Corset Diaries

by Katie MacAlister

  “I don’t have to have given birth to know what’s reasonable for a kid and what’s not.”

  “Reasonable?” Max barked.

  Barbara sucked in her breath in a manner that said she was both shocked and secretly thrilled.

  “You’re trying to tell me what’s reasonable? You? A woman who’s been here for less than—” He slid a glance toward the camera pointing at him. “—a few months?”

  I slammed my fork down on the table. “Yes, I am telling you what’s reasonable, since you seem to be too pigheaded or blind to see it. Melody is obviously unhappy—”

  “I don’t need you to tell me whether or not my daughter is happy—”

  “I’m just trying to help, you annoying man!”

  “We don’t need your help!” he roared at me.

  I bit my lip and ignored the fact that my cheeks were flaming as I stared down into my plate. There wasn’t anything I could say. He made it quite clear that this pretend world was to go no further than what was displayed for the camera.

  I just wished that knowledge didn’t feel so much like rejection.

  I didn’t look up when Max cleared his throat and said, “My apologies, Tessa. I was out of line. As your stepdaughter, Melody is—”

  “She’s not my mother! She’s some stranger who is just pretending to be married to you!”

  Within me indecision warred, an uncomfortable emotion that spawned a sudden epiphany. There are times in life when you face a point of no return and have to make a decision about how you are going to proceed— either wholeheartedly embracing whatever is facing you or sounding a judicious retreat, skirting the edges, keeping yourself safe from the dangers that the unknown can pose. I’ve spent the last three years since my husband died avoiding contact with friends and family, immersing myself in research of the dry, bloodless past, backing away from situations that challenge me to interact with others.

  Clearly, I was at a point in my life where either I could push myself back into the world of the living—thus leaving myself open to the pain of rejection or worse—or I could step back to a safe distance and participate only on the most superficial level.

  I glanced at Max and acknowledged that he held some sort of attraction for me, an attraction I hadn’t felt for a very long time. If I wanted to see if it was reciprocated, I’d have to risk my own peace of mind. Did I really want to destroy the layer of insulation I’d managed to build around myself ever since Peter died? Was anything worth the risk of the sort of pain I knew one person could cause another? Could any relationship—assuming there was one to be had—be worth the heartache that could result?

  Melody positively radiated anger, and oddly enough, it was that which ended up melting my heart. It was an odd feeling, this reawakening of my emotions, and at that moment I knew that what I had believed to be three years of insulation from the cruelties of life was really nothing more than a slow death. More importantly, the sight of Melody’s angry face drove home the fact that these were real people, people whose lives I was touching for better or worse. They weren’t just names on a piece of paper, they weren’t puppets enacting a part, they were, all of them, people who had good qualities and insecurities and needs and desires and dreams, the same as I had.

  Looking between the face of an angry girl and her frustrated father, I realized I wanted to live again, really live, I wanted to experience everything life had to offer to me—the good, the bad, and all of the flavors in between.

  It was then that I realized I really hadn’t taken this job because of the money; I’d been restless and unhappy for the last six months, fretting for a way to rejoin the world but not knowing how.

  “Welcome back to the land of the living,” I said under my breath, then used the opportunity of Barbara covering for the argument with tale of a marvelous story she’d read in the Times to lean sideways (ignoring the creaking of the corset) and hiss, “Listen, you little monster, either you play along with this setup, or I won’t take you riding with me.”

  Melody’s pugnacious little face achieved a level of obstinacy that I had heretofore thought impossible. “My dad says you’re not supposed to take me riding.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t take orders from him, now do I? Either get with the program, or suffer. Those are your choices.”

  “I hate you.”

  “You’re not my most favorite person on the face of the planet, either.”

  Her dark blue eyes narrowed until they were little slits of anger, misery, and frustration, all topped off with a huge dollop of self-pity. “My dad will never like you. You’re fat.”

