. If Lord Oakley tries anything, use it."

Adelaide thought it best not to laugh, for Mrs Bunce was clearly in earnest, but arming herself seemed a vastly excessive response to somebody noticing the colour of her eyes—even if that observation had been made with absurd and improper insistence. More by way of thanks for her concern than for any real concession that she might need it, Adelaide accepted the little implement and slipped it into her pocket .

The housekeeper gave a decisive nod. "Good. Now run along."

Patty was waiting in the passageway outside and required an immediate summary of everything that had been said within.

"So there you have it," Adelaide concluded, once she had told her all. "And he will see me kicked out on the streets if he does not cease his nonsense."

"Do you not think it is a little flattering that a viscount has taken a shine to you?"

"Truly, I do not think he has taken any sort of shine to me. I cannot shake the feeling that he really was only intrigued by my eyes." She stopped walking and thrust her face towards Patty's, as Lord Oakley had done to her on the stairs. "Come, tell me. Are they purple?"

Patty gamely stared into them, only to shake her head. "Down here, everyone's eyes look the same shade of murky brown."

"Ever the charmer," Adelaide said, rolling her unremarkable eyes as she linked arms with her friend and directed her back to the servants' hall to see whether there were any dumplings going begging.

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