  She delivered the last words with the sharpness of a picador stabbing a bull. I bit back the retort that she was an annoying little snot and instead caught Sam’s eye. As he turned the camera on me, I smiled and patted the monster on her head. “Why, certainly you can return to your studies! What an industrious little thing you are. Teddy, would you escort Lady Melody to the schoolroom? She’s just itching to get back to work.”

  Lunch went much better without her, but I was aware the whole time of Max’s less-than-happy eyes upon me. Brilliant Tessa, the master at relationships. Hour one of rejoining the human race, and I’d already angered the two people in whom I was most interested.

  After lunching on the miniscule amount of food I was able to fit into my compressed torso, I headed out by myself to find the stables. I had no idea what the others were going to do—by that point Max was not saying much of anything, while Barbara did nothing but talk. To be honest, I preferred Max’s sulky silence to her verbal diarrhea.

  The house and grounds really were lovely. I knew it had cost the production company a packet to rent them for the month, not to mention hiding all of the electric fixtures, modern plumbing, and such that had been added over the passage of time, but I certainly thought it was money well spent. Since Max and family had scattered and I didn’t know where the stable was, I figured the best bet was for me to ask one of the people in the servants’ hall.

  I slipped through the green baize door and felt like I’d entered another world. Rather than the rich carpeting, lovely wallpaper, bright paint, and highly polished wood that graced the public rooms, the hall leading to the back stairs was a dingy, depressing place with an ugly brown mat as carpeting, a horribly antiseptic pea-green paint on every available surface, and dark, age-spotted pictures of long-dead servants on the walls. My heels clattered loudly on the bare wood steps as I descended down to the realm of Downstairs.

  Noise, billows of steam, and the nose-wrinklingly acid odor of a coal fire swept me into its embrace as I entered the servants’ hall. I paused at the foot of the stairs, waiting for a quiet moment to introduce myself, but was immediately sucked into the drama that was being enacted before me.

  “Raven, I need that large yellow bowl. Would you hurry up with it?” A large woman with a floury front waved equally floury hands at a small young woman at the sink. The floury woman would be Clara the cook, no doubt.

  “Oy! Do I look like I have five hands? I’m washing it as fast as I can but it’s not so easy without proper washing-up liquid, you know. And I’ve got that lot from upstairs to do yet.”

  A sharp-faced woman stood in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips. “What happened to my eggs? Did someone take my eggs?”

  “I suppose you call this clean?” Palmer waved a limpid hand toward a silver salver sitting to the right of where Teddy was polishing silverware.

  Teddy looked up. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do call that clean.”

  Palmer sighed a long, drawn-out Eeyore sort of sigh. “Thought you would. It’s not enough I have to drag my poor aching nerve up and down the stairs all day waiting on the family, now I have to do the silver, too. Ah, well, it’s not as if I have much of a future, what with my nerve and the lumbago and the heart attack that’s waiting to claim me. I might as well do the silver, as not.”

  “Eggs! I said eggs! Hello, can anyone hear me?” I gathered that was Sally
the kitchen maid waving her hands around for attention, since she seemed to be preparing tea for the servants.

  “That you will not do, Mr. Palmer,” Mrs. Peters said as she bustled into the room, carrying a large red candle and a stick of incense. “It’s Teddy’s job to be doing the silver, and do it he will, or I’ll be knowing why.”

  “Look, Peters, I’m not your slave—”

  “You will refer to me as Mrs. Peters.”

  “I put a bowl of eggs down right here. A whole bowl of eggs. Now they’re gone. Which one of you took them?”

  Teddy ignored her and Mrs. Peters, instead focusing his glare on Palmer, going so far as to poke his finger in the poor man’s chest, causing Palmer to stagger back a step. “The only reason I’m doing this is because my agent thinks it’ll launch my career, not so you can go all toffee-nosed on me and think you can push me around.”

  “Toffee-nosed!” Mrs. Peters said, no doubt righteously indignant on Palmer’s behalf. The frizzy corona of hair surrounding her head bobbed as she shook her head at Teddy. “How dare you speak to your superiors in such a manner?”

  “Ow,” Palmer said, rubbing his chest.

  Clara the cook turned to where the scullery girls were washing up. “Raven, I can’t make the pudding without that bowl.”

  “You’re a bleedin‘ housewife from Manchester!” Teddy sneered at Mrs. Peters. “Superior, my arse!”

  “People, if I don’t get those eggs back, there won’t be any tea, so whoever thought it would be funny to take them had just better give them back.”

  “Superior is as superior does,” Mrs. Peters said with a testy sniff, then headed for a side door.

  Alice the head maid entered the room (and the fray), a huge, shiny brass can in her arms. “Honey, what are you doing with the knives? They go to Michael; he’s in charge of cleaning the knives.”

  A timid-looking young girl in a drab gray maid’s outfit almost jumped out of her skin at the words. “Sorry, Alice. I thought I was to do the knives, too.”

  “EGGS! Are you all deaf? Who stole my bloody eggs? I don’t think it’s funny at all, and if you think I’m going to be putting up with this sort of behavior, you can all think again.”

  “Ugh. Can we open another window? I’m sure breathing in all these coal fumes is toxic . . . oh, hello again.”

  Alice stopped midway across the servants’ hall when she caught sight of me standing at the foot of the stairs. Silence fell like a week-dead flounder.

  I rallied a smile and took a couple of steps into the room. No one moved a muscle; it was like they were all playing a game of statues. “I hope I’m not disturbing anything. Nice to see you all—I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance earlier to meet you, but it’s kind of awkward with the camera guys and all. I’m Tessa, and in case you didn’t know, I’m playing the role of the duchess. I’ve met a couple of you—hi, Teddy, hi, Bret—but haven’t had the pleasure of meeting the rest of you. I thought I would just pop in and say hi before I toddle off to the stable. So . . . um . . . hi!”

  Palmer, looking faintly scandalized, limped forward. “Generally, it is understood that the lady of the house tells the butler or housekeeper when she plans on making a visit downstairs. I will, of course, take full responsibility for being downstairs here when you had need of me upstairs, and can give no excuse other than the sharp pain in the region of my kidneys—”

  “No, no, you did nothing wrong, and heaven knows if you’re having kidney pain on top of everything else you should probably be sitting down. In fact . . . er . . . maybe this job is too much for you. I mean, your health has to come first. If you like, I can talk to Roger—”

  Palmer’s shoulders straightened as he leveled an outraged look at me. “I assure you that I am perfectly capable of fulfilling my duties, Your Grace. If you have a complaint about my service, kindly address it to me and I will strive to do whatever it is you want of me.”

  “But—”

  “What’s going on out here?” Mrs. Peters asked as she reentered the servants’ hall. “Your Grace, what are you doing downstairs?”

  “She’s trying to do Mr. Palmer out of his job, that’s what she’s doing,” Raven the scullery tattletale said with a smirk thrown in my direction. “She wants to tell Roger that he’s not fit to do the job.”

  “I am not, I just want Palmer to—”

  “Well!” Mrs. Peters eyed me from the top of my head to my toes. “I’m sure the spirits will be most interested to hear about your attempt to do an honest, hardworking man out of his livelihood.”

  Oh, great, now she was going to sic her ghosts on me. “I am not trying to do him out of his—”

  “It’s difficult to please those who are in possession of perfect health,” Palmer told Mrs. Peters. He had a certain morose sense of satisfaction about him that redoubled my conviction that he was shamming us all. “They don’t understand those of us who are cursed with a more delicate nature.”

  “Shameful, that’s what it is, completely shameful, Mr. Palmer,” she agreed.

  “OK, right, reality check time! First off, I’m not trying to get rid of anyone, I’m just worried about Palmer’s health—” I held up my hand to stop both him and Mrs. Peters from interrupting. “—but if he says he’s fine, end of story. I certainly won’t say anything to Roger. Next, and more importantly, can we remember that this is all pretend, and that no one’s livelihood actually depends on the month here?”

  “That’s not what my agent says,” Teddy said, flicking a dirty linen cloth over a pair of candlesticks.

  “Fine, I’ll amend my statement to pertain to those of you who aren’t using your time on camera as a means to finding another job. Now that I’ve been filled in on the proper etiquette of why it’s wrong for me to come downstairs without making an appointment, can I please put some names to faces?”

  Most of the indoor staff were present, with the exception of Mademoiselle Beauvolais, the governess, and Ellis. Mrs. Peters introduced the remainder of the staff in turn: Clara Billings, who was our cook (the flour-covered small woman with thick Coke bottle glasses), Easter, the second housemaid (tall, gorgeous, blond, could easily be a model—I made a note to talk to her later and find out why she had signed herself up to be a housemaid for a month), Honey, the third housemaid (shy-looking girl of about eighteen), Raven and Shelby, the two scullery maids who weren’t looking too happy at the moment (could very well be the mountain of dirty dishes that they were washing), Michael, the third footman (nice eyes, going prematurely bald), and a weedy, unhappy-looking man sitting in the corner who was introduced as Reg Crighton, the valet.

  “Crighton as in Ellis Crighton’s husband?” I asked.

  He bobbed his head a couple of times.

  “Oh, how nice for you to be able to share this experience with your wife,” I said politely. He murmured something about it being a thrill, and hurried off with one of Max’s suit coats to press.

  “It’s lovely meeting all of you, and I’d like to say just how much I appreciate you taking on what I’m sure are perfectly ghastly jobs, and if there’s anything I can do to make it a little bit less ghastly, just let me know.”

  Teddy grinned and Alice gave me a weak smile, but the rest of the staff just looked uncomfortable. I didn’t know if it was because I was American or because I was representing Upstairs, or maybe they just didn’t like me personally. Whatever it was, I felt as uncomfortable as they looked, so after asking directions to the stable, I hustled out of the servants’ hall as fast as my corset would allow.

  “Hello. You’re not going to lecture me about what I should and shouldn’t be doing, are you?” I asked the brown spaniel who was lazing about on a patch of sun-warmed cobblestones. His abbreviated tail thumped a couple of times. I wanted to pet him, but that would mean I had to bend over, and I wasn’t sure the corset would let me do that. I ended up squatting down in a singularly ungraceful fashion and managed to give his head a few pats, as well as read the tag on his collar. “Ah. You’re
a Toby. Why didn’t I guess? Don’t tell me, you’re owned by the Sloughs, right?”

  “That he is.” A man’s voice came from behind me. I tried to turn as I got to my feet, but my skirt got tangled around my ankles and my corset objected strongly to me making any sudden moves, both of which resulted in me falling backward onto my butt. A pair of polished dark brown leather boots stepped into view. I followed the boots up to a pair of cocoa-colored breeches, up higher to snowy white shirt with gray suspenders, the sleeves rolled up to show strong, tanned arms, up higher still to a good-natured face topped by a thick mop of curly dark blond hair. The man grinned and stuck out a large hand to help me up. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”

  “Just my dignity, and that’s taken a fairly big whack today, so nothing else can do much damage to it,” I grumbled as I allowed him to pull me to my feet. It took a minute, not because he had any problems doing so, but because I had to first stop staring up at him. Max was breathtakingly gorgeous in his black frock coat and waistcoat and all, but this man was . . . seductive. Alluring. Earthy. He looked like he walked straight out of the pages of Tom Jones. I was willing to bet he could charm the undies off a nun. “You wouldn’t happen to be Alec the coachman, would you?”

  “In the flesh,” he said, flashing me another one of those grins that made me very aware of the fact that I was a female and he was a male, and hoo, baby, was my girl equipment aware of his boy equipment.

  I gave myself a brief, very brief lecture about lusting after a man who was probably young enough to be a really, really younger brother, and firmly told my uterus to stop twitching and behave itself.

  “You’re the Yank duchess. The one that . . . eh . . .”

  “Yes, the incident at morning prayers. I was kind of hoping everyone would forget that.”

  “I thought it was pretty funny. It was a gas.” He went off in a gale of laughter.

  I smiled weakly. “Yes. Very funny. Ha ha ha.